Angels Walk Off Cardinals on Hit-by-Pitch in Ninth

The Cardinal Chronicle
Angels Walk Off Cardinals on Hit-by-Pitch in Ninth
St. Louis, MO
By Ray Mileur

The St. Louis Cardinals were one strike, one pitch, one clean finish away from opening the series in Anaheim with the kind of road win they badly needed.

Instead, they walked off the field with one of the stranger losses of the season.

The Los Angeles Angels beat the Cardinals, 3-2, Monday night at Angel Stadium, rallying for two runs in the bottom of the ninth and winning it when Jo Adell was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded.

A walk-off hit-by-pitch.

That is how this one ended.

It was as frustrating as it sounds.

The Cardinals had a 2-1 lead going to the ninth inning. Kyle Leahy had given them six strong innings. Ryne Stanek and George Soriano had helped bridge the game to Riley O’Brien. The offense had not done much, but it had done just enough in the second inning to give St. Louis a lead that held almost all night.

Then the ninth got away.

O’Brien opened the inning by striking out Mike Trout, which made the inning feel like it was pointed in the right direction. But Nolan Schanuel followed with a single to right, and the Angels immediately went to their bench, sending Oswald Peraza in as the pinch-runner.

Jorge Soler was then hit by a pitch, putting two runners aboard. The Angels sent José Siri in to run for Soler, and the pressure suddenly increased.

Vaughn Grissom followed with the hit that tied the game, driving a double to right field. Peraza scored from second, Siri moved to third, and the Cardinals’ 2-1 lead was gone.

O’Brien intentionally walked Josh Lowe to load the bases, setting up the force at every base and bringing Adell to the plate.

Then the final pitch got away.

Adell was hit by the pitch, Siri came home from third, and the Angels had a 3-2 walk-off win.

There are losses that come on a big swing.

There are losses that come on a defensive mistake.

There are losses that come when a team gets beat start to finish.

This was not that.

This was a game that slipped away pitch by pitch in the ninth inning, and the final blow did not even require the ball to be put in play.

That is a hard one to take.

The Cardinals had taken control early against Angels starter José Soriano. Jordan Walker opened the second inning with a double to left, and Lars Nootbaar followed with a single to left to put runners on the corners with nobody out.

After Masyn Winn struck out, Nathan Church came through with an RBI single to right, scoring Walker and giving St. Louis a 1-0 lead. Nootbaar moved to third on the play, and Blaze Jordan followed with a groundout to third that brought him home.

Just like that, the Cardinals had a 2-0 lead.

It looked like the start of something.

It was not.

Jimmy Crooks struck out to end the inning, and from there, the Cardinals’ offense went cold. JJ Wetherholt walked and stole second in the third, but Iván Herrera struck out, Alec Burleson grounded out and Walker grounded out. Nathan Church singled again in the fourth, but Mike Trout threw him out trying to advance to second after an Angels challenge overturned the original call.

After that, St. Louis did almost nothing.

The Cardinals finished with two runs on four hits. Walker doubled, walked, stole a base and scored. Nootbaar singled and scored. Church had two hits and drove in the first run. Jordan drove in the second with the groundout.

That was the offense.

Four hits.

Eleven strikeouts.

No home runs.

No runs after the second inning.

For a while, it looked like that might still be enough because Leahy was so good.

Leahy gave the Cardinals six innings, allowing one run on three hits, walking none and striking out four. He threw 95 pitches, 62 for strikes, and continued to give St. Louis the kind of steady, competitive work that has become increasingly valuable in this rotation.

He was not overpowering.

He was efficient.

He kept the ball on the ground, kept the Angels from building traffic, and gave the Cardinals every chance to win a low-scoring road game. With the offense quiet again, Leahy’s margin for error was almost nothing. He still made the 2-0 lead stand into the third and kept the Angels from adding after Adell finally got Los Angeles on the board.

That run came in the bottom of the third.

Adell turned on a pitch and drove a solo home run to left-center field, cutting the Cardinals’ lead to 2-1. It was his 14th homer of the season and the only real damage Leahy allowed.

