PITTSBURGH -- For a guy named Church, one would think the Cardinals' rookie left fielder would have gotten the memo on the whole ‘thou shalt not steal’ thing.
But on Wednesday night at PNC Park, there was Nathan Church, robbing an opposing hitter with a leaping grab at the wall for the third time this season.
This time, it won the Cardinals a game.
With a walk-off home run as the alternative, Church flipped the script and walked off the Pirates with the catch, taking one away from Nick Gonzales to secure the final out of a 5-4 Cardinals win.
With Gonzales hunting on the first pitch, the man who threw it didn’t have a good feeling about it once he saw the Pirates' third baseman connect.
“Initially off the bat, I thought it was gone,” Riley O’Brien said.
The Cardinals' closer wasn’t alone.
“Off the bat, I thought it was -- not just a homer -- I thought it was way gone,” Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said.
Of course, not everyone was so surprised. Cardinals starter Andre Pallante was back in the visitors’ clubhouse following his start as he watched the game’s final sequence unfold on television.
“Popped him up,” Pallante said plainly of his reaction to Church’s latest caper. “Fly ball to left. Everything to left field is an out. We love having Church out there.”
O’Brien was feeling the love, too -- and he wasn’t shy about letting Church know it.
“I said, ‘I love you. Thank you for catching that,’” O’Brien grinned.
Cardinals rookie JJ Wetherholt provided another display of his elite bat control, driving a Bubba Chandler fastball with authority toward the left-field corner for an RBI double in the third inning to open the scoring.
Wetherholt didn’t appear to be angling for anything other than getting the barrel to an up-and-away offering. It was a disciplined, bat-to-ball swing, but came off the bat at 100.1 mph to drive in Ramon Urías.
In the top of the fifth, Chandler nestled a slider over the heart of the plate to Alec Burleson, who stayed through the baseball to crack an opposite field home run an estimated 411 feet.
Church’s collision course with outfield walls is a trend for which the groundwork is laid at the beginning of every series. No matter where the Cardinals are playing, Church is among the St. Louis outfielders working with Jon Jay on wall balls, preparing for the possibility of those types of moments showing up in games.
“That was some of the work that we did right when we got here,” Church said. “Knowing the walls and how they're going to play. Just doing that homework beforehand. So when plays like that happen, you're ready for it.’
Church’s catch made a winner out of Pallante long after the Cardinals' starter had departed the game. With the slider standing out again amid a healthy pitch mix, Pallante cruised through six innings of tidy one-run baseball.
Then, he got his handshakes -- and things got complicated.
More than just the final out of the game, much of what happened for the Cardinals on the mound after Pallante’s departure on Wednesday can be categorized as an adventure.
Ryne Stanek struggled with his seventh-inning assignment, leading to a rescue mission by JoJo Romero. Though Romero allowed a two-run hit to tighten the score, he retired Marcell Ozuna on a key groundout to end the threat with the Cardinals still leading, 5-3.
The battle between the lefty Romero and the right-handed slugger Ozuna brought about as much tension as a ballpark with fewer than 10,000 fans inside of it could possibly produce.
“That's a tough spot to bring somebody into, right?” Marmol said. “Bases loaded. Ozuna, if you look at his splits, he's heavily in the air against righties. He's on the ground over 47, 48% against lefties. JoJo has the two pitches in a sinker and a changeup to do exactly that.
“So, you're just betting on the fact that he can execute on it -- and he did a really nice job. That's the game right there. We committed to only using Riley for three outs at the end today. And we had to figure out a way to get it to him.”
Enter George Soriano. Like much of what transpired in the seventh for the Cardinals' bullpen, Soriano’s eighth inning was anything but clean. After he allowed a hit and a walk to invite a potential Pittsburgh rally, an untimely -- and seldom seen -- error by Masyn Winn contributed to the Pirates cutting the deficit to one.
But Soriano kept it there, retiring Nick Yorke -- who’d driven in both runs in the seventh -- to strand runners on first and third and keep St. Louis’ lead intact.
The Cardinals' manager commended Soriano’s mental makeup as the right-hander persevered after throwing multiple pitches that -- on another day or with one more defensive play -- could have gotten him out of the jam unscathed.
“The more you watch him, he's really steady in his mentality and overall demeanor out there,” Marmol said. “His preparation is highly, highly impressive. Before that game starts, his notes on every hitter and every potential pinch-hitter are top-notch. It allows him to feel prepared and just play when he's out there.”