Cardinals Erase 5-3 Deficit With Seven-Run Seventh, Rout Braves 11-5
St. Louis trailed by two runs heading into the seventh inning, then sent 11 men to the plate and scored seven times to blow Atlanta out 11-5. Jordan Walker led the Cardinals with 4 RBI on the night, but the story of the game was a collective offensive explosion that turned a deficit into a rout in one chaotic frame.
The first inning looked like it might belong to St. Louis. Walker launched a 396-foot homer to left center, scoring Wetherholt and Herrera to put the Cardinals up 3-0. Atlanta answered immediately and then some — a Dubón single plated one, then Dominic Smith doubled to right, clearing the bases and scoring Albies, Dubón, and Olson to flip the lead to 4-3. A Yastrzemski sacrifice fly made it 5-3 Braves, and that's where the score sat for five-plus innings while Hurston Waldrep worked through 5.1 innings, allowing 5 hits and 3 earned runs with 4 strikeouts. Atlanta's bullpen, it appears, was not up to the task of protecting that lead.
The seventh inning is where this game was decided — and where it got genuinely wild. Nathan Church led off with a 392-foot homer to right center, scoring Winn to tie it at 5-5. That swing alone moved the win probability from 83% in Atlanta's favor to 62%, a 22-point swing on a single pitch. From there, St. Louis just kept coming. Wetherholt singled to center to score Torres and make it 6-5. Herrera singled to center, scoring Fermín for 7-5. Walker singled to left, scoring Wetherholt for 8-5. Nootbaar doubled to right, scoring Burleson for 9-5. Then Winn grounded into a fielder's choice — Atlanta challenged the call at first, and the call was upheld — with Walker scoring to push it to 10-5. Seven runs, one inning, game over in everything but the final out.
Alec Burleson added a punctuation mark in the ninth, homering to right (395 feet) to set the final at 11-5. Masyn Winn went 3-4 with an RBI, and the Cardinals' bullpen — Justin Bruihl (2.2 IP, 0 ER), Matt Svanson (1.0 IP, 0 ER, 2 K), and JoJo Romero (1.0 IP, 0 ER) — combined to throw 4.2 scoreless innings after the Cardinals took the lead. St. Louis looks like a team that refused to let a two-run deficit define the night, and Atlanta looks like a team that ran out of answers the moment the seventh inning started.