ST. LOUIS -- The gritty Cardinals have built an identity upon thriving in close games all season, but on the final night in town for the Tarps Off boys, they knew they needed to deliver another moment on Tuesday night at Busch Stadium.
Despite being hitless in his first four at-bats, Iván Herrera was ready to provide it.
The slugging designated hitter left no doubt in the bottom of the 10th inning, smoking a three-run home run to walk it off for the Cardinals in a 9-6 win over the Pirates.
As an encore to a whirlwind weekend, the boys from Stephen F. Austin were back to witness it all -- including an exuberant tarp-twirl celebration from Herrera after the game-winning swing.
The SFA club baseball team had a game on Sunday night in nearby Alton, Ill., so the Lumberjacks weren’t at Busch for that afternoon’s Cardinals loss to the Royals. That means Herrera’s walk-off sent the boys back home to Nacogdoches, Texas, a perfect 3-for-3 on the surreal, viral sensation of a trip.
The Jacks were in the house Friday, Saturday and Tuesday, propelling the Cardinals to three wins, two of which came in walk-off fashion.
“That was just your typical Cardinal baseball game on a Tuesday,” Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol joked. “It seems like every night, it’s somebody different, doing something pretty cool.”
Herrera had thought about the possibility of breaking out a tarps-off celebration if he were to hit a home run Tuesday -- but to do it on his first Major League walk-off homer brought the jubilation at Busch to another level.
“It’s definitely more cool hitting it right now, because we’ve got the guys going out there,” Herrera said. “I mean, the whole game, they didn’t stop. So I mean, we’ve got to deliver. I’m just glad I did today.”
A Cardinals team that prides itself on fundamentals had an uncharacteristically sloppy game in various aspects. Two errors and a couple of runners caught stealing -- one of which was Thomas Saggese simply falling down as he attempted to get back to third base on a pickoff attempt -- could have headlined the night had the Cardinals let Tuesday’s game get away.
But the relentless nature of their lineup sensed the need for some thunder. St. Louis blasted four home runs to buoy other areas of the roster that were in need of a reprieve.
“We made some mistakes defensively, we made some mistakes on the bases,” Marmol said. “Some were aggressive, some weren’t. But to be able to still find a way to shake hands at the end of it is good. Because you’re going to have games like that. We’re not going to be perfect. You still have to figure out ways of scoring and overcoming it. Today was a good day for that.”
Matthew Liberatore was the model of efficiency through four innings. For a Cardinals starting rotation that ranks 29th in MLB in strikeouts on the season, efficiency is rarely associated with gaudy K totals.
But Liberatore had the best of both worlds in the early going, tying a career high in strikeouts by the end of the fourth. Though he set a new career high with his ninth strikeout in the fifth inning, he also failed to escape that frame, allowing four runs to flip a Cardinals lead into a deficit.
So after the once-promising outing hit a snag, the Cardinals needed to find a way back into the game.
Leave it to Liberatore’s boyhood pal Nolan Gorman.
As has become a serendipitous trend through the years, Gorman provided a big swing in a game started by Liberatore, launching one out to right-center field for a go-ahead two-run home run in the bottom of the sixth inning. Facing his Minor League teammate and former Cardinals farmhand Evan Sisk, Gorman turned around a sinker a Statcast-projected 437 feet to put the Cards up, 5-4.
The swing marked the first long ball allowed by Sisk to a left-handed hitter in his big league career.
Two other lefty bats for the Cardinals added home runs in the win, with JJ Wetherholt displaying another piece of keen bat control when he stayed on a Mitch Keller outside changeup to send his ninth home run of the year out to the opposite field. Alec Burleson clubbed his seventh of the year into the Cardinals’ bullpen in the eighth before Pittsburgh rallied for two runs in the ninth to tie the game and force extras.
Then came Herrera’s key swing, helping the Cardinals improve to 5-0 against the Pirates on the season.