Getting a base hit in each of the four opportunities they had to bat with runners in scoring position, the St. Louis Cardinals rallied to defeat the San Diego Padres, 4-3, in the opener of a three-game series Monday night at Busch Stadium. St. Louis improved to 5-0 against San Diego on the season.
Harrison Bader struck the final blow, a one-out, RBI single off Craig Stammen (2-1) in the bottom of the ninth to score Paul DeJong with the winning run. Matt Wieters had tied the game off San Diego starter Cal Quantrill with a solo home run in the bottom of the eighth.
San Diego (15-20) hit three homers off St. Louis starter Dakota Hudson. Trent Grisham homered in the first, Manny Machado hit one in the third, and Josh Naylor put San Diego ahead, 3-2, with his fifth home run of the season in the seventh.
But the clutch Cardinals still prevailed thanks to timely RBI hits earlier in the game by Dexter Fowler and Wieters, that plated runners and gave the Cards an early 2-1 advantage. St. Louis didn’t threaten again until the Wieters home run in the eighth.
In the ninth, DeJong was hit by a Stammen pitch with one out and moved to second on a single by Kolten Wong. That set the stage for Bader’s winning single.
