SAN DIEGO – After pitching on the mound that he had dreamed about being on for years and beating the team he rooted for as a baseball-loving kid in front of roughly 100 friends and family members, Michael McGreevy didn’t think life could possibly get any better than it was late Saturday night.
Then, following the Cardinals' stunning and stirring come-from-behind 8-5 win against the Padres, McGreevy picked up his phone and noticed a first-ever text message from Cardinals royalty.
Adam Wainwright, the 200-game winner who knows a thing or two about curveballs, had kind words for the 25-year-old McGreevy and the wicked spinner he used in the fifth inning to baffle Padres’ star Jackson Merrill.
“I looked at my phone after and Waino had texted, which is just so sick,” said a smiling McGreevy, the San Clemente, Calif., native who got the win after working six innings and seeing the Cards rally back from a 4-0 deficit. “He gave me some pointers and I’m hoping to use that resource going forward now that he graced me with his phone number. … The message said, ‘Hey Micheal, this is Waino,’ and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh! I need to dive into this later.’ That [curveball to Merrill] felt great.”
Battered by the Padres for nine hits and seven earned runs six days earlier at Busch Stadium, McGreevy looked like he might suffer a similar fate in his homecoming game in San Diego. Manny Machado drove a ball off the wall in the first for a run, Ramon Laureano tripled in another run and scored in the second and Merrill reached McGreevy for a Statcast-projected 415-foot blast in the third inning. But, then, a funny thing happened to McGreevy: He started trusting his stuff, landing his pitches and showing the fight that led to the Cards falling in love with him late in 2024 and early in ’25.
“His attitude and the way he goes about his business out there, it’s impressive,” said catcher Pedro Pagés, whose three-run homer in the fourth inning knotted the game at 4 and silenced the Petco Park sellout crowd of 44,533. “No matter how many runs he gives up, he just keeps attacking. That’s something he does very well, and I’m happy for him.”
Said McGreevy of having to pick himself up after the second rocky start versus a Padres team he rooted for throughout his childhood: “It’s just that aggression of, ‘I’m not going to let this happen twice.' Baseball is a cruel game sometimes because I thought I was making pretty good pitches, especially in that second inning. But I was just trying to really compete and say, ‘Hey, this isn’t happening to me twice and I’m putting my team in a good position to win.’
“Sometimes it takes getting punched in the face and you have to wipe the blood off and keep going. That’s what I did after the third inning by putting up some zeroes.”
McGreevy also got plenty of help in his bid for his second win of the season from relievers Kyle Leahy and JoJo Romero. Just days after the Cardinals traded two-time All-Star closer Ryan Helsley, ace setup man Phil Maton and versatile swingman Steven Matz, questions abounded about how the Cards would close out games. Leahy, one of the team’s breakout young stars all season, capped a 1 2/3-inning outing with a strikeout of Machado with a wicked curveball.
“I kind of did leave it in not the best spot,” Leahy said of the 84 mph pitch that Machado missed after taking a mammoth cut. “I give all the credit to Pagés because he called a great game. He had all their guys in between. McGreevy had them all off balance because him and Pedro were working so well together. And Pedro kept it going with me.”
As for Romero, he closed out the final 1 1/3 innings for his first save of the season.
With the Wainwright congratulatory text on his phone and the win in hand, McGreevy dared to compare how the reality of the outing stacked up against the dream he had his whole life of pitching at Petco Park with so many family members and supporters cheering on his every pitch. When the game ended, he spent a half-hour posing for pictures, shaking hands and receiving congratulatory hugs.
“I’ve seen that [Petco Park] backdrop on TV so many times, so it felt very familiar to me,” said McGreevy, who got a game-high seven swing-and-misses and 10 groundball outs with his heavy sinker and curveball. “My stuff felt great, this is a great stadium and the crowd was very electric. I’ve known about [the environment] since I was a kid, so to be back here and get the win, it’s amazing.”