Martinez helps Cardinals beat Brewers
ST. LOUIS -- Desperate for a good performance from their starting pitcher, the St. Louis Cardinals turned to their best pitcher this season, Carlos Martinez, for Friday night's game against the Milwaukee Brewers.
He did not let them down.
Even though Martinez was far from dominant, he was good enough to deliver a 4-3 win for the Cardinals, thanks to two-run homers from Matt Carpenter and Stephen Piscotty.
Martinez (14-7) allowed nine hits, walked one and hit two batters over seven innings, not recording a 1-2-3 inning until the seventh. He had only one strikeout and needed 102 pitches to get through the seventh.
The Cardinals had not had a starter last past the fifth inning in any of their four previous games, and had seen their starter allow four or more runs in seven of their last 12 home games dating back to Aug. 6.
Milwaukee starter Jimmy Nelson took the loss, despite allowing only five hits over six innings, with three of them coming in the span of four batters in the third, when the Cardinals scored all of their runs. Nelson fell to 0-7 in his career against the Cardinals.
Kevin Siegrist worked a perfect eighth inning to turn the one-run lead over to Seung Hwan Oh, who pitched around a leadoff walk to earn his 17th save.
After spotting the Brewers an early 3-0 lead, the Cardinals responded with their two-run homers in the third to go ahead 4-3. Carpenter hit his 19th of the year and Piscotty his 21st, increasing the team's total for the season to 204.
The Brewers scored the game's first run in the top of the first without getting a hit. Martinez walked Scooter Gennett with one out, and with two outs, hit Chris Carter with a pitch. Kirk Nieuwenhuis followed with a hard smash up the middle, which was ruled an error on Jedd Gyorko, allowing Gennett to score.
Gennett increased the lead to 3-0 in the third with a two-run homer, his 11th of the season, and the first by any current hitter on the Milwaukee roster off Martinez.
The three runs equaled the total the Brewers had scored off Martinez in six starts dating back to the start of last season, over a span of 34 innings.
NOTES: Cardinals SS Aledmys Diaz played the second game of his rehab assignment for Double-A Springfield on Friday night. The team is hopeful he can be back in the lineup as early as Sunday for the first time since breaking his right thumb when he was hit by a pitch on July 31. ... RHP Trevor Rosenthal, also on the DL for the Cardinals, is scheduled to throw live batting practice on Saturday, manager Mike Matheny said. ... The Brewers, who went to a six-man rotation when RHP Junior Guerra came off the DL, intend to keep using six starters for the time being. In their first six games since making the change the Brewers were 5-1 and the starters allowed just eight earned runs in 34 innings, a 2.12 ERA. ... The Cardinals' game against the Cubs on Sept. 25 has been picked as the Sunday night game by ESPN, with a starting time of 7:08 p.m.