Again unable to solve Reds rookie lefty John Lamb, the Cardinals pounced on the Cincinnati bullpen after his departure to steal a 2-1, come-from-behind win on Monday night that dropped their magic number for a division title to nine. The victory was the Cardinals’ 12th of the season when trailing after seven innings.
After stranding the potential tying run at third in the seventh, the Cardinals snapped the Reds’ Busch Stadium scoreless-innings streak at 29 an inning later. Tommy Pham opened the inning with a triple and scored on Jhonny Peralta’s single to right. Peter Bourjos, plugged in to pinch-run, then motored home as Stephen Piscotty drove a double to left-center.
“We’ll keep the fans from leaving if we keep doing this,” Cardinals manager Mike Matheny said of the team’s 38th comeback victory. “Man, I don’t know how many times we’ve seen it this year. Just keep playing the game and trust that somebody is going to get it done.”
The Cardinals needed the win, too, to maintain their four-game lead over the Pirates and a six-game advantage over the Cubs in the division.
The pair of runs off J.J. Hoover cost Lamb his second Major League win. Lamb, who has a 6.19 ERA in his six season starts against anyone other than the Cardinals, has held St. Louis scoreless over 11 innings this month.
“Really, it started with the first pitch, an elevated fastball that Pham was able to square up and reach third base,” Reds manager Bryan Price said of Hoover. “They took advantage of pitches to hit there, it looked like. It’s the tough part of those late-inning roles. Quite often you’re coming up against their better players with very little margin for error. He just didn’t have the margin for error to pitch through that inning without giving up the lead.”
The Reds jumped on Cardinals starter Jaime Garcia for a first-inning run, using a leadoff walk and singles by Joey Votto and Brandon Phillips to take the early lead. But Garcia settled in from there, allowing just three more singles in a seven-inning start to buy time for the Cardinals’ offense to strike.
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