ST. LOUIS -- In analyzing his team’s offense prior to the first meeting of the season against the rival Cubs, Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said his squad had learned to make up for their lack of home runs with a hitting approach more focused around singles and doubles.
Clearly, the Cardinals changed that approach on Monday night and beat the usually hard-hitting Cubs at their own game with some massive left-handed power.
Despite coming into Monday with 39 fewer homers than the Cubs, the Cards got two-run home runs from Lars Nootbaar, Brendan Donovan, Alec Burleson and Nolan Gorman and some stellar pitching from Matthew Liberatore to throttle Chicago, 8-2, in front of 27,058 fans at Busch Stadium.
“It’s just that hitting is contagious and sometimes it sparks you a little bit,” said Nootbaar, who has rebounded from an 0-for-26 skid to go 6-for-his-last-19 with two home runs and five RBIs.
The four homers tied the season high by the Cardinals in a game this season, last achieved in Game 1 of an April 30 doubleheader vs. the Reds. Their four two-run home runs in a game is a first for a Cardinals team since Sept. 10, 2020, versus the Tigers, per MLB.com research. That day, Yadier Molina, Tyler O’Neill, Lane Thomas and Rangel Ravelo all hit two-run homers. On this steamy Monday night, the Cards narrowly missed a fifth home run when Cubs superstar Pete Crow-Armstrong made a leaping catch at the center-field wall in the sixth inning to take away another potential long ball from Donovan.
On this night, the homers came when Nootbaar smashed a curveball, Donovan clubbed a fastball, Burleson stayed on a changeup and Gorman launched a fastball off Chicago right-hander Ben Brown.
“We each had an idea of what he was trying to do to each of us and we had good individual plans and a good team approach,” said Burleson, whose Statcast-measured shot traveled 386 feet for his ninth homer of the season. “We were able to execute those plans with runners on and that helps.”
It was just the start to the four-game series that the Cardinals were looking for considering that they came into the day 4 1/2 games back of the National League Central division-leading Cubs. Monday’s game was the latest the Cards and Cubs have played for the first time in a season since 1997. The two teams will play seven times -- three more at Busch and three at Wrigley Field -- over the next 14 days.
“You want to play well all throughout the season, but when you have a team that’s ahead of you [in the standings], you can make up ground a little bit faster than usual,” Nootbaar said. “It seems like when we win ballgames, we’ll check the scores and they’re winning ballgames too. But when we face each other and get to go head to head, it’s nice to test yourself against those guys. It’s a fun series and it’s a good chance for us.”
How dialed in were the Cardinals at the plate on Monday night? Not only did they get homers from the four lefties they stacked the lineup with, but they also had 16 balls leave bats with at least a 99 mph exit velocity. Willson Contreras, who collected three hits against his former team, had a 112.6 mph single in the fifth and a 109.5 mph double in the seventh, per Baseball Savant. Donovan’s home run left the bat at 109.4 mph, while Burleson hit two balls harder than 100 mph.
Burleson was quick to credit hitting coach Brant Brown for preparing the hitters so well.
“Well, we’re all different hitters, right?” Burleson said. “[Donovan] and I couldn’t be more different, me and [Nootbaar] are similar, but Gorman is different. So, we’re all going to get pitched differently. Brownie’s done a great job of individualizing it and talking to each guy about what they’re going to see.”
After Nootbaar broke a scoreless tie in the fourth inning with his 10th home run, the Cubs got within 2-1 an inning later when Crow-Armstrong doubled and scored on a Carson Kelly single. Nico Hoerner singled and Matt Shaw walked to load the bases, but Liberatore got out of the jam by inducing an inning-ending double-play ball from long-time Cards nemesis Ian Happ. Liberatore, who made quick work of the Cubs early in the game, limited Chicago to six hits and two earned runs over seven innings of work.
“[Pitching coach] Dusty [Blake] told me I could throw a heater up or spin him under and asked what I wanted to throw and I told him, ‘Cutter,’” Liberatore said. “I tried to go in and luckily he rolled it over.”