Cardinals vs Brewers Recap: Lynn cruises, Rosie crashes, Cards lose game in extras

Lance Lynn pitched another strong seven innings against the Brewers Tuesday night, staking the Cardinals to a 2-1 lead against a just as dominant Wily Peralta. Lynn's line on the night:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Lance Lynn - 7.0 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 5 K (101 pitches/72 strikes).  Pat Neshek in to pitch.</p>&mdash; St. Louis Cardinals (@Cardinals) <a href="https://twitter.com/Cardinals/status/512063632033599488">September 17, 2014</a></blockquote>
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He allowed nine ground balls, one line drive, and ten fly balls, of which three were in-field flies. Unfortunately, one of those fly balls was also a home run, by Gerardo Parra in the fourth inning. Parra's homer was the only extra-base hit allowed by Lynn all night.

The Cardinals' two runs came in the very first inning of the game: Matt Carpenter single, Jon Jay single, Matt Holliday single, and the Cardinals had Matt Adams up with the bases loaded, no outs, and the sky the limit. Wily Peralta walked his one batter of the night to give the Cards a 1-0 lead and bring up Jhonny Peralta with the bases still full, but alas, the Milwaukee Peralta got the better of the matchup, as Jhonny swung at an inside fastball for a run-scoring but still disappointing double play groundout. Yadier Molina then grounded out to the pitcher to end the inning.

What followed that first inning was a pitchers duel, interrupted only by Parra's homer. Peralta kept the Cardinal hitters off-balance all night, and Lynn's various fastballs did the same to the Brewers.

Ultimately the game turned on relief pitching, and what else led to the Brewers tying the game in the ninth but that most injurious of relief-pitcher sins: the leadoff walk. In this case, of Jonathan Lucroy by Trevor Rosenthal. Lucroy was pushed to third by an Aramis Ramirez double off a very poor changeup. After Ryan Braun grounded out to the pitcher, the Cardinals elected to walk Parra to load the bases and bring up new call-up Matthew Clark. Rosie got Clark to fly out to left, but far enough out that Holliday couldn't throw out Hector Gomez (who had pinch-run for Lucroy) at the plate. Tie game. On to extras.

Carlos Martinez and Seth Maness pitched scoreless tenth and eleventh innings, but Kevin Siegrist did not: after striking out pinch-hitter Rickie Weeks in dominant fashion, he walked Carlos Gomez.

Which I wish he hadn't done, because Gomez then stole second and third and finally scored on a disappointed sigh of a hit by Hector Gomez, just out of the reach of Matt Adams and second baseman Daniel Descalso.

Adams, Peralta, and Molina went down in order in the bottom of the twelfth, and the Cardinals' lead over the Pittsburgh Pirates fell to two and a half games with 11 to go.

WPA:

<iframe src="http://www.fangraphs.com/graphframe.aspx?config=0&static=0&type=livewins&num=0&h=400&w=400&date=2014-09-16&team=Cardinals&dh=0" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" height="400" width = "400" style="border:1px solid black;"></iframe><br /><span style="font-size:9pt;">Source: <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/livewins.aspx?date=2014-09-16&team=Cardinals&dh=0&season=2014">FanGraphs</a></span>

The series continues Wednesday night in St. Louis, Adam Wainwright squaring off against Mike Fiers at 7:15pm central.