Wheels come off St. Paddy wagon, Cards fall to Red Sox 10-5

It was O'Shelby day as the Cardinals traveled to JetBlue Park at Fenway South (that's its full name, no foolin') in Fort Meyers to face the Red Sox. Seems like we saw these guys a few months ago. I should go look up what happened. My memory isn't what it used to be.

Shelby wasn't terribly sharp, particularly after the first inning. Often working behind in the count and missing his spots, he gave up three runs on three walks, three hits, and nary a strike out. Two of those runs were delivered by a Pedroia home run over the Mini Monster. The little guy did not get cheated on that swing. After 3 2/3 innings and 69 pitches, Matheny decided he'd gotten his work in for the day.

Lyons was summoned and promptly balked in one of the runners he inherited from Shelby. It was such an obvious balk, even I noticed it. He would escape the fourth without further damage, but would proceed to get torched for five runs of his own in the fifth. The Sox' fifth was punctuated by a three-run Mike Napoli shot over the Fake Monster.

As for the rest of the relief corps: Nick Greenwood allowed a run in the 6th, Trevor Rosenthal pitched a clean seventh, and Kevin Siegrist gave up a solo home run in the eighth.

As noted by paposse in the game thread, Cardinals pitchers did not record a single strike out in this game. C'mon guys, it's okay to be a little fascist.

The Cardinals' offensive stars of the day were Kolten Wong, who went 3 for 4 and drove in a run in the fourth, while Dirty Daniel Descalso (or Delscalso according to the ESPN announcer) and Pete Kozma each had a two-run scoring double.

The Cardinals have an off-day tomorrow, then face the Twins in Jupiter on Wednesday.

Just 10 exhibition games remain before the Cardinals open the regular season.