ST. LOUIS – One night after trouncing the Cardinals by a dozen runs in the first game of a three-game set, the Orioles exploded out to a seven-run lead before the end of the second inning. As much as the outburst must’ve felt like another preordained victory, the Birds instead had to bounce back from a mid-game letdown to come away with a tighter-than-expected 8-7 victory.
Christian Encarnacion-Strand’s ninth-inning double marked the second four-hit game of his career, and stood as the game-winning RBI. Luis Vázquez, selected to the active roster earlier in the day after Tyler O’Neill was placed on the injured list, pinch ran for Samuel Basallo and came around with the winning run in his first big league action this season.
Leody Taveras delivered the first big blast of the night for the O’s, launching a three-run homer against Cardinals starter Michael McGreevy to put the exclamation point on a first-inning rally. Pete Alonso powered up for his second homer of the series in the second, this one an opposite-field shot that pushed him north of 90 RBIs for the sixth time in his eight big league seasons. One of the years he failed to reach that mark was the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. In the other such season, 2024, he tallied a mere 88.
Kyle Bradish had to grind on a sweltering summer evening and was ultimately unable to finish the fifth inning of his start, needing 91 pitches to complete just 4 1/3 innings. Bradish held the Cardinals to just one run in the first four innings, surrendering a solo homer to Nolan Gorman, but he gave back five runs in the fifth before being replaced by Alex Hoppe.
The first two Orioles to come to the plate in the first inning, Jackson Holliday and Alonso, grounded out on a combined five pitches, seemingly setting the stage for McGreevy to escape the inning with a light tab. Instead, Gunnar Henderson poked a single to the opposite field to start a series of five consecutive Orioles to reach, culminating in Taveras’ homer. It was the third such streak in the first two games of this series for Baltimore, with both of the other two coming in Tuesday’s prodigious fifth-inning outburst.