JJ Wetherholt and Jordan Walker both homered during a three-run first inning off reigning National League Cy Young Award winner Paul Skenes and Alec Burleson went 3-for-5 with three RBIs as the visiting St. Louis Cardinals completed a four-game series sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates with a 10-5 victory on Thursday afternoon.
Nathan Church added a two-run double and Wetherholt and Walker, who had three RBIs, each finished with two hits. Pedro Pages and Nolan Gorman also had two hits for the Cardinals, who finished with 14 hits. Gordon Graceffo (2-0) picked up the win with 1 1/3 innings of hitless relief.
Bryan Reynolds had two doubles and two RBIs and Brandon Lowe homered and also had an RBI double for Pittsburgh, which suffered its fifth straight loss.
Skenes (4-2), who flirted with a perfect game while allowing one hit over seven innings in his previous start at Milwaukee, took the loss, allowing five runs (four earned) on eight hits over five innings. He didn’t walk a batter and struck out a season-high nine batters.
Wetherholt led off the game with his seventh home run, a 391-foot drive to right, to give the Cardinals a quick 1-0 lead. Ivan Herrera followed with an infield single and scored one out later when Walker lined a 2-1 sweeper into the left field bleachers for his ninth homer to make it 3-0.
The Cardinals extended the lead to 4-0 in the third when Burleson singled and advanced to second on a throwing error by shortstop Konnor Griffin. One out later, Gorman singled to right to drive in Burleson.
Pittsburgh cut the lead to 4-1 in the fourth on a bases-loaded walk by Spencer Horwitz but St. Louis answered with an RBI single by Burleson to go back up by four runs, 5-1, in the fifth.
The Pirates closed to 5-4 on a two-run double by Reynolds in the bottom of the fifth and Lowe’s 416-foot homer in the seventh. But the Cardinals broke the game open with five runs in the eighth off reliever Isaac Mattson, highlighted by Church’s two-riun double off the top of the fence in right-center and a two-run single by Burleson.
