Cards vs Reds recap: Cards start cold, play terribly, lose in rout

Autumn is my favorite season, but the end of summer is inherently bittersweet.

Part of the poignancy arises from the baseball season coming to an end. In high summer, your team plays every day, they either win or lose, play well or poorly--but with each morning comes another opportunity for baseball to fill the background of your day.

It's a mundane sport, in the best way. Mundane like love.

In the summer, then, it's easy to shrug off a really bad game such as tonight's, because another game is just a work day away. In late September, though? When every game is important, and your team is theoretically in a wild-card chase? It's much less fun, and it's much harder to shrug off.

Then again, what if that loss was as quickly out of hand and as absurdly one-sided as tonight's? Maybe we should just laugh, console ourselves with dog portraits, and see what tomorrow brings.

At any rate, to make it official:

Cards Lose in Rout, 15-2

The Cardinals lost in hilarious grand-guignol fashion to the Reds tonight, 15-2. They absolutely got their hats handed to them.

Fortunately for St. Louis, the Mets also lost and the Giants had the night off. The Cards are therefore 1.5 games behind the Mets and 1.0 game behind the Giants.

It was a terrible game, unless of course ye be a Reds fan.

Here is how each Cardinal pitcher did tonight:

Jaime Garcia

• 1.0 IP, 4 H (2 HR), 2 ER, 0 BB, 1 K;
• 18.00 ERA

Michael Wacha

• 2.2 IP, 9 H (1 HR), 7 ER, 0 BB, 1 K, 1 WP;
• 23.63 ERA

Luke Weaver

• 0.2 IP, 4 H (1 HR), 5 ER, 1 BB, 1 K;
• 67.50 ERA

Dean Kiekhefer

• 0.2 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 1 K;
• 0.00 ERA (!!!)

Mike Mayers

• Too boring to look up, honestly;
• 4.50 ERA

Sam Tuivailala

• -___-
• 0.00 ERA (!!!)

Ronnie Williams

• Didn't know he was on the squad!
• 0.00 ERA (!!!)

The Reds produced fifteen (15) hits before the Cards had even one (1). The Cardinals' pitchers had a BABIP of .450 against them, which remember that doesn't include any of Cincinnati's home runs. This game was surreal. It's not every game where you hear ironic cheers from the St. Louis crowd for the third out of an inning--but that happened after the Reds batted in the interminable fourth AND the fifth innings.

Stephen Piscotty

The one small bright spot for the Cardinals was perhaps Piscotty hitting a triple that was just a few feet short of a home run. If Piscotty can get his bat going, as they say--well, that'd be nice.

And that's about all I have in me to say about this game. The Cardinals' loss mattered a little, but only a very little.

Hug your loved ones and see you tomorrow.

Notes:.

• The Reds executed FOUR successful steals off Yadier and Jaime in the first inning--though one was reviewed and correctly called an out, because Jose Peraza came off the bag for a second. While some of these were, say, partially Jhonny Peralta's fault for making it to third base so late, and definitely partly Garcia's fault for really just not even caring about what the baserunners were doing--some of the fault was Yadier's, who looked almost as slow and old at catcher as Peralta did at third. If the Cardinals make it to the postseason, I hope he has some extra gear he can shift into.
• One inning: this was the shortest start of Jaime Garcia's career--the second shortest came just a few starts ago, versus the Cubs. Yikes.
• Matt carpenter's got a "sore middle finger" that has been troubling him, so that partly explains how badly he's been playing lately.
• One nice thing: game was such a rout, Dan and Rick got to talk about Jose Fernandez a lot, and it was very moving.
• Here is a thing that matters: Dee Gordon hitting his first home run of the season, in the Marlins' first at-bat since the death of Jose Fernandez:

Dee Gordon's emotional homer. pic.twitter.com/FrNVMwJtGC

— Jason Foster (@ByJasonFoster) September 26, 2016

Baseball really is good sometimes.

The series continues tomorrow at 7:15 central, Adam Wainwright versus Robert Stephenson.

*All dog portraits by Melinda Copper, whom I want to be friends with.