Toronto Blue Jays defeat St. Louis Cardinals 6-3 – MLB Update
Toronto Blue Jays won the second consecutive game on Saturday, June 25, beating the St. Louis Cardinals 6-3 at Busch Stadium.
The home team toiled to rise but failed as Carlos Villanueva outwitted the Cardinals’ hitters.
With 64 at-bats, Villanueva has a record of hitting three RBIs and being a career .078. Even though Matt Holliday gave an early 1-0 lead to the Cardinals in the very first inning with his RBI, Jaime Garcia failed to preserve the lead afterwards as the Blue
Jays’ offence commenced their hitting campaign.
Garcia had not probably braced himself what awaited the team in the 5-run third which was a game-decider. Adam Lind was the first one to hit a sacrifice fly to level the score following whom J.P. Arencibia scored an RBI to give the Blue Jays a 2-1 lead.
However, before Garcia would settle there, Juan Rivera hit a massive three-run homer, enthralling the crowd and worsening the plight of already cornered Cardinals’ defence, failing to stop the Blue Jays’ hitters.
Emboldened by the remarkable performance put up by the Blue Jays offence, Villanueva pitched the upcoming innings with more zeal. Apart from the fourth inning that saw two hits and a run by Yadier Molina, the Cardinals’ offence was effectively crippled by
the Blue Jays’ starter.
Villanueva kept throwing scoreless innings to not only build pressure on the Cardinals’ hitters but also preserve the lead. While the Cardinals’ hitters were stumbling to put in a decent performance, Edwin Encarnacion scored a single in the eighth to take
the lead to 5-2.
When Frank Francisco came out to pitch in the ninth, Skip Schumaker was the only hitter to have a single in the inning, unable to reverse the Blue Jays’ lead, thereby losing the second consecutive game by 6-3.
Compared to Garcia’s five innings that he pitched and gave up five hits and runs, Villanueva allowed two runs in the five hits that he gave up among the Cardinals nine hits and the Blue Jays six hits as a whole.
"Well, you know I'm not the best hitter, but what I try to do is make him throw as many pitches as possible," Villanueva said. "I know when I'm out there I don't want to go into deep counts with the pitcher, because it just gets your pitch count up.”
The Blue Jays put in a brilliant performance as they managed to contain the Cardinals’ offence. The Cardinals struggled to get their hitting to fire as they let the game slip away from them. Toronto dominated the game and will be looking to win the series
with a sweep. The Cardinals will fight hard to avoid a sweep and try something different with their strategy to try and restrict the Blue Jays.
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