St. Louis Cardinals Matt Adams is greeted by teammates at home plate after hitting a two run walkoff home run in the ninth inning against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Busch Stadium in St. Louis on July 7, 2014. UPI/Bill Greenblatt
Cardinals first baseman Matt Adams is from western Pennsylvania and grew up a Pittsburgh Pirates fan. It may be fitting that his first career game winning hit in the majors came against them.
Adams hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth inning to give the Cardinals a 2-0 victory in a game that was delayed at the start by rain.
Matt Carpenter drew his third walk of the game to lead off the ninth and after Matt Holliday flied out, Adams hit his 10th homer on an 0-1 hanging breaking ball from Justin Wilson (2-1). It has been over three years since the Cardinals won a game on a home run. The last time happened in the I-70 series against Royals when Skip Schumaker homered on June 19, 2011.
All-Star Pat Neshek picked up the win by throwing a scoring ninth inning, lowering his ERA to 0.75. Sam Freeman pitched the eighth after Adam Wainwright threw up zeroes for seven innings. Wainwright gave up seven hits and three walks while striking out five in the no-decision.
What’s concerning about the win is that the Cardinals were held to three hits. Wainwright can’t make every start and the club can’t rely on these types of performances from their starting pitcher game in and game out.
The start of the game was delayed 47 minutes with the tarp down in anticipation of a storm, but it never rained. There was an eleven minute delay after the Pirates stranded two in the first.
