ST. LOUIS _ Jack Flaherty was the National League pitcher of the month for August and he showed Tuesday that pages on a calendar are just an arbitrary construction.
August is gone but Flaherty is still on a roll. He held the Giants to one hit through eight innings on Tuesday before coming out, keeping them hitless for the first 5 1/3 innings. The Cardinals needed him to be on his game because they got only one run, on a homer by Marcell Ozuna for a 1-0 win over the Giants at Busch Stadium.
Flaherty, who no-hit the Giants for 6 1/3 innings on July 7, improved to 9-7. Carlos Martinez, relieving for the fourth straight day, came on to pitch the ninth and get his 18th save.
The Cardinals got the one run they needed on Ozuna's blast in the sixth, his 25th homer of the season.
Flaherty sailed through the first five innings against the Giants on Tuesday night without allowing a hit. The Giants broke up the no-hitter with two outs in the sixth on a clean single to right by Mike Yastrzemski. Prior to that, the Giants had only one baserunner, Stephen Vogt, who walked to lead off the second. Flaherty came out after the eighth inning, having allowed one hit and striking out eight. Flaherty faced just two batters over the minimum before coming out, having thrown 113 pitches _ 84 of them strikes. Twenty of them came in the eighth as the Giants fouled off a lot of pitches.
The Giants hit five balls into the outfield and Flaherty got some good defense behind him. Tommy Edman lent a hand in the fourth, running far down the left-field line into foul territory to catch a pop up and then on the next hitter, charging Evan Longoria's ground ball, bare handing it and throwing him out at first.
In the eighth, on Flaherty's final hitter, Harrison Bader raced in in center to make a diving catch on a shallow fly ball from Mauricio Dubon.
It was on July 7 against the Giants in San Francisco that Flaherty no-hit them for 6 1/3 innings and allowed them just one run on two hits before coming out of the game, which ended up a 1-0 loss in the final game before the All-Star break.
The Cardinals loaded the bases with two outs in the first but couldn't score. The highlight of the inning was a ground ball by Paul DeJong that started about 10 feet foul on the first base side near home plate and then curved back into fair territory.
