ST. LOUIS _ It was just a matter of time, but the Cardinals did it to the Pirates again on Saturday night.
The Cardinals waited till the eighth inning before getting their offense going on Friday night. This time, it happened in the sixth, as the Cardinals, who had been held to just two hits in the first five innings, got five hits and two runs in a weird sixth inning on their way to a 3-1 win over the Pirates.
Adam Wainwright, meanwhile, scattered six hits over six innings and struck out eight, including back-to-back strikeouts with one out and runners on first and third in the fourth, and then another on Josh Bell with the bases loaded and two outs in the fifth, to even his record for the season at 8-8. After 2 1/3 scoreless innings by Giovanny Gallegos, Carlos Martinez came in to get the final two outs and the save.
The highlight of the sixth was Tommy Edman's go-ahead run, in which he circled the bases on one swing of the bat, with just a brief stop at second. The inning had begun with Dexter Fowler being thrown out at second as he tried to stretch a blooper down the left-field line into a double. Edman followed that with a hard-hit ball to center that went to the wall. Edman had his sights on a triple but pulled up at second as Starling Marte quickly got the ball back to cutoff man Kevin Newman.
While second baseman Adam Frazier was telling Newman to hold the ball, Newman instead turned and threw to third, where the ball surprised and short-hopped Colin Moran, bouncing off his legs and rolling toward the Pirates dugout, where it found one of the openings and rolled in, giving Edman two bases and a free ride home.
The Cardinals weren't done with the scoring, or the strangeness. Paul Goldschmidt singled and went to third on a double by Marcell Ozuna. Paul DeJong followed with a grounder that third baseman Moran stopped but didn't have a play on, scoring Goldschmidt while Ozuna stayed at second. Matt Carpenter then sacrificed and was thrown out at first, 2-3. With catcher Elias Diaz having moved out toward the mound to make the throw, Ozuna tried to keep going and score from second, but Bell saw him going and Diaz got back in time to record the out, 3-2. The Pirates managed to get two outs on a play that didn't have an official at-bat.
The Pirates got their one run on the first pitch of the game, with Frazier homering into the seats above the Cardinals bullpen. The Cardinals, in an eerie echo of Friday, loaded the bases with no one out in the bottom of the first and got only one run as Ozuna, for the second straight day, grounded into a double play. DeJong followed with a foul out to end the inning.
