Cards win, 9-5

The Cardinals hit parade continues! Proving that they weren’t just taking advantage of the Diamondbacks’ pitching, the Cards also pounded out the hits on Thursday night against the Dodgers as they won 9-5.

They had 16 total hits on the night, with every starter except pitcher Jaime Garcia having at least one. It marked the fourth consecutive game the Cardinals had at least 14 hits, and the first time they’d achieved that feat since May 30-June 2, 1979.

Included in the hit total was Albert’s second homer of the season, plus two hits and two RBI for Yadier Molina — a welcome change after seeing him struggle on Wednesday.


Good

• The offensive star was Matt Holliday, who had a .341 average against the Dodgers going into the game. He continued that good hitting in going 3 for 5, with two doubles and three RBI. He’s leading the team with a .391 average.
• It was another good night for Lance Berkman also, as he had two more hits and gave the LB Fan Club even more to cheer about. Speaking of, check out what charter fan club member Mike Turner wrote about LB and the fan club at The Redbirds Report.
• Ryan Theriot hasn’t been mentioned much lately, but he’s been hitting right along with everyone else and had an RBI and two hits in the game to increase his average to .314. (Just wanted to throw that in for the Cubs fans who may be reading this …)
• Pitching-wise, Jaime Garcia was not as dominant as he was in his first two starts but he was effective enough even without his best stuff. He lasted five innings and gave up eight hits, three  runs (two earned, thanks to a passed ball by Yadi) and only had two strikeouts. He did, however, pick up his second win — that’s good!
• Mitchell Boggs had two impressive hitless innings in relief of Jaime, with three strikeouts.

Bad

• It seemed like a nice, low-pressure situation to get Ryan Franklin back into a game — he hasn’t pitched since his second consecutive blown save last weekend against the Giants. He did only give up one hit to the Dodgers. It just happened to be a homer to Matt Kemp. At least his ERA dropped from 9.82 to 9.64.

Ugly

• Hard to find any ugly again. So I’ll go with the fact that I had to read tweet after tweet of how happy everyone was to be listening to Vin Scully broadcasting the game. Even though I live more than 200 miles from St. Louis, I am still in their broadcast territory. That means my only option was listening to the exceptionally chatty Dan McLaughlin and Rick Horton. Although Ricky did have some good, and surprising, zingers last night.

And More

• Just when I was falling asleep in the bottom of the eighth inning, Emily sent me a tweet that Our Little Namesake was on deck to pinch-hit for the Dodgers. So, of course, I had to watch. Aaron grounded into a fielder’s choice, so we got to see him on base. And the amount of Miles love on Twitter after that was actually kind of amusing. Ah, well, we all have our different memories of his Cardinals days. Aaron stayed in the game to play second base in the ninth.
• In other Twitter silliness, there was actually a debate last night about LB’s walk. Is it sassy? Does he strut? Does he saunter? Miranda started it by saying he has a sassiness to how he walks. (Maybe we can blame her kidney stone and drugs for this observation?) I find it difficult to believe that a big ol’ Texan can have anything about him described as sassy. Watching him walk to the plate, it seemed more of a strut. Yet Miranda countered with saunter (and our Twitter pal Misty countered with sassy saunter). So I’m just not sure. It’s going to take a bit more study before we can end this debate — and maybe a dedicated LB feed on MLB.TV for closer inspection?

There’s no way to make a smooth transition into something far more important and worthwhile, so I’ll just say today is Jackie Robinson Day and the Cardinals and Dodgers will pay tribute to Robinson during a pre-game ceremony. Look for a post on this later today.



Christine Coleman is the senior St. Louis Cardinals reporter for Aaron Miles’ Fastball. Follow her on Twitter, @CColeman802, or e-mail aaronmilesfastball@gmail.com. Also follow @AMilesFastball for the latest updates.