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Cardinals Rookie Left-Hander No-Hits Giants for Five Innings, Nabs Second MLB Victory
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- Cardinals Rookie Left-Hander No-Hits Giants for Five Innings, Nabs Second MLB Victory
Cardinals ' manager Oli Marmol discusses Quinn Mathews ' strong outing in a 2-1 win over the San Francisco Giants at Busch Stadium on Monday night.
Facing the same San Francisco Giants team that beat him six days earlierin his native California despite him pitching six solid innings, St. Louis Cardinals rookie left-hander Quinn Mathews was flawless for five innings and got hisrevenge by gritting his way through his final five outs.
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Mathews no-hit the Giants for five innings and limited themto one run and four hits over 6 2/3 innings of work for his second MLB win asthe Cardinals held on for a 2-1 victory at Busch Stadium.
Alec Burleson drove in his MLB-leading 110th run of the season and had two hits, while rookie catcher Leo Bernal hammered out three hits and drove in his 14th run in 13 games. A day after seeing his 11-game on-base streak, Bernal hit safely in his 11th game since being promoted from Triple-A Memphis on Sept. 1.
Cardinals' All-Star closer Riley O'Brien allowed two runners to reach in the ninth inning, but he closed out the Giants for his 37th save of the season. O'Brien struck out two and got Christian Koss to ground out to Masyn Winn , who used his strong throwing arm to record the game's final out on a bang-bang play.
The Cardinals beat the Giants in the first game of the three-game series after getting swept in San Francisco last week. St. Louis is 3-1 so far on its nine-game homestand.
The game was the 51st one-run game of the seasonfor the Cardinals (75-76), second in MLB only to the Dodgers ' 53 one-run games.The Cardinals improved to 24-27 in those games that featured little-to-no roomfor error.
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"I had one of our (analytics) guys look up the amount ofone-run games we've played this year, and the amount of two and three-run games,and it's outrageous," Marmol said before the game. "It creates an environment wherethere's a lot more scrutiny because every game is one decision away (from aloss). But that's a great environment for everybody to train under, where there'sno margin for error. The fact that we're in that many games and we're in arebuilding year and we've kept the scores to what it is every night, that's abig deal.
"It's really a good thing for us. Now, we're on the wrongside of some of those at times. But that fact that every night – even in losses– we're getting the tying run up – that's a really good environment for ourguys to play under."
St. Louis native Tony Vitello Returns to Busch Where He Once Rooted for Cards
The Cardinals took control of the game in the bottom of thefifth inning when two familiar contributors drove in runs. Burleson, MLB'sleader in RBI since his three-run double on Sunday afternoon, recorded his 110thRBI of the season when he drilled Reiver Sanmartin 's first pitch for a 100-mphsingle back up the middle to plate Thomas Saggese .
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Then, Bernal – who set a Cards recordwith 12 RBI in the first 10 games of his MLB career – drilled a 104-mph linerto right field to score Ivan Herrera and give the Cards a 2-0 lead.
The 25-minute half-inning seemed to jar Mathews out of hisrhythm as he went to a full count and surrendered a leadoff double to Grant McCray to end his no-hit bid at five innings. McCray hit a 3-2 slider 111.6 mph for adouble and he came around to score two batters later on a hit by Jonah Cox.
Mathews worked out of the inning by teaming with Bernal fora strike 'em out, throw 'em out double play. After the left-hander got BryceEldridge to whiff, Bernal's tailing throw was corralled by shortstop MasynWinn, who tagged a head-first-diving Cox on the leg to complete theinning-ending double play.
