Cardinals starter Jeff Suppan was hit early and often in a 7-5 loss to the Phillies on Tuesday night. He completed just three innings and was charged with five runs off eight hits to drop to 3-4 on the season.
Phillies’ right fielder Bobby Abreu hit his eighth home run in nine games and his 11th of the season when blasted a solo home in the first to make it 1-0. Pat Burrell was up next and he nailed his eighth homer to give Philadelphia a 2-0 lead.
Suppan cut the lead to 2-1 in the second inning with a bunt to first to score Mark Grudzielanek. Grudzielanek’s single earlier in the inning was the 1,500th hit of his career.
In the bottom half of the second, Philadelphia took advantage of a couple of Cardinal miscues to score five runs to put the game away. Ryan Howard hit the third home run Suppan served up on Tuesday. Later, Mike Lieberthal and Corey Lidle scored on David Eckstein’s fielding error and Endy Chavez scored on a wild pitch by Suppan. That made it 7-1.
St. Louis chipped away with Jim Edmonds’ RBI double in the third, Albert Pujols’ two-run double in the fourth and David Eckstein’s first home run of the season in the ninth, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the early deficit.
The loss was just St. Louis’ fifth defeat on the road this season.
