Cardinals @ Diamondbacks: First to 80 wins.

It's Jaime Garcia! (1.79 ERA, 3.14 FIP, 3.21 xFIP)! It's Robbie Ray! (3.38 ERA, 3.31 FIP, 4.02 xFIP)! Baseball!

After last night's Adventures with Greg Garcia, Matheny gave him the night off and brought Kolten Wong back from his brief sabbatical.

Also:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Brendan Ryan goes 1-2-3 in the 9th. Last <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Yankees?src=hash">#Yankees</a> position player to pitch 2+ innings: Gene Michael went 3 vs. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Angels?src=hash">#Angels</a> on 8/26/68!</p>&mdash; Jayson Stark (@jaysonst) <a href="https://twitter.com/jaysonst/status/636358195712294912">August 26, 2015</a></blockquote>

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The Game

It was a fun night to be a Cardinals fan as the Redbird bats banged out 9 runs on 12 hits while Jaime kept the Dbacks at bay for 6 innings.

Matt Carpenter, as he so often does, set the tone in the very first plate appearance of the game, grinding out an 8 pitch walk. Thomas Pham singled to right and Matt decided to stretch it out and take third. Tommy followed his lead, putting runners on at 2nd and 3rd. Jason Heyward singled 'em both home for an early 2-0 lead. That would be all the Cards would need. G'night. Thanks for coming.

Oh. Well, anyway there was still 8 2/3 innings of baseball to be played. Heyward swiped 2nd with a nifty slide (captured above) and Yadier Molina doubled Heyward home for a 3-0 advantage. Yadi STOLE THIRD because it was just that kind of inning. A better throw gets him, but that's not the throw that was actually made. Stephen Piscotty drew a walk, and Wong singled to left and scored Molina, who, you know, had just stolen third freaking base. 4-0 Cards. Jaime Garcia struck out, thereby undeniably and indubitably completing the Cardinals batting around in the inning.

Things were fairly quiet until the 4th, which looked kinda similar to the 1st. Matt Carp reached this time via a hit by pitch and Pham did his single-but-Matt-is-taking-two-so-Tommy-did-too thing again. This time while Pham's twin sister was being interviewed wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with PHAMily across the front.

That was it for Robbie Ray and Randall Delgado was brought in. Peralta sac flied Grinder home for a 5-0 advantage. Heyward reached on catcher's interference, and Yadi sac flied Pham in for a serious 6-0 lead.

The Diamondbacks did scratch out a run in the bottom of the 4th. Paul Goldschmidt ripped a liner off into the right field wall. Into the wall because the ball immediately stuck between two pads on the wall. Weird. A wild one from Garcia got past Molina, which allowed Goldschmidt to take 3B. An Aaron Hill sac fly scored Goldschmidt to put the score at 6-1.

Pham lead off the 6th with a stand up triple past an outstretched Pollock. Guy can fly. Peralta singled to CF to score Pham, 7-1. Later, a Piscotty single to left scored Heyward from 2nd for a comfy 8-1 score.

In the 7th, Peter Bourjos ripped a pinch-hit home run into the left field seats to finish up the scoring for the night at 9-1 Cardinals.

Garcia's line: 6 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 1 BB, 6 K, 96 pitches

Seth Maness took care of the 7th and 8th, letting a couple of runners on in the 8th just to set things up for an inning-ending double play. That's so Maness.

Steve Cishek finished things up in the 9th for some reason.

<iframe src="http://www.fangraphs.com/graphframe.aspx?config=0&static=0&type=livewins&num=0&h=350&w=500&date=2015-08-25&team=Diamondbacks&dh=0" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" height="350" width = "500" style="border:1px solid black;"></iframe><br /><span style="font-size:9pt;">Source: <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/livewins.aspx?date=2015-08-25&team=Diamondbacks&dh=0&season=2015">FanGraphs</a></span>

Tomorrow is game 3 of this 4-game set as bitter grognard John Lackey (2.99 ERA, 3.59 FIP, 3.98 xFIP) and Patrick Corbin (4.09 ERA, 3.74 FIP, 3.18 xFIP) pitch. It's another late one, 8:40 pm Central.