ST. LOUIS — 10 nights ago, Cardinals fans cheered for Jordan Walker from their living rooms.
A westward road trip out of the All-Star break meant a longer layover before those same fans could express their appreciation in person for Walker’s T-Mobile Home Run Derby greatness.
“That seemed like a month ago,” manager Oliver Marmol remarked on Thursday afternoon. “I was like, I wonder if I’m going to have to answer Home Run Derby questions coming back to St. Louis. That’s like, two years ago.”
Thursday’s standalone makeup game between the Cardinals and D-backs at Busch Stadium wasn’t a regularly-scheduled affair, but the crowd seemed ready for the return of St. Louis baseball — and Walker certainly saw the love in a 10-6 loss.
Though a T-shirt giveaway commemorating his Home Run Derby win is scheduled for Friday at Busch Stadium, Walker didn’t have to wait until the weekend series to be celebrated in his home ballpark. In his first game back here following the All-Star events in Philadelphia, Walker received a hearty ovation before his first at-bat from the late-afternoon crowd of 32,381.
The energy in the stadium propelled the All-Star right fielder directly into a first-pitch double that got the Cardinals on the board early against D-backs starter Brandon Pfaadt. But Walker’s RBI double ended up as a rare moment of celebration for the home faithful.
On the heels of a game in which the Cardinals only collected three hits in a 1-0 win against the Angels on Wednesday in Anaheim, the top of St. Louis’ lineup produced four straight hits off Pfaadt to begin Thursday’s game.
But the Cardinals didn’t make things difficult enough on Arizona’s starter for the remainder of his outing. After limiting the damage to two runs in the first inning, Pfaadt cruised through his next five frames, posting a quality start as the winning pitcher.
Marmol cited Pfaadt’s moderately clean exit from his first inning as a moment in which the Cards left some meat on the bone.
“We got off to a pretty good start, but the reality is, we let them off the hook in that first [inning],” Marmol said. “I’m glad we got two, but those are those ones where you want to continue to add and get three or four — which is not always the easiest thing to do. But that was our opportunity to kind of take advantage of. So, I felt like, although we put up a crooked number, we could have done a little better. He settled in and did a nice job.”
The two-run first inning marked St. Louis’ first crooked number since Monday — but it was the only offense the Cardinals could muster until a ninth-inning rally mitigated the appearance of how lopsided the game really felt. Three relievers were charged with a combined six runs across 2 2/3 innings to put the game out of reach before the Cards’ four-run ninth.
After a meager four-run output across a three-game series loss to the Angels, the Cardinals continued their recent quiet spell at the dish for the bulk of Thursday’s loss. In July, St. Louis’ bats rank 28th in MLB with a .636 OPS.
“We’re not slugging a ton so then you do have to bunch them together in order to score,” Marmol said. “We’ve done that at times, we haven’t done that at times. That’s just the nature of our lineup.”
Cardinals starter Michael McGreevy found trouble in a blink in the fourth inning when Tyler Locklear tucked a line-drive home run just inside the left-field foul pole.
Locklear didn’t get much air underneath the baseball, but the impact was real, giving the D-backs a 3-2 lead. They never looked back from there.
“That was like, the one pitch I wasn’t really convicted in today,” McGreevy said. “It’s baseball, of course it’ll bite you … like that. But I think if I execute that pitch and I throw it a little farther down in the zone, it’s not a homer. He might take it, he might hit a double down the line, but it’s not a two-run shot. But that’s just something you can learn from.”
Without his sharpest stuff, McGreevy pitched into the seventh inning to give the Cardinals the length they desired from the starter as the team aims to navigate this stretch while retaining sixth starter Hunter Dobbins on the active roster following his six scoreless innings on Wednesday.