The Angels had a chance to build something later in the inning when Zach Neto singled with two outs, but Leahy struck out Trout to end the threat.

In the fourth, Schanuel singled to right, but Blaze Jordan, Wetherholt and Burleson turned a clean double play on Grissom’s grounder to erase the inning. Leahy then retired the side in order in the fifth and sixth, keeping the Cardinals ahead by one.

That should have been the winning foundation.

Instead, it became another strong start that did not turn into a win.

Soriano deserves credit for the Angels. After the Cardinals put two runs on him in the second, he settled in and controlled the rest of his outing. He went seven innings, allowing two runs on four hits, walking one and striking out seven.

From the Cardinals’ side, that was the problem.

They had him in trouble in the second and had a chance to create more separation. But after Jordan’s run-scoring groundout, St. Louis never found the next swing. They never made Soriano pay again. They never stretched the lead beyond one run.

The Angels bullpen did the rest.

Samy Natera Jr. worked a clean eighth and struck out two. José Fermin handled the ninth, also striking out two while working around Walker’s walk and stolen base. That ninth-inning chance mattered too. Walker reached with two outs and stole second, putting an insurance run in scoring position, but Nootbaar flied out sharply to left.

The Cardinals left the ninth still leading 2-1.

But they had failed to add on.

That failure came back quickly.

Stanek took over for Leahy in the seventh and worked around a leadoff walk to Schanuel, getting Soler on strikes, Grissom to pop out and Lowe to line out to left. George Soriano handled the eighth after Adell opened with a single. He struck out Denzer Guzman, got Wade Meckler to line out and retired Neto on a fly ball to right.

The bridge had done its job.

O’Brien just could not finish it.

The Cardinals closer entered with a one-run lead and left with the loss. His final line was ugly enough because of the result: one-third of an inning, two runs, two hits, one intentional walk, one strikeout and two hit batters. It was not the kind of inning that had defined much of his season, but it came at a bad time and in a game the Cardinals had no business losing once they reached the ninth with the lead.

That is the part that will linger.

This was the first game after the All-Star break road reset, the opener of a series against an Angels club sitting near the bottom of the American League West. The Cardinals had just suffered a brutal loss in Arizona after blowing a 7-0 lead. They needed to get back on the right side of the ledger.

For eight innings, it looked like they would.

Instead, the offense stayed quiet, the lead stayed thin, and the ninth inning turned into another late-game gut punch.

The Angels finished with three runs on six hits. Adell drove in two, including the walk-off hit-by-pitch, and hit the solo homer that put Los Angeles on the board. Grissom had the game-tying double. Schanuel had two hits and started the ninth-inning rally. Siri scored the winning run as a pinch-runner.

The Cardinals finished with four hits and no errors, but clean defense was not enough. They were 1-for-4 with runners in scoring position, left eight men on base and got almost nothing from the top of the order.

Herrera struck out four times.

Burleson went hitless.

Winn went hitless.

Crooks struck out twice.

Wetherholt walked and stole a base, but went hitless.

The whole offense came from Walker, Nootbaar, Church and one productive groundout from Jordan.

That is not enough room for any bullpen.

It especially is not enough room on the road, where one bad inning can turn the whole night around.

The Cardinals have had too many of these lately — games where the starter does enough, the offense leaves too much undone, and one late sequence decides everything. Sometimes the bullpen has cracked. Sometimes the offense has disappeared. Sometimes both issues meet in the same box score.

Monday night was a little of both.

Leahy gave them what they needed.

The offense did not build on the lead.

O’Brien could not close it.

And the Angels walked it off without needing a bat on the final pitch.

It was strange.

It was painful.

It was avoidable.

The Cardinals will have to turn the page quickly, because this series still has two games left and the road trip still matters. But this was not just another one-run loss. This was a game the Cardinals had lined up, led all the way into the ninth, and still could not finish.

That is how a 2-1 lead becomes a 3-2 loss.

That is how a good start from Kyle Leahy disappears.

And that is how the Angels stole the opener in Anaheim.

The Cardinal Chronicle, in association with Gateway Sports & MiLB Today
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Photo Credit: Riley O'Brien, St. Louis Cardinals | MLB