NEW YORK – In Thursday’s game between the Cardinals and Mets, the two teams found themselves in a slugfest early at Citi Field. It was like a free home run giveaway at the ballpark. They scored a combined seven runs in the first inning and a half, and all of them were scored via the long ball, with St. Louis leading, 4-3.
But the game settled down after that. New York managed to tie the game and Juan Soto’s monster home run proved to be the difference in a 5-4 loss that snapped the Cardinals’ six-game winning streak.
With the game knotted up at 4-4, Cardinals left-hander JoJo Romero started the seventh inning by retiring the first two hitters – Carson Benge and Bo Bichette – he faced. Then came Soto, New York’s best hitter. Romero was ahead in the count, 1-2, but Soto untied the score with his mammoth blast over the right-field wall.
"Just do damage,” Soto said. “I was definitely hunting the fastball, [trying] to react to any offspeed. He hung it. He hung it in my spot, and I just swung at it."
Despite the loss, the Cardinals are still feeling good about themselves. It’s a big difference compared to when they played at Citi Field in April of 2025. That year, the Mets swept the four-game series. This season, the Cardinals took two out of three and still gave New York a tough time in the loss.
After taking a 1-0 lead in the first inning on a Alec Burleson home run, the Cardinals found themselves behind the 8-ball in the bottom of the frame with right-hander Hunter Dobbins on the mound. Bichette hit a two-run homer, while Jared Young made it a 3-1 game with a solo homer.
But St. Louis bounced back in the top of the second against right-hander Christian Scott. Lars Nootbaar led off the frame with a homer well beyond the right-field wall. Two batters later, Jimmy Crooks swung at the first pitch and hit a two-run homer to give St. Louis a one-run lead.
The Cardinals collected three hits the rest of the way, but manager Oliver Marmol liked what he saw from his position players on this day. They were aggressive in the batter’s box, he said.
“We did some things well today, but at the end of the day we came up short,” Marmol said. “But I like the way our guys played. We took some good at-bats. We were aggressive early, we were able to punch back early. Our group has done it a lot this year.”
Burleson is one of the reasons the Cardinals are on top in the National League Wild Card standings. He has hit safely in a career-high-tying 11 straight games with a slash line of .356/.408/.711 with four homers, 13 RBIs and 10 runs scored during that span.
Even Burleson sees the difference between this year’s club and last. This year’s team will move past the loss to the Mets. It’s time to think about the series with the Twins starting Friday.
“Not to be disrespectful, but [the current team doesn’t] care about what the media says or what outside people are saying. It doesn’t really faze us. We are going to go out and play our brand of baseball. It has put us in a good position to win a baseball game,” he said. “Today, I think it put us in a good position to win a baseball game. We didn’t come through the last couple of innings.
“You look at this year, the energy is still good. We won a series against a good team. Yeah, we felt we could have swept them, but the energy is still good. We are in a good spot. If you look at the last couple of years, if we don’t sweep a team we feel like we should, it’s just different. I think that’s the difference. We’ll bounce back from this one and move on to Minnesota.”