The St. Louis Cardinals overcame a subpar first inning, and manager Oliver Marmol thinks they can still snap out of a shaky start to the season.
They took a step in the right direction by beating the Chicago Cubs 7-5 on Sunday, chasing Cubs ace Marcus Stroman in the fourth inning to earn a split of their weekend series at London Stadium.
“We do believe we have a chance at this,” Marmol said. “But in reality, if we’re talking about sustainable, we’re going to have to pitch better and we’re going to have to continue to do what we do offensively.”
The Cubs missed a golden opportunity to get back to .500 after Stroman (9-5) left the game with a blister on his right index finger, and the Cardinals ended a two-game losing streak after a mistake-ladened first inning handed the Cubs a 4-0 lead. It appeared that the Cubs would blow them out of the stadium and send them on the next plane to St. Louis.
Reigning NL MVP Paul Goldschmidt hit a go-ahead RBI single that knocked Stroman out of the game for good, and Willson Contreras went a perfect 4 for 4 with two runs scored.
“Contreras had a really good day, and we feel like he’s starting to get into a really good spot and he’s going to be a big contributor to us being able to go on a run,” Marmol said. “But giving up four in the first and some of the miscues — those things are the things that can’t happen.”
The Cubs (37-39) won in blowout fashion, 9-1, on Saturday but had their winning streak snapped at four games. They have not been at .500 since May 12, although they have hovered around the mark winning 11 of their past 14 games.
Cardinals closer Jordan Hicks, who sat out Saturday because a strep throat, got the final three outs to record his fourth save, all in the past eight days. He struck out two and allowed one run on Nico Hoerner’s sacrifice fly.
The Cardinals bullpen took care of business, allowing one lone run over 6 2/3 innings before a sellout crowd of 55,565 with a game-time temperature at 87 degrees.
Jake Woodford (2-2) came in for spot starter Matthew Liberatore in the third and pitched 2 1/3 innings.
The Cardinals (32-45) erased a 4-0 deficit with clutch hitting and a big assist from Cubs first baseman Trey Mancini.
With the bases loaded in the second, Stroman struck out Paul DeJong for the second out. Tommy Edman then grounded to second but Hoerner’s underhanded toss to Mancini was dropped by the first baseman when he tried to corral it with his bare hand, allowing Contreras to score to make it 4-1. Stroman smacked his mitt in frustration.
Brendan Donovan knocked in a two-run single to right field on a sinker, batters swung at 17 Stroman sinkers and missed just three of them on the day, scoring Nolan Gorman and Jordan Walker, who beat the throw with a head-first slide to make it 4-3.
An inning later, the Cards knotted the game at 4 on Walker’s single that scored Lars Nootbaar.
Goldschmidt put the “home” team ahead in the fourth on a sharp single off Stroman that scored Edman.
Stroman was then pulled, and the first batter reliever Michael Fulmer faced was Nootbaar, whose sacrifice fly scored Donovan for a 6-4 lead.
An inning later, the Cards made it 7-4 when Gorman’s single to left off Fulmer drove in Contreras.
The Cardinals handed Stroman a 4-0 lead before he even toed the rubber, by committing two infield errors in the top of the first inning, not helping Liberatore, who took Jack Flaherty’s place.
Hoerner led off and reached on an error by DeJong at short and moved to third by swiping second and advancing on an error by Gorman at second.
Liberatore struck out Christopher Morel looking for the second out.
Dansby Swanson singled to score Hoerner. Ian Happ walked, and Mancini then hit a two-run double, crunching a 95-mph heater off the wall in the left-center gap, it might have sailed out of the park in 2019 when the walls were closer and came around to make it 4-0 when Miguel Amaya doubled on a hard shot past third baseman Nolan Arenado that originally was ruled an error.
Stroman got shellacked, allowing six runs, three earned, and eight hits and had two strikeouts and a walk. Liberatore lasted 2 1/3 innings.
After the Cubs hyped their “ royalty ” Bill Murray on Saturday, the Cardinals countered with John Goodman a day later. Goodman sang “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and dedicated it to Harry Caray.
The two-game attendance figure was 110,227, which is 8,491 less than the two-game tally from 2019 when the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox played in the MLB’s European debut.
Nootbaar hopes “we inspire some kids to go out there buy a glove, buy a bat and go in the backyard and play a little bit.”
The Baseball Hall of Fame collected a few items from the London games. Happ donated the batting gloves he wore when he hit two homers off Adam Wainwright on Saturday. Goldschmidt donated the cap he wore Saturday when he became the first big leaguer to play a regular-season game in five countries.
Cubs: Cody Bellinger returned after being out sick on Saturday.
Cardinals: Gorman was in the lineup after sitting out a day with an illness. RHP Flaherty had been scratched from his scheduled start Sunday with hip tightness and Marmol said there are bullpen options should he miss another turn in the rotation.
The teams have Monday off to recover from the trip and both begin six-game homestands Tuesday. The Cubs host Bryce Harper and the Philadelphia Phillies. The Cardinals host Jose Altuve and the Houston Astros.
