Magic number. One.
It was another day of success for the Cardinals, as they rallied from a late deficit to beat the Cubs 4-2 at Wrigley Field on Sunday.
The win bumped their historic win streak up to 16 games, and also moved them closer to clinching the second NL Wild Card.
“We’re just playing Cardinal baseball right now, and that’s playing all the way through nine innings,” said catcher Andrew Knizner, who scored the winning run on a wild pitch in the top of the ninth.
St. Louis struck first, as Paul Goldschmidt continued his red-hot September, blasting a home run 464 feet to dead center.
The Cubs rallied and took the lead in the bottom of the fourth, but starter Jake Woodford kept them in check through 5 ⅓ innings, holding Chicago to just those two. Andrew Miller came in and got the final two out in the sixth.
The score was still 2-1 in the top of the eighth when Harrison Bader came to the plate. With two outs, Bader launched one (literally) out of the stadium to tie the game for St. Louis.
The Cards put two on in the top of the ninth, then moved them both into scoring position on Tommy Edman’s sac bunt. Goldschmidt received the intentional pass to set up a potential double play.
But there was no such luck for the Cubs, as reliever Cody Heuer threw a pitch in the dirt which allowed Knizner to race home and score the go-ahead run. Another run would subsequently score on a chopper back to the mound, which Heuer bobbled, though he did recover to throw out Tyler O’Neill at first.
The bottom of the ninth is where things got really wild. After recording the first out, Giovanny Gallegos put two men on for Frank Schwindel.
Schwindel popped up to third, but Nolan Arenado slipped and the ball dropped. Arenado recovered to step on the third base bag and throw to second to try and nab Rafael Ortega.
The play was ruled an infield fly, and Ortega was tagged by Tommy Edman after drifting off the bag for a split second. The Cardinals believed they had won the game on a crazy double play, but one umpire called time after the pop up fell, which offset the double play.
Manager Mike Shildt came out to argue and was promptly ejected.
The tying run was now in scoring position, but Gallegos settled down and struck out Ian Happ to secure the win for St. Louis.
“That’s Gio. That’s one of the reasons he’s good at the back end of the game,” Shildt said. “Talk about a slow heartbeat. Not going to make things bigger than they are and he was tremendous. Locked back in to get Happ. That was clearly a big at-bat and he made pitches with his weapons.”
The Cardinals return home 87-69. All they need now is a win to punch their ticket to the postseason for the third consecutive year. They’ll send Adam Wainwright to the mound against a Brewers team that locked up the NL Central title yesterday.
For more MLB coverage, click here.
