The St. Louis Cardinals played a nearly complete game of baseball Friday afternoon, and the scoreboard reflected it: a 17-1 win over the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field built on 17 hits, three home runs, and 5 2/3 scoreless innings from Andre Pallante. It ended the Cubs‘ five-game winning streak and gave St. Louis four wins in its last five games.
Masyn Winn and Nathan Church each hit a three-run homer, and Winn and Alec Burleson drove in four runs apiece. Iván Herrera went 3 for 4 and scored three times, Blaze Jordan added three hits and three runs, and José Fermín doubled twice. The runs came in six consecutive innings, from the second through the seventh, a 3-3-5-3-2-1 drumbeat that never let Chicago back into the afternoon.
What made the day notable was not the total so much as the method. Pallante walked one batter in 5 2/3 innings and improved to 10-5, pitching to contact and letting his defense finish innings behind him. The lineup took extra bases when they were offered and cashed nearly everything: 17 runs on 17 hits and four walks, with only seven strikeouts. Days like this are what execution looks like when it runs through all nine spots in the order.
The win moved St. Louis to 46-39, still 7 1/2 games behind Milwaukee in the NL Central but firmly in the National League Wild Card picture, and it opened a rivalry series against a Cubs club sitting six back of the division lead. The Cardinals carried the momentum into Saturday, blanking Chicago 3-0 to take the second game of the set.
