Cardinals Miss Sweep, Fall to Dodgers 3-2 in Finale

THE CARDINAL CHRONICLE
Cardinals Miss Sweep, Fall to Dodgers 3-2 in Finale
St. Louis, MO
By Ray Mileur

The St. Louis Cardinals came close to leaving Los Angeles with a sweep.

Close does not count in the standings.

After taking the first two games at Dodger Stadium with two very different wins, the Cardinals carried a late lead into Thursday night’s series finale before the Dodgers slipped away with a 3-2 win.

It was a tough way to end what was still a good series.

St. Louis went to Los Angeles needing to show there was still life left in September. The Cardinals did that. They beat the Dodgers 13-8 on Tuesday with five home runs, then came back Wednesday with an 8-6 win in 10 innings. The kids were everywhere. Leo Bernal made his debut and delivered his first big-league hit, then hit his first major-league home run the next night. Thomas Saggese had a huge series. Joshua Báez kept showing the power and run-production potential. Jordan Walker continued to sit on the edge of 100 RBIs.

For two nights, the Cardinals looked like a team refusing to let the season fade quietly.

Thursday gave them a chance to do something even bigger.

A sweep at Dodger Stadium would have changed the entire feel of the road trip. It would have pushed St. Louis over .500 again. It would have been the kind of series finish that makes a club believe there might still be a real September push left.

Instead, the Cardinals had to settle for two out of three.

That is good.

It just could have been more.

Quinn Mathews got the ball in the finale, and the rookie left-hander gave the Cardinals a start they could have won with. That is the part that will make this one sting.

Mathews did not look overwhelmed by the moment. He was facing one of the best lineups in baseball, in one of the toughest road environments in the league, with the Cardinals trying to finish a sweep against a first-place club.

He competed.

He attacked.

He gave St. Louis a chance.

The Cardinals gave him an early lead in the first inning. José Fermín reached base and Joshua Báez lined a single to right field, scoring Fermín and putting St. Louis ahead, 1-0.

That was important against Tarik Skubal.

The Dodgers’ left-hander has front-line stuff, and the Cardinals knew runs were not going to come easily. They needed to avoid letting him settle into a low-stress rhythm. Getting on the board in the first inning gave St. Louis exactly the kind of start it needed.

The Cardinals added another run in the third.

Iván Herrera reached, and Ramón Urías delivered a two-out single to left field, scoring Herrera and extending the lead to 2-0.

That was the kind of baseball St. Louis needed in this matchup.

Not a five-homer night.

Not a huge inning.

Just enough traffic, enough contact and enough execution to put pressure on the Dodgers.

For much of the night, it looked like that might be enough.

Mathews held Los Angeles off the board through the first four innings, working around traffic and keeping the Dodgers from finding the big swing. He struck out Will Smith in the first inning and showed the kind of composure the Cardinals wanted to see from a young starter in a difficult spot.

The Dodgers finally broke through in the fifth.

Former Cardinal Tommy Edman reached and eventually scored on a wild pitch by Mathews, cutting the Cardinals’ lead to 2-1. It was a run the Dodgers did not have to earn with a clean RBI swing, and in a game this tight, that mattered.

Still, the Cardinals remained in front.

They had the lead.

They had the series already secured.

They had a chance to finish something.

That is what made the ninth inning so frustrating.

The Cardinals carried the lead deep into the night, but Los Angeles found the late answer. The Dodgers pushed across two runs in the bottom of the ninth, turning a 2-1 Cardinals lead into a 3-2 Dodgers win.

Just like that, the sweep was gone.

So was the chance to climb above .500.

St. Louis fell to 70-71, walking out of Dodger Stadium with a series win that felt both encouraging and incomplete.

That is the strange part about this one.

Before the series started, almost anyone would have taken two wins in Los Angeles. The Dodgers came into the series leading the National League West. The Cardinals came in carrying frustration, injuries and the burden of a season that has never quite allowed them to gain real separation from the .500 line.

Winning the series mattered.

But after winning the first two, the finale became something more.

It became a chance to make a statement.

The Cardinals missed it by a run.

The offense had its chances. St. Louis had more traffic than the final score suggests, but the Cardinals could not create the third run that might have changed the ninth inning. Against Skubal and the Dodgers bullpen, they had to make every scoring opportunity count. Báez and Urías delivered the run-scoring singles, but the bigger inning never came.

That was the difference.

The Cardinals had the early lead and the start. They did not have enough separation.

When a team is trying to sweep the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium, one extra run can feel like three.

St. Louis did not find it.

Mathews deserved a better ending. His line will be judged against the final score, but the larger takeaway should be that the rookie gave the Cardinals exactly what they needed to have a chance. He was not perfect. The wild pitch in the fifth helped Los Angeles get back into the game. But he held a dangerous lineup down long enough for the Cardinals to win.

That matters.

This is where development and the standings keep running into each other for St. Louis.

The Cardinals are trying to learn about Mathews. They are trying to find out how his stuff plays against elite lineups. They are trying to see how he handles stress, traffic and real big-league moments.

Thursday was a meaningful test.

He passed enough of it to keep the Cardinals in position to win.

The finish did not cooperate.

That is baseball.

It is also September baseball, where almost every missed chance feels bigger because there are fewer games left to recover from them.

The Cardinals have lived too close to the edge all season. They have hovered around .500, climbed back to even, slipped back under, then done it again. The first two nights in Los Angeles gave them a chance to move the conversation forward.

Thursday pulled them right back to familiar ground.

Back below .500.

Back explaining how close they came.

Back trying to turn a good series into something that can carry into the next one.

Still, this was not a lost trip through Los Angeles.

Far from it.

The Cardinals won two of three against one of the best teams in the National League. They got production from young players. They saw Bernal announce himself. They saw Saggese continue one of the best stretches of his young career. They saw Báez drive in another run. They saw Mathews handle a difficult assignment well enough to win.

Those are real positives.

They just do not erase the way the finale ended.

The Cardinals were three outs away from a sweep.

They did not get them.

That is the part that will linger.

A sweep at Dodger Stadium would have felt like a jolt. It would have sent the Cardinals to Colorado with a winning record and a little more belief. Instead, St. Louis heads out with a series win, a 70-71 record and the same urgent math it has been carrying for weeks.

Win games.

Win series.

Stop giving away the ones that are there.

Thursday night was there.

The Cardinals had Skubal on the other side and still built a lead. They had Mathews giving them competitive innings. They had the Dodgers chasing the game into the late innings. They had a chance to finish the sweep.

Then the ninth inning changed everything.

The Dodgers won, 3-2.

The Cardinals won the series.

And somehow, both of those things can be true while the finale still feels like one that got away.

The Cardinal Chronicle, in association with Gateway Sports & MiLB Today
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Photo Credit: Teoscar Hernandez, Los Angeles Dodgers | MLB