ST. LOUIS _ The Cardinals unleashed the power that's become their calling card this season, hitting three home runs off Mets pitcher Jacob deGrom on their way to an 8-1 win on Wednesday night.
Matt Carpenter, back in the leadoff spot after eight games batting third (and struggling), homered in the first, Randal Grichuk homered in the fourth, his second in as many games, and Stephen Piscotty hit a two-run homer in the fifth. The Cardinals got another run on an RBI single by Piscotty in the third and then added two in the seventh and another in the eighth.
The Cardinals had 19 hits in the game, matching their single-game high for the season. They also had 19 hits against Milwaukee on April 11.
Carlos Martinez, meanwhile, allowed just one run in eight innings of work to improve his record to 12-7. He allowed four hits, struck out five and walked three. Seung Hwan Oh, who hadn't seen action since Friday, pitched the ninth. (Martinez also had two singles to raise his batting average to .255.)
With the Miami Marlins winning, the Cardinals remained 1{ games ahead for the second wild-card spot but improved to four games up on the next team, Pittsburgh, and 4{ on the Mets.
Carpenter was hitting .218 in eight games he had spent in the No. 3 spot after Matt Holliday suffered a fractured thumb when hit by a pitch. The home run was his 16th of the season and his third leadoff home run. In his career, Carpenter is hitting .299 when batting first, much less everywhere else. Though he is hitting .432 in a small number at-bats in the six spot, in no other spot is he hitting better than .257. When batting leadoff, he's got a .391 on-base percentage and a .489 slugging percentage.
The Mets tied the game in the second in Martinez's only rough patch. A bloop double by Jay Bruce was followed by a real double by Asdrubal Cabrera. But after that one-double by Cabrera, he retired the next nine batters before giving up a single to Kelly Johnson in the fifth. The Mets got runners on in the sixth and seventh, but both times Martinez got double plays to end the inning.
The Cardinals strung together three two-out singles in the third to score a run and then Grichuk, just two games removed from his third four-strikeout game of the season, went deep for the second game in a row, upping his total to 17. Piscotty hit his homer, his 19th, with one out in the fifth and the Cardinals got two runs in the seventh on a single by Yadier Molina, a triple by Jhonny Peralta and a single by Greg Garcia.
