ST. LOUIS -- Still searching for the form that made him one of the Cardinals' most reliable relievers in 2024, left-hander JoJo Romero got to put his recent weight room work to the test in one of the most difficult spots imaginable against the Mets Sunday at Busch Stadium.
Brought in to face superstar slugger Juan Soto with two on and one out in the eighth inning of a one-run game, Romero aggressively got ahead of the game’s highest-paid player 0-2 before ultimately losing him to load the bases. There would be no reprieve, as slugger Pete Alonso, the reigning National League Player of the Month for April, followed. Not only did Alonso come to the plate with nine hits in his previous 20 at-bats, but his .664 slugging percentage for the season trailed only Yankees star Aaron Judge (.792).
What followed was the kind of poised and fearless attacking that the Cardinals have been looking for from Romero for weeks. After running the count full, Romero got away with a couple of pitches that the Mets' first baseman fouled back. Then came Romero’s best pitch of the season: a 84.4 mph slider that clipped the outside and bottom corner of the strike zone for strike three that elicited a loud roar from the Busch Stadium crowd of 37,735. Minutes later, when Romero went back to the slider and got Brandon Nimmo to fly out and end the threat, Romero let out several emotional screams.
“It was great to hear all the fans here and [coming through there] kind of goes to all the experience that I’ve gained over the last few years,” Romero said after the Cardinals' 6-5 win that snapped a nine-game losing skid to the Mets. “It wasn’t a whole lot of out-of-body experience. I was actually relaxed and focused. It was just being around a lot of the veteran leadership that we have around here.”
For Romero, coming through in that big spot looked more reminiscent of 2024, when he went 7-3 with a 3.36 ERA and 30 holds – numbers that allowed closer Ryan Helsley to set the franchise record in saves with 49. His scoreless two-thirds of an inning on Sunday lowered his ERA to 5.73 and was his third hold. More importantly, Romero showed progress against a right-handed hitter, a problem area all season, as righties had hit .348 with a homer against him before Sunday.
“That’s a big at-bat [against Alonso],” Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said. “He comes in against Soto and he slips on that 2-2 pitch and ends up walking him. But to punch out Alonso, that’s the game. That guy is red hot, he’s hitting everything no matter what you throw him. So, to get the punchout there and the [flyout to center], that is the game.
“And from a confidence standpoint for JoJo moving forward, that’s a big pitch.”
Romero, who has been working for weeks to add strength, can take confidence from the fact that his four-seam fastball maxed out at 95.7 mph and he got two whiffs with his sinker.
“We’re limited with what we can do as far as throwing the baseball; we can’t go out there and throw 100 balls and try to figure some things out,” Romero said. “So it’s really just about getting with the trainers, seeing how we can make some adjustments and identify certain things we can get better at. A lot of credit to them with getting me to this point.”
Cardinals first baseman Willson Contreras put St. Louis in position to win on Sunday by smashing a home run to right-center and delivering two singles the opposite way, the last of which was part of a four-run fourth inning.
The win came before the nightcap of the split doubleheader, which served as a makeup of Saturday’s game that was washed out by heavy rain. It is the second doubleheader in five days for the Cardinals, who took two from the Reds on Wednesday following a Tuesday rainout.
The Cardinals ended a nine-game losing skid to the Mets that dated to April 28, 2024.
St. Louis came in having lost 10 of 15 games – a streak started when they lost four times in Queens against the Mets from April 17-20 – and scored four times in the fourth when Brendan Donovan and Contreras delivered clutch two-run singles. Contreras, who reached base for a 16th straight game, punched two singles into right field and drilled a homer to right-center in the second inning that left the bat at 106.5 mph, per Statcast.
“To see [Contreras] go [opposite-field] homer in his first at-bat was great, because you want to see him get rewarded,” Marmol said. “And then [to see] him stay on the ball and drive in two more later in the game, that was big.”