Cards Survive Father’s Day Slugfest, Beat Royals 12-10

The Cardinal Chronicle
Cardinals Survive Father’s Day Slugfest, Beat Royals 12-10
St. Louis, MO
By Ray Mileur

The St. Louis Cardinals needed a win Sunday afternoon in Kansas City.

They got one.

It just took 12 runs, 16 hits, four home runs, seven relievers, and maybe a few extra Father’s Day prayers to drag it across the finish line.

After dropping the first two games of the I-70 series, the Cardinals avoided the sweep with a wild 12-10 win over the Kansas City Royals at Kauffman Stadium. It was not clean. It was not comfortable. It was not the kind of game a manager draws up before first pitch.

But after the past few days, style points were not the issue.

Survival was.

The Cardinals came out swinging like a team tired of being pushed around in Kansas City. JJ Wetherholt opened the game with a leadoff home run to right-center field, setting the tone immediately. Iván Herrera reached, Alec Burleson worked a walk, and Lars Nootbaar followed with an RBI double to center to make it 2-0.

Then Masyn Winn delivered the biggest swing of the first inning, launching a three-run homer to left field. Before the Royals had even taken their first at-bat, the Cardinals had a 5-0 lead.

That should have felt safe.

It did not.

Kansas City answered in the bottom half against Dustin May, with Michael Massey driving in two runs on a single to right. The Royals had already shown during the series that they were not going to go quietly, and Sunday quickly turned into another reminder that no lead at Kauffman Stadium was going to be treated as secure.

The Cardinals kept swinging in the second.

Nathan Church reached, and Wetherholt came back up and did it again, hammering his second home run of the afternoon, a two-run shot to left. It was his 12th homer of the season and gave St. Louis a 7-2 lead.

Burleson followed later in the inning with an RBI triple, scoring Herrera, and Winn added an infield single to bring Burleson home. By the middle of the second inning, the Cardinals had put nine runs on the board.

Nine runs in two innings.

On most days, that should be enough to turn a game into a laugher.

This was not most days.

The Royals punched back in the bottom of the second. Nick Loftin hit a two-run homer to left-center, and Jac Caglianone followed with a two-run homer of his own to right-center. In the span of a few swings, a 9-2 Cardinals lead had been trimmed to 9-6.

May’s day ended after just two innings. He allowed six runs on six hits, walked one and struck out two. After his complete-game shutout against San Diego earlier in the week, this was a hard turn in the other direction.

That is baseball. One start you look like the staff ace. The next, you are handing the ball over after two innings in a seven-run game that suddenly feels like a coin flip.

From there, the Cardinals had to turn the game over to the bullpen much earlier than planned.

Max Rajcic was first out of the pen. Matt Svanson followed. Gordon Graceffo came next. JoJo Romero, Ryan Stanek, George Soriano and Riley O’Brien would all be needed before the day was done.

That is seven relievers in a nine-inning game.

That usually means something has gone sideways.

And plenty did.

Kansas City crept closer in the fourth when Salvador Perez singled home Carter Jensen to make it 9-7. The Royals had all the momentum, and the Cardinals badly needed someone to change the temperature again.

Herrera did exactly that in the fifth.

After Church walked and Wetherholt singled, Herrera drove a three-run home run to left-center field. It was his 10th homer of the season and pushed the Cardinals’ lead back to 12-7.

That swing mattered.

Not just because it gave St. Louis breathing room, but because the Cardinals needed a response before the game completely slipped into chaos. Herrera provided it.

He finished 3-for-5 with three runs scored, a home run and three RBIs. Wetherholt was just as important, going 3-for-5 with three runs scored, two home runs and three RBIs. Burleson added three hits, including a triple, and scored twice. Winn finished with two hits and four RBIs. Nootbaar had two hits and drove in a run.

That is a lot of offense.

The Cardinals needed every bit of it.

Kansas City got a solo homer from Jensen in the sixth to make it 12-8, and the late innings became less about adding on and more about simply getting to the finish line. Stanek and Soriano helped steady things for a while, but the ninth inning still turned into one last uncomfortable ride.

Caglianone homered again in the ninth, his second of the game, cutting the Cardinals’ lead to 12-9. The Royals kept applying pressure, and another run crossed to make it 12-10. Suddenly, what had once been a 9-2 lead and later a 12-7 lead was down to two runs.

The Cardinals were not cruising.

They were hanging on.

And this time, they hung on long enough.

The final line was loud enough to tell the story: Cardinals 12 runs, 16 hits, one error; Royals 10 runs, 12 hits, no errors.

This was not a pitching clinic. It was a slugfest. It was an inning-by-inning tug-of-war. It was a Father’s Day game that started like a party, turned into a bullpen marathon, and ended with St. Louis finally getting the one thing it needed most.

A win.

The offensive highlights were everywhere for the Cardinals.

Wetherholt’s two-homer game gave St. Louis the spark from the top of the order. Herrera’s three-run homer restored control when Kansas City had cut the lead to two. Winn’s three-run shot in the first inning helped build the early cushion, and his infield single in the second gave him four RBIs on the day. Burleson continued to look like one of the steadiest bats on the roster, collecting three more hits and driving in a run. Nootbaar added the early RBI double, and Church reached base and scored twice.

Even Jordan Walker, who went hitless, made a run-saving defensive play with a homer-robbing catch in right field. On a day when every run mattered, that play deserves a line in the story.

Because every run really did matter.

For Kansas City, Caglianone was the problem the Cardinals could not completely solve. He homered twice, drove in three and scored three runs. Jensen also homered, reached multiple times and scored three runs. Massey had three hits and drove in two. Loftin added a two-run homer. The Royals kept coming, and for most of the afternoon, it felt like the Cardinals were trying to put out one fire only to see another one flare up.

That is why this one should not be mistaken for a clean bounce-back game.

It was a necessary bounce-back game.

There is a difference.

The Cardinals still have pitching questions. May’s short outing forced the bullpen into a long day. The relief corps did enough, but not without stress. St. Louis gave up 30 runs across the three-game series in Kansas City, and that is not something a team can just shrug off if it wants to remain serious in the National League race.

But Sunday was also a reminder that this lineup can carry a game when it has to.

The Cardinals had lost three straight. They had been outplayed badly on Thursday, came up short Friday, and had to sit through a rare Saturday off day with two losses hanging over them. A sweep at the hands of the Royals would have made for a long ride home and an even longer conversation.

Instead, they salvaged the finale.

It was messy.

It was loud.

It was probably harder than it needed to be.

But it was a win, and after the way this series started, the Cardinals will take it.

The Cardinal Chronicle, in association with Gateway Sports & MiLB Today
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Photo Credit - JJ Wetherholt, St. Louis Cardinals | MLB