With Molina in dugout, McGreevy spins six scoreless after comebacker scare

ST. LOUIS -- For Michael McGreevy to navigate through a lineup, his control has to be precise and he has to stay out of the middle of the plate due to his reliance on pitching to contact.

He also, broadly, needs to stay out of the way of screaming line drives, but the 104.6 mph liner off Pete Crow-Armstrong’s bat that struck McGreevy square in the chest in the second inning wasn’t enough to slow him on Friday night. McGreevy spun six scoreless innings in the Cardinals’ 5-0 victory over the Cubs in the series opener at Busch Stadium.

“The ball’s coming right at me, and my body just freezes,” a smiling McGreevy said. “My mind is thinking at, like, a thousand words per second, and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, here comes the ball. Dude move, move, move. Like, catch it.’ By that time, I just didn’t move -- it hit square chest.”

McGreevy described but did not display -- “it’s a family show, so I won’t show it” -- the blossoming bruise in the center of his chest, which all told was a price he was more than willing to pay in service of his fourth victory of the season.

The young righty scattered six hits -- all singles -- and walked only one hitter, coupled with three strikeouts. Matt Svanson, JoJo Romero and Riley O’Brien combined to toss three scoreless innings to close out the shutout.

“He did a really nice job,” manager Oliver Marmol said of McGreevy. “Some hard contact first time through, but we defended it well. And then he settled in and did a really nice job to give us six.”

Jordan Walker vaporized a Statcast-projected 434-foot home run in the bottom of the sixth inning for his first deep fly since May 17 in Kansas City, and first at Busch Stadium since April 13. The screaming line drive left his bat at 111.7 mph and landed just beyond the Chicago bullpen in left field.

“I like where I am right now, and [I] continue to hit the ball hard,” Walker said. “Now it’s just a good night, and I hope to continue doing it.”

Walker (three), Alec Burleson (three), Masyn Winn (two), Thomas Saggese (two) and Pedro Pagés (two) all contributed multiple hits for the Cardinals, who also got the offense moving with some small ball in a two-run rally in the fifth. Garrett Hampson and Brendan Donovan each successfully laid down a sacrifice bunt, the first time the Cardinals executed two in the same half inning since September 23, 2018 against San Francisco.

Those runs were more than enough for McGreevy, who turned in the first scoreless start of his young career. With franchise icon Yadier Molina starting a brief, two-game stint as a guest coach, McGreevy and Pagés were able to find enough well-placed contact to force Chicago into an 0-for-9 mark with runners in scoring position.

The line drive that struck McGreevy was the second-hardest-hit ball he allowed all night. Having previously been heavily reliant on his sinker, McGreevy continued a season-long trend of instead leaning on his four-seam fastball. He secured just five of his 18 outs on the ground; one of those was the ball that struck his chest, and another was a sharp ball to third that allowed Saggese to nab Ian Happ at the plate.

“I thought we executed really well when we needed to, especially when traffic got heavy,” McGreevy said. “Defense made great plays for me. Saggese cutting down that run, Walker and Hampson out there tracking balls down. It was an all-around good team effort.”

For McGreevy, for Walker, for the young Cardinals all fighting to establish themselves in the season’s remaining weeks, this was a good start. One solid outing makes for a good memory, but stacking several in a row is what allows a habit to become a pattern, and create a framework for reliable results every time out.

That, perhaps more than anything else, is widely understood as a separator among Major League players. Not only having success, but repeating it, is often a solid demonstration of a productive process, and can be proof for a pitcher like McGreevy that his style will play up to his current level.

“I thought the last outing we faced them [and up] until now, there [were] some pitches I gave in [where] I go, ‘Let’s just throw a strike,’” McGreevy said. “Those are gifts to good hitters. I thought the mentality was just better going forward of where, like, hey, there’s room to miss, there’s room to be aggressive here and not give in to guys like [Kyle] Tucker.”

Still, it’s worth finding some more room to miss those line drives.