Cardinals Decisively Beat Brewers 6-0 on Memorial Day

Happy Memorial Day!  MLB celebrates holidays each year by seeing exactly how ugly a hat they can put on a baseball player, and they did not disappoint this year.

Mmm...nope.  But on to the game!

In the 3rd, the Cardinals got to pitcher Junior Guerra for a three run inning.  Matt Carpenter started things off with a line drive single to right, followed by an infield single by Aledmys Diaz (the second consecutive time he reached on a ball hit in the infield) with Carpenter advancing to third on a throwing error by 3B Hernan Perez.  A Matt Holliday single brought in Carpenter, followed by a Matt Adams double to score Diaz.   Brandon Moss gave us the rare run-producing whiff, swinging through a third strike that got away from Jonathan Lucroy to score Matt Holliday from third.

The Cardinals got three more in the 7th.  Matt Carpenter took another double to the wall in basically the identical position to his previous double.  He then scored from second (!?!) on a wild pitch by relief pitcher Jhan Marinez.  Not to be outdone, Matt Holliday hit a massive 466 foot home run that actually left the stadium.

Carlos Martinez worked his way out of a couple minor jams, but nothing overly stressful, and looked great doing it.  An error by Diaz and a walk in the third were quickly erased by a popout by Scooter Gennett and a strikeout of Lucroy.  Similarly, after allowing singles to Lucroy and Jonathan Villar in the 6th, Martinez rebounded to strike out Chris Carter and Kirk Nieuwenheis.  Other than that, Martinez cruised through this outing with 104 pitches. Final line for Martinez:  8 IP, 5 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 8 K.

Martinez was solid all game.  With the exception of a 27 pitch 3rd, he never went above 15 pitches in an inning.  He mixed the 2 seam fastball, 4 seam fastball, and changeup pretty evenly, while also throwing a decent number of curveballs.  Here's his well-balanced pitch speed graph:

Other notes: The Cardinals turned an unusual two tag double play in the 2nd inning: with the shift on for Kirk Nieuwenheis, he grounded to Kolten Wong who tagged out Chris Carter and flipped to Matt Adams who tagged Nieuwenheis coming up the line.  Matt Carpenter rebounded to form after his return from paternity leave, going 4-5 with two doubles.  Greg Garcia continues his "I don't make outs" ploy to stay on the big league roster by getting a single in his PH appearance in the 9th.  Trevor Rosenthal made an uneventful non-save appearance in the 9th to get some work, having not pitched since May 25th.  On the not-so-pleasant side, Brandon Moss earned his second golden sombrero of the year with 4 Ks on the day.

To the WPA graph!

Source: FanGraphs

Cards and Brewers do it again tomorrow evening.