ST. LOUIS _ For the second consecutive night, the Cardinals capitalized on a young Braves pitcher's mistakes in one crucial inning to take control of a game without needing to hit a home run.
Friday it was two walks issued by Mike Foltynewicz in a four-run second inning. Saturday it was two batters hit by pitches from Lucas Sims in a three-run fourth inning when the Cardinals broke open a previously tied game to take a three-run lead, then held on for a 6-5 win at sold-out Busch Stadium.
Freddie Freeman's two-out, bases-loaded single in the ninth inning against Trevor Rosenthal got the Braves within a run before Nick Markakis struck out to end the game. Dansby Swanson started the ninth-inning rally with a single and Danny Santana reached on an error before Brandon Phillips worked a walk to fill 'em up for Freeman.
The Braves came close but couldn't get their first win in five tries this season against the surging Cardinals, who improved to 28-16 since June 25, the second-most wins in the majors in that period behind the Dodgers (31 before Saturday).
They were a half-game behind the National League Central-leading Cubs pending the outcome of the Cubs' late game Saturday at Arizona.
In his third major league start, there were lessons to be learned for Sims (0-3), who was charged with 10 hits, five runs (four earned) and one walk in 51/3 innings. That's in addition to the two batters he hit with pitches in the fourth inning including Kolten Wong leading off.
Phillips hit his ninth home run for the Braves, who have a 6-18 record since the long and encouraging climb that got their record to .500 on July 16, when they were 45-45.
That must seem long ago now to the Braves and their followers, who had hoped to see the team play meaningful games into September in this third year of their rebuilding project.
They'll have one more chance Sunday to beat the Cardinals and try to stop their eight-game winning streak, but they did manage to stop another streak by holding St. Louis to fewer than eight runs Saturday. The Cardinals had scored at least eight runs in each of their six games, the longest such scoring streak in wins in franchise history and the longest in the majors since the Braves themselves did it in six consecutive wins in July 2006.
Kurt Suzuki's two-run single in the first inning staked Sims to a 2-0 lead before he threw his first pitch Saturday. Phillips and Freddie Freeman had consecutive one-out singles and Nick Markakis walked to load the bases for Suzuki, who singled to left to give the Braves a two-run lead before Cardinals starter Carlos Martinez (9-9) recorded his second out.
But Martinez retired nine of the next 10 batters and recorded 12 outs in a span of 13 batters before Phillips' solo homer in the fifth inning, after the Cardinals had scored five unanswered runs to take a 5-2 lead.
Things came apart on Sims long enough in the fourth inning to pretty much seal his and the Braves' fate. Randal Grichuk followed the leadoff hit-by-pitch by hitting a double that set things up nicely for the fundamentally sound Cardinals, who then got runs when the next two batters followed with a ground-out and a single (by Martinez).
After Matt Carpenter was hit by a pitch, Tommy Pham's RBI single pushed the lead to 5-2.
After giving up six hits in six innings in each of his first two starts, Sims was tagged for 10 hits without making it out of the sixth inning in his first road start. The five runs were also the most he's allowed, though four earned runs matched what he surrendered in his previous start Sunday against the Marlins.
The Cardinals added a run in the seventh when Paul DeJong homered off Jose Ramirez to start the inning.
