St. Louis, Mo. — Nothing much went right for the Tigers Monday night.
And we’re not just talking about the 11-4 drubbing they took from the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium.
“We obviously didn’t put out the performance we wanted to,” said catcher Dillon Dingler. “Just turn the page and look forward to the next couple of games in this series.”
Things started to go crooked hours before the game. Reliever Chase Lee had to be hastily summoned from Toledo after the decision was made to put starting pitcher Reese Olson (right ring finger) on the injured list.
That meant another shuffling of the rotation, with Jack Flaherty’s start pushed to Thursday with a bullpen game scheduled in his original spot Wednesday.
Not the good kind of chaos, for sure. With the Tigers deploying an opener Monday and with the bullpen game scheduled for Wednesday, bullpen usage was going to be tricky.
Then came the game, which began with thunderstorm and tornado warnings being sounded in the greater St. Louis area. The game was delayed 34 minutes in the seventh. More bad chaos.
BOX SCORE: Cardinals 11, Tigers 4
Manager AJ Hinch used lefty Sean Guenther as the opener ahead of right-hander Keider Montero. The strategy was sound. The Cardinals had left-handed hitters in the first and third spots in their order before a pocket of three righties.
So let Guenther deal with the first three hitters and give Montero a more comfortable entry.
Good plan. Except the Cardinals weren’t cooperating.
Both the lefties (Lars Nootbaar, double, and Brendan Donovan, RBI single) got hits, as did the right-hander between them, Mayson Winn. He singled and was thrown out trying to steal second by Dingler.
From there, especially with the rain coming, the game became a rescue project, not a recovery.
“At the beginning of the game, no,” Hinch said when asked if he was managing this one with an eye on the rest of the series. “We try to win every game and we didn’t. … As the game went on and things got out of hand, of course you manage for tomorrow and the next day.
“But going into the game, there is nothing on our minds more than today’s game.”
Things didn’t go much better for Montero, clean pocket or not. And because of the bullpen game Wednesday, he had to wear it for a bit.
The Cardinals didn’t hit him particularly hard, but they hit him a lot. They scored four runs over the fourth and fifth innings on five singles.
“This is a business where you have good days and you have bad days,” Montero said through interpreter Carlos Guillen. “Today was not a good one. But from every error and every mistake you learn. I’m taking positive things from this outing and I am thanking God that I am healthy.”
What he should take out of his outing was his ability to soldier through 5.2 innings — allowing five runs and eight hits — and throwing 98 pitches to save a bullpen arm for later in this series.
“We were down 5-0, so we’re not going to burn though pitchers down 5-0,” Hinch said. “And we were doing nothing offensively. It wasn’t a great night for us to try to push. Keider did a good job of hanging in there.”
Hinch sent Montero out to start the bottom of the seventh, but he didn’t expect him to have to pitch. There were tornado warnings in the vicinity and ushers evacuated the upper bowl at Busch Stadium in the sixth inning. Both managers were alerted to the storm.
“I sent him back out because the weather was coming,” Hinch said. “That was more on them not calling for the tarp and I didn’t want to burn anybody else before the rain delay. We knew it was coming around 8:45 (CT).”
The game was finally delayed after Donovan led off the bottom of the seventh with a double.
It resumed 34 minutes later. The Tigers wished it hadn’t.
Right-hander John Brebbia replaced Montero after the delay and the Cardinals beat up him. They scored six runs in the inning. One was charged to Montero and one was unearned because of an error by right fielder Kerry Carpenter.
The rest were well earned. They got five hits in six batters against Brebbia, including doubles by Jordan Walker and Scott and a two-run homer by Pedro Pages.
Catcher Tomas Nido got the final two outs in the inning and pitched a clean bottom of the eighth. Five straight outs, throwing pitches between 47 and 68 mph.
“No manager loves bringing a position player in that spot,” Hinch said. “But if you are going to do it, he did it right. Throw as slow as you can and let them swing as hard as they can. Get through the outing and get back to the hotel.”
The Tigers were completely stymied by Cardinals starter Sonny Gray, who gave up three hits and struck out 10 in his six shutout innings. They finally got on the board in the eighth on an RBI double by Akil Baddoo.
They scored three more in the ninth on an RBI double by Andy Ibáñez and a sac fly by Trey Sweeney.
“We didn’t hold the zone,” Hinch said. “We didn’t play good baseball and they did. We punched out double-digits. It was a hard night for us. But there is no way we can blame anything other than Sonny Gray really exposed the fact we didn’t hold the zone and the game ended up how it was.”
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