ST. LOUIS _ The Cardinals collected 16 hits and eight walks against Pittsburgh pitching Thursday night and batted around three times to post a 17-4 win over the Pirates at Busch Stadium.
The Cardinals had six doubles, Marcell Ozuna drove in four runs and Dexter Fowler had three RBIs. Yadier Molina and Paul Goldschmidt had three hits each.
Michael Wacha (3-0) was the beneficiary as he worked 5 2/3 innings and allowed four runs on nine hits. That was good enough on a night that the Cardinals chased Pittsburgh starter Joe Musgrove after three-plus innings.
The Cardinals scored four runs in the second inning, five in the fourth and five in the sixth, sending at least nine batters to the plate in each of those innings. Walks played a major role in the scoring as seven of the eight Cardinals who walked ended up scoring.
After some rough recent outings, Dominic Leone pitched two scoreless innings, allowing one hit and striking out four.
The game featured some oddities, including a Molina single off the wall in right-center field, a dropped third strike that helped extend the big sixth inning and a slow ground ball that turned into a two-run fielding error by Pittsburgh.
The Cardinals scored so much, so early that Molina had three hits and had scored three times by the fourth inning.
