The St. Louis Cardinals have won five series in a row, although they benefited from a notable gift in their latest contest.<\/p>\n
Aided by a dropped ball with two outs in the ninth inning Thursday afternoon, the Cardinals rallied past the Cincinnati Reds. St. Louis will look to continue its winning ways tonight when it opens a three-game road series against the Philadelphia Phillies.<\/p>\n
Rookie JJ Wetherholt’s ninth-inning fly ball to deep left-center field was misplayed by Cincinnati’s Dane Myers, allowing Jose Fermin and Masyn Winn to score and give St. Louis a 6-5 lead on Thursday afternoon. The Cardinals tacked on four more runs and escaped with a 10-9 victory against the Reds.<\/p>\n
St. Louis manager Oliver Marmol was happy with the resiliency displayed by his team as it bounced back from squandering an early four-run lead.<\/p>\n
“I’m going to shower. I’m going to have an adult beverage, and I’m going to get on the plane and not think about that one,” Marmol said. “Because there’s … you can’t. There’s so many things that put us in a position to win. There’s so many things that allowed us to almost give it away.”<\/p>\n
St. Louis right fielder Jordan Walker extended his hitting streak to six games on Thursday after homering in his second consecutive contest. He is 11-for-25 (.440) with three home runs and 10 RBI during the streak.<\/p>\n
The Cardinals won three of the five games in the series at Cincinnati, improving to 12-6 across their past 18 games. They reside 2\u00bd games behind the San Diego Padres in the race for the third and final National League wild-card spot.<\/p>\n
Included in the run of five straight series wins for St. Louis was a three-game set against Philadelphia. The Cardinals dropped a 6-5 decision in the opener Aug. 8 before outscoring the Phillies by a 9-1 margin during the final two games.<\/p>\n
Philadelphia has turned it around since that set, winning a season-high six games in a row to move a campaign-best 12 games above .500.<\/p>\n
“It was big for us,” outfielder Brandon Marsh said, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, after the Phillies’ 4-1 victory Wednesday against the Miami Marlins. “Just not been the second half that we’ve really wanted, but we’re still in it, and love where we’re at.”<\/p>\n
The Phillies sit five games behind the National League East-leading Atlanta Braves. They also hold down the second wild-card spot.<\/p>\n
Luis Arraez belted a two-run homer off his former Miami teammate Sandy Alcantara in the third inning on Wednesday. The homer was the sixth of the season for Arraez and his second since being acquired Aug. 3 from the San Francisco Giants.<\/p>\n
The homer drove in Bryce Harper, who, one batter earlier, extended his on-base streak to 23 games with a walk.<\/p>\n
Philadelphia left-hander Jesus Luzardo (11-5, 3.23 ERA) will get the start tonight.<\/p>\n
Luzardo, who did not pitch against St. Louis in the Aug. 10-12 series, improved to 8-1 in his past 15 starts after shutting down the Minnesota Twins last Saturday. He struck out nine batters in 6\u2154 innings of one-run ball, increasing his total to 28 strikeouts across his past three starts (21\u2154 innings).<\/p>\n
Luzardo, 28, is 2-1 with a 2.95 ERA in four career appearances (all starts) against the Cardinals.<\/p>\n
St. Louis did not announce a starting pitcher for tonight’s game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The St. Louis Cardinals have won five series in a row, although they benefited from a notable gift…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70],"class_list":["post-269699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}