STL Buries CHW 7-3 as Meidroth's Two Homers Go to Waste
Chase Meidroth hit two home runs — 398 feet to center and 391 feet to left center — and still ended up on the losing side as St. Louis rolled to a 7-3 win over Chicago on September 12. The Cardinals answered every White Sox punch and then kept swinging long after the fight was over.
The first inning set the tone for the whole night. Meidroth got Chicago on the board immediately with his solo shot to center, but St. Louis responded in the same frame when Alec Burleson doubled to right and Herrera scored to tie it at 1. That double was the single biggest momentum shift of the game — the home win probability swung from 45% to 56% on that one swing. Chicago had led for roughly three batters. By the second inning, a fielder's choice grounder to third plated Leo Bernal and gave St. Louis a lead they would never relinquish.
Meidroth kept Chicago alive in the third with his second homer, a 391-foot shot to left center that knotted the score at 2. But Joshua Báez answered immediately, singling to center to score Jordan Walker and put St. Louis back in front 3-2. That was the last time the White Sox were within one run. The fifth inning is where this game got away from Chicago entirely: Walker scored on a Burleson single, Burleson then scored on a Báez double, and Bernal capped the rally with a single to left that scored Báez. Three runs, three hits, and suddenly it was 6-2 with Anthony Kay long gone. Bernal added another RBI single in the seventh, again scoring Báez, to push the lead to 7-2. A late Chicago run in the eighth — Antonacci scoring on a fielder's choice — was purely cosmetic.
The story of the night was the Cardinals' lineup depth overwhelming a Chicago pitching staff that had no answers once the fifth inning arrived. Báez went 3-for-4 with 2 RBI and scored twice. Bernal matched him at 3-for-4 with 2 RBI. Burleson chipped in 2 RBI of his own. On the mound, Matthew Liberatore wasn't sharp — 4.1 innings, 6 hits, 3 walks — but it didn't matter because the offense gave him a cushion that made his struggles irrelevant. For Chicago, Meidroth's two-homer, 2-RBI night looks like a performance that deserved a better fate. Randal Grichuk also went 2-for-4, but the White Sox managed just 3 runs against a Cardinals staff that was far from dominant. That gap in run support tells the whole story.