Cards And Rockies Split In Hard Fought Battle

With the 2nd half trucking along, the Rockies pushed some chips in at the trade deadline!  The Cards pushed in a slightly smaller stack of chips, but that made sense since the Cards are well atop the standings.  Both teams got to see their new lineups perform as the Cards visited Coors Field.  And, just as anyone could have predicted in Coors with good weather, runs were hard to come by!! (??)

GAME 1

Cardinals - 0

Rockies - 3

This was the marquee pitching matchup, and Skenes vs Pivetta lived up to the hype.  Both pitchers twirled 7 scoreless frames.  So it came down to bullpens.  The Rocks rolled out Jose Suarez, who threw two scary but scoreless frames.  The Cards let Carlos Esteves handle the 8th, and then turned to Drew Pomeranz in the 9th.  Pomeranz would allow a leadoff single and a one-out walk, so Jose Iglesias got the call, facing off against luckless Brett Baty and his .180 batting average.  But Baty had a dream...and he hit it off of Iglesias' card.  5-9....game-winning 3-run homer!

Starters - Skenes and Pivetta

WP - Suarez  LP - Pomeranz   HR - Baty

GAME 2

Cardinals - 5

Rockies - 0

The snoozer of the series.  The Cards put up 14 hits and, despite stranding a lot of runners, were never were really threatened.  Gausman threw 7.  The Rocks only put two baserunners on in an inning once all game.  Yawn.

Starters - Gausman and Kershaw

WP - Gausman  LP - Kershaw  HR - Altuve

GAME 3

Cardinals - 1

Rockies - 3

This game was actually the best game for the Rocks pitchers.  We allowed just 3 hits and 4 walks all game.  But the first of those hits was a Pedro Pages homer that tied the game at 1, and the Rockies offense never got the big hits to pull away.  That made the 9th especially scary, as Emilio Pagan loaded the bases with one out, and we braced ourselves for the pain.  But Freddie Freeman hit a weak flyout that scored no one, and Altuve hit a Catcher X groundout that gave the guys in purple reason to celebrate.

Starters - Imanaga and Glasnow

WP - Glasnow  LP - Imanaga  SV - Pagan  HR - Tatis, Pages

GAME 4

Cardinals - 4

Rockies - 3

The score after 2 innings turned out to be the final score.  The Cards used a 3-run, 2nd-inning Harrison Bader homer to go up 4-0.  And although the Rockies would use 3 hits and 3 walks to close it to 4-3 in the bottom of the frame, we'd come up short again and again for the rest of this one.  Particularly brutal was getting a leadoff double and a walk in the 6th, and then putting up a goose egg when Will Smith hit into an inning-ending 6-4-3 double play!  Cards salvage a split in a hard fought, well-managed series!

Starters - Canning and Ray

WP - Canning  LP - Ray  SV - Esteves  HR - Bader