Game Recap For August 2nd: Cardinals Win Wild and Woolly Game vs Brewers

Last night, the Cardinals did not win, and I did not get to watch the game. In fact, I tried to watch it, but I failed. Even tried to write a recap, but fell asleep. Been a barnburner of a week for me, but I did get to see Saturday's game, which was also a bit of a barnburner, a fitting end to the week.

Without further delay...

The scoring began with an Aramis Ramirez single, which scored the newly acquired Gerardo Parra, who was walked by the newly acquired Justin Masterson. The Cardinals answered with a Kolten Wong dinger. He has 7 home runs now and 15 stolen bases, which offsets his horrible OBP.

Masterson pitched well, and then Jhonny Peralta hit his 15th home run of the season. He has been the key new piece to the puzzle for the Cardinals this year, one of the best shortstops in MLB this season. Not to be outdone, Mr. Wong collected a couple more RBI with a sharply hit single, scoring Tony Cruz and Justin Masterson. Then one of the Matts wanted in on the run knocking-in, Holliday matting in another Matt of the Carpenter variety, and Kolten. Gerardo Parra had an errant throw too, which allowed Matt H. to move along to the keystone. The Adams Matt did not get in on the action.

I thought Masterson's slider looked amazing at times, but he walked 3 batters in his first Cardinal start.

Also, Masterson allowed Scooter Gennett to be pesky once again. He is the villain of the Brewers this year, which is not easy since they have two rather douchey bro dudes Braun and Garza, and the nutty Carlos Gomez. His double scored Braun and Lucroy. The Cards threatened but did not score (Tony Cruz double!).

Next, Oscar Taveras put the game into the Cardinals hands with a double, which resulted in two Matts batted in, since Adams and Holliday were on base at the time. After that, Carlos Gomez decided to make it more interesting by doubling in a run.

Fast forward to the ninth inning, where Rosenthal threw a ton of heat, but started off by allowing a hit. He also nearly hit a batter, but it confused the ump. Instant replay ended up helping the Cardinals, and the umps. Trevor struck out a couple batters and earned his 32nd save of the season.

WPA

Source: FanGraphs

Probability benders were Kolten Wong who went 3 for 5 and lead Cardinals batters in WPA. Neshek and Rosenthal were the pitching stars tonight. Both have been quite good this season, but Neshek has really been nothing less than uncanny.

Aramis Ramirez had a great night, but Kyle Lohse had a terrible night (and almost died at the hands of Matt Holliday). Lohse's WPA was -.625! Wow, that's bad. When all was said and done, he gave up 9 hits, 3 walks, 2 home runs, and 7 earned runs.

***

The Cardinals are now tied with the Pirates for second place with the exact same record of 58-51 at the time of this writing, but it looks like the Pirates are going to win tonight vs the D-Backs. Next game is Sunday at 1:15pm, and features the debut of John Lackey as a Cardinal. Hopefully he will do better than Justin Masterson in his debut, since Matt Garza is not a pushover. Almost forgot, Adams made an incredible defensive play tonight, which I think Justin Masterson probably really appreciated. He is going to really appreciate this team's defense!