TLDR: Chase Burns needed 104 pitches to get through five innings and still walked off the mound trailing — then his bullpen and lineup cleaned it up late for a 5-4 win over St. Louis.
+Chase Burns entered with a 2.54 ERA and All-Star pedigree
+Had already beaten this Cardinals team once in the set
+De La Cruz and Stewart capable of quick-strike offense
−Lost 4 of last 5 games entering Wednesday
−Hunter Greene out for the year after second Tommy John
−Williamson and Ashcraft both still working back from long injured-list stints
Burns and Matthew Liberatore made for an odd pairing on paper — a rookie All-Star with a 2.54 ERA against a lefty who came in scuffling — and for five innings it played out exactly like the mismatch it wasn't supposed to be. Liberatore's Cardinals scratched across 2 runs in the fourth on a walk, a wild pitch and RBI hits from Nathan Church and Bryan Torres, and Burns went to the dugout after 5 having allowed those same 2 runs on 6 hits and 2 walks, with 8 strikeouts to show for the grind.
Matthew Liberatore
(5-13)·5.41 ERA
Aug 14 @ Cubs
L
5.1IP
2ER
6K
1BB
95P
08/19 Lineup
Chase Burns
(15-3)·2.79 ERA
Aug 14 vs Marlins
W
7.0IP
0ER
8K
0BB
93P
08/19 Lineup
Neither team is exactly healthy right now. Cincinnati is still without Hunter Greene, who had his second Tommy John surgery this month and won't pitch again for 12 to 18 months, and Brandon Williamson (shoulder) and Graham Ashcraft (elbow) are both working back from long injured-list stints — Tony Santillan just got activated off his own. St. Louis, meanwhile, is nursing Ramon Urias through a rehab assignment and lost reliever Max Rajcic for the year to elbow reconstruction. Neither injury report moved much, but the market barely blinked at Liberatore's night either, and it showed.
Cincinnati's offense had managed one hit through five innings before Sam Moll relieved Burns, and the bats picked the same frame to wake up. Matt McLain doubled, Elly De La Cruz singled him in, and Sal Stewart followed with a homer that flipped a 2-0 deficit into a 3-2 lead. The Reds tacked on 2 more in the eighth to make it 5-2, and while the Cardinals scratched back with 2 runs in the top of the ninth to make it a one-run game, they ran out of outs before they ran out of deficit.
This was the fourth meeting of a stretch that's swung both ways — St. Louis had taken 2 of the first 3 in Cincinnati, including a shutout the day before, while the Reds had grabbed the other with a walk-off. That push-pull matched the shape of both clubs' seasons: Cincinnati came in having dropped 4 of 5, St. Louis had won 4 of 5, and neither the standings gap (65-62 to 60-66) nor Wednesday's final did much to separate them.
Burns' final line — 5 innings, 2 runs, 8 strikeouts, 104 pitches — is the story anyone who's followed him this year would recognize: nasty stuff, short leash. Reports out of Cincinnati have suggested the Reds won't push him deep into the fall given his workload, and nights like this one, where he's already at 104 through 5, are exactly why that bullpen picture matters as much as his ERA does.
Cardinals 4, Reds 5: Final Score & Odds Recap — Reds Survive Rookie Ace's Long Night To Edge Cardinals
