Wetherholt's 409-Foot Blast Is All STL Needs in 1-0 Win
One swing. One run. One Cardinals win. JJ Wetherholt homered to center 409 feet in the sixth inning, and that was the entire scoring summary for a 1-0 St. Louis victory over Los Angeles on July 22.
For five innings, this game was a pitchers' duel with a pulse. Hunter Dobbins was sharp for St. Louis — 6.0 innings, 6 hits, zero earned runs, zero walks, 5 strikeouts — a performance that looks like one of the cleaner outings a starter can put together. Reid Detmers matched the energy on the LAA side, going 5.1 innings with just 2 hits allowed, 2 walks, and 6 strikeouts, surrendering only 1 earned run. The Angels had the better hit total through most of the night; the Cardinals had the only run that mattered.
That run came in the sixth inning, and it came in the loudest possible way. Wetherholt drove a ball 409 feet to center, flipping the home win probability from 54% to 36% — an 18-point swing on a single pitch. That's the game, full stop. The Angels had Wade Meckler going 2-for-3 and Josh Lowe going 2-for-4, which looks like enough offensive production to win most low-scoring games. It wasn't enough tonight, because LAA couldn't manufacture a single run against a Cardinals pitching staff that simply refused to crack. Zach Neto went 1-for-4 for Los Angeles — notable given the trade deadline noise swirling around him — and the Angels as a team were held scoreless.
After Dobbins exited, Riley O'Brien came on for St. Louis and delivered a clean 1.0 inning — no hits, no earned runs, 3 strikeouts, though he did issue 2 walks. Samy Natera Jr. handled 1.0 inning for LAA, allowing 1 hit with 2 strikeouts and no runs. The Cardinals' bullpen did exactly what it needed to do to protect a one-run lead. For St. Louis, the story of the night was the combination of Dobbins' efficiency and Wetherholt's power — the Cardinals generated just 2 hits off Detmers but made one of them count in the most emphatic way possible. The Angels, coming off a win the night before, appear to be a team that can hit but couldn't solve the Cardinals' pitching when it mattered. One swing decided everything, and it wasn't theirs.