Game 36 Recap: the return of Dinger Patrol

Hello! You, a respectable Midwestern working person, were too tired to stay up for a West Coast game. Or maybe you just live on the East Coast, and didn’t even try. Or maybe you live in a western time zone, or are a young person, and saw the game live and just like to read our extremely good recaps here at VEB. Whatever your reason for being here, I am here to tell you that the Cardinals beat the Padres on either Friday night or Saturday morning and did so emphatically.

Luke Weaver started for the Cardinals against some lefty who honestly, odds are you’re never going to need to know his name.

In 2016, the Cardinals led the National League in home runs. That was fun! Last year they fell back to the middle, which was stupid. I, for one, missed the days of home run balls raining down from the sky. Home runs are unique in sports: where else can a player do their job so well that their opponents are forced to literally stop playing defense and watch helplessly as they jog toward the ultimate goal? Home runs are great.

Tonight, they hit some homers. Not coincidentally, they won.

The first one, via Paul DeJong with two men on in the 2nd:

The second, courtesy of Harrison Bader with nobody on in the 3rd:

The third, by Marcell Ozuna two batters later:

The fourth, off the bat of Jedd Gyorko immediately thereafter:

“Majestic blasts,” Al Hrabosky called them. And for once, I cannot disagree with Al. After this assortment of majestic blasts, it was 6-0 Cardinals in just the 3rd inning. I’ve been privately remarking for a while that it’d be nice to have a boring and relaxing game where the Cards just jump out to a big early lead and keep it. This was certainly a big early lead. With Luke Weaver on the mound, it was plenty.

Weaver has been bitten by the BABIP bug lately but still has very good peripheral stats, and tonight he showed again why he’s so easy to be high on. A couple of floppy opposite-field hits to start the bottom of the 1st led to a 25-pitch inning to kick Weaver’s start off, but after that he settled in. Weaver got seven guys in a row out between the 2nd and 4th. In the 5th he got in some trouble with a walk and a single slapped to left by Padres reliever Brian Mitchell, but a strikeout of Travis Jankowski and a grounder (of course) by Eric Hosmer got Weaver out of the inning with the shutout intact.

Tommy Pham added to the dinger barrage in the top of the 6th. In Pham fashion, his homer literally drew blood. Seriously: it bounced off the top of the fence and busted a Padres fan in the face. The legend grows.

Also, by this point it was 9-0. If you need particular updates on how it got there, MLB.com and many other good resources contain play by play data.

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Oh yes hello, I am still awake. Observation: the United States is very large; these time differences are excessive.

Further observation: the Padres are bad.

Further yet: the game resolved with a final score of 9-5. Some of the lesser lights in the Cards pen allowed runs (Bowman, Brebbia) which, whatever. Luke Gregerson also allowed a couple, which isn’t ideal but also this game was over at the time. Cardinals prevail, 9-5.