Fast strikes: Cardinals starting pitcher Steven Matz wins but gets injured again | St. Louis Cardinals

O’Neal, hitting No. 2 for the second night in a row, hit a two-run homer and drove another run with one, giving him five runs in two nights. He only had 28 RBIs in an injury season before the team got here.

Matz, who hasn’t played for the Cardinals since May 22 with a left shoulder hit, struck out seven, including five in a row from the fourth to sixth innings. He scored his first win since May 2 in the Cardinals’ 6-3 win over the Reds, but failed to finish sixth when he suffered a left knee sprain after fumbling tapper Joey Votto on the first base line. and then lunged. try to pick up.

Matz, who might have been better off letting first baseman Paul Goldschmidt play the game, will now be out for a few more weeks. Adding insult to injury, Matz (4-3), who had only three hits and only one in 5 1/3 innings, was charged with a foul.

But the Cardinals’ bullpen controlled the last 3 2/3 innings – All-Star Ryan Helsley recorded his ninth save – and the Cardinals won Game 2 of the trip for the seventh straight time this year. Ironically, they lost the first game in all seven trips.

Matz was aggressive early on, landing 18 hits in the first 25 innings over two innings. Reaching a top speed of 96 mph, Matz, who had a pinched shoulder, allowed former Cardinal Tommy Pham to make two singles on that stretch.

Goldschmidt hit one of the Cardinals’ two runs in the third inning with a single from the left, hitting O’Neal. That batted run was Goldschmidt’s number 1,000, who also recently surpassed 300 home runs and 1,000 runs scored in his career.

Dylan Carlson started the pitch with a brace, his fifth consecutive game with an extra-base hit, making Goldschmidt the longest such streak among the Cardinals this season.

O’Neal put up a scoring single by scoring Carlson. On the next pitch, O’Neal stole second without a throw.

Goldschmidt made it 2-0 with his seventh hit in 13 at-bats against left-hander Mike Minor. Nolan Arenado doubled and moved to left center, Goldschmidt settled in third. The rally also stopped there.

Albert Pujols rebounded to third while Tommy Edman was deliberately passed over. But with the bases loaded, Brendan Donovan hooked up with Minor, who forced Goldschmidt to return home. And Edmundo Sosa fanned himself for the second of four times.

As the Cardinals blew their chance for a longer inning, the Reds caught up with them in the third.

Matz hit Stuart Fairchild with a pitch and Mark Kolozvary forced Fairchild. Jonathan India went 3-2 in close field and Brandon Drury doubled to left center. Kolozjvary scored an easy goal, and India, after running past third base coach JR House’s stop sign, dived home ahead of catcher Andrew Knizner’s tag after Knizner shot up slightly off shortstop Sosa.

Marmol said he beat O’Neal second “to get him going” after more than half a season of inconsistency and injury. O’Neal tied the 416-foot homer to the green at center after Carlson was hit by a one-out pitch in the fourth.

Then Goldschmidt cracked his 22nd homer, marking the fifth time the Cardinals had hit a homer in a row this season, and it was 5-2.

Later in the inning, Pujols doubled to left to give him 934 career multi-hit games, placing Hall of Famer Eddie Murray 11th on the career list. Pujols, who has 685 career homers, later blew two home run chances—once just a foul and another hitting a wall.

Through five innings, Matz maintained a 5-2 lead, boarding in the fifth with weights of 95, 96 and 95 respectively, with Kolozvary watching and India and Drury spinning.

But after Edman drove with one in the sixth, Kolozsvary, who was remembered earlier in the day, knocked out his first homer in the big leagues from Junior Fernandez in seventh place for the Reds, cutting the Cardinals’ lead to 6-3. Fernandez hit India with a right hand and Giovanni Gallego passed Drury before Gallegos came off the innings, sending Votto off on a proven mound shot.

Throwing at 102 mph, Helsley knocked out the last four Red hitters covering eighth and ninth, eliminating all three he faced in ninth.