Enhanced Box Score: Cardinals 11, Cubs 4 – July 21, 2017
Well, that was a baseball game for seven innings.
Holding onto a one-run lead in the 8th inning, Carl Edwards Jr. couldn’t find (an admittedly tight) strike zone, and left a bases loaded, no outs jam for the newly-trusted Hector Rondon to try to work out of. Not only did Rondon not perform well in his first high leverage moment in months, he also left a bases loaded, no outs jam. Then Justin Grimm came in to finish things off, which he did … but not until the Cardinals had scored nine runs before the Cubs even recorded an out. Whoo boy, that was bad.
The Cardinals were happy to share the details, and I can’t blame them:
Our 9-run 8th
Double
Walk
Walk
Walk 1 run
Double 2 runs
Walk
Single 1 run
Double 2 runs
Walk
Single 1 run
Single 2 runs
Double Play
Walk
Out pic.twitter.com/YJfhyzUQLl— St. Louis Cardinals (@Cardinals) July 21, 2017
The only thing that would actually concern you about that inning – other than the fact that it is a loss, and losses suck – was Edwards. Hopefully it was just a random blip and he’ll bounce back, as he has before.
The Cubs were absolutely crushing the ball off of Carlos Martinez, hitting more 100mph+ rockets than I can recall seeing in a recent game. And yet, they wound up with very little to show for it, thanks to a combination of bad luck, bad sequencing, and failing to come through in the biggest moments. It’s never *entirely* bad luck in these situations, but today, if you were watching, you were sitting there shaking your head at how much hard contact Martinez was giving up, and then he kept getting out of trouble.
In terms of game outcome, that was all mooted by the disastrous 8th inning, but I guess in a way, it was good to see the bat still clicking on the hard contact front. It was also good to see another quality performance from Jake Arrieta.
Unfortunately, the 8th inning nightmare towers over all else today …
