The Cardinals ended their brief visit to Pirate territory with a comprehensive 5:1 win on Wednesday, 23 September, in a regular-season MLB match that wrote off yesterday's result in one evening. And here's the thing — just twenty-four hours earlier the Pirates had taken the same opponent 2:0 at home, so the swing between games was as sharp as you could expect. To be fair, neither side had been consistent all season, but this one felt decisive from the first innings.
The Pirates had been riding a wave of five straight wins before this evening, including four victories over the Royals in a row and a hard-fought 7:4 win over the Brewers on Sunday. By then you'd have thought they were the team to beat, but baseball has a habit of catching you in possession when you least expect it. The Cardinals turned it around after the break in a way that left the home crowd watching in silence.
Cardinals arrived with mixed form — three losses in their last five games, most notably a 9:1 drubbing against the Nationals on 19 September and a 8:5 defeat in the same opponent's house two days later. They had bounced back with a 5:3 win over the Nationals on 20 September and then lost 6:5 to the Giants on 16 September. The history between them adds an edge to every meeting, and tonight the visitors made sure it counted.
One thing you notice when you watch the whole match is that the Pirates never really found their rhythm after the opening frame. They held the tie in their own hands early but couldn't convert, and by the middle innings the Cardinals were running away with it. The old head of the visitors' dugout must have settled them down — the Pirates looked like they'd had nothing to do all evening once the game opened up.
The result means the Cardinals have now split the two meetings between them this season, taking one in each direction. For the Pirates it ends a streak that looked promising but felt fragile from the start. The series is still wide open, but tonight the visitors proved they could reach for a win when it mattered.
