St. Louis Cardinals batter Matt Holliday watches his solo home run during the third inning of their MLB interleague baseball game against the Toronto Blue Jays in Toronto June 22, 2010.MIKE CASSESE/Reuters
Brett Cecil was feeling pretty smug with himself, ahead 1-2 in the count to Ryan Ludwick and an opportunity to close out the fifth inning with just one run in for the St. Louis Cardinals.
The Toronto Blue Jays pitcher figured he had already skirted the big danger in Albert Pujols, the Cardinals slugger, who was issued an intentional walk with first base open and Matt Holliday at second after rapping out a run-scoring double
But a Cecil slider slid up too high in the strike zone and Ludwick sliced a sinking liner to left field that just avoided being caught for the third out on a valiant diving effort by Blue Jays outfielder Fred Lewis.
"Please God, catch it," Cecil said afterward when asked what he was thinking as the play unfolded.
There would be no divine intervention as Lewis missed allowing Holliday to score easily from second base, the second of four runs St. Louis would put up on the board in the inning.
That proved to be the difference as the Cardinals (39-31) went on to record a 9-4 victory over the Blue Jays (38-33) before 16,830 at Rogers Centre Tuesday night.
Cecil, with his second consecutive rough outing, absorbed the loss to see his record fall to 7-4.
Even though he allowed more than two earned runs for the first time this season in his 14th start, Jaime Garcia still had too much for the Jays to handle, going six strong innings to improve to 7-3.
Were it not for that one errant pitch in the fifth, things could have gone much differently for both Cecil and the Blue Jays.
A two-out double by Holliday - who had three hits in the game, including a home run in the third - brought home Randy Wynn from second base that moved the Cardinals in front 3-2, still a close game.
With first base open, Pujols (.306, 15 home runs, 50 runs batted in) was given a free pass so Cecil could work against Ludwick (.276, 11 home runs, 41 RBI) and try to limit the damage to just a solitary run.
But Ludwick had other ideas and pulled the ball into left field.
Cecil said it was frustrating being within one pitch of getting out of the inning relatively unscathed only to see everything fall apart.
"Yep, intentional walk to Pujols and then get the guy right where you want him," Cecil said somewhat ruefully. "I threw him a 1-2 slider, just caught too much of the plate."
David Freese, the next St. Louis batter, only increased Cecil's pain when he singled to centre that brought in two more runs that brought the score to 6-2 in the Cardinals' favour.
Even a two home-run game by Jose Bautista - who entered the contest not have hit one in his previous 13 games - was enough to salvage things for Toronto in the first of a three-game series against the National League Central-leading Cardinals.
For Bautista, who now has hit a career-high-and-counting 20 on the year, it was his fourth multi-home run game of the season.
"Two rough starts, got to start over," said Cecil, who was dinged for six of the St. Louis runs off eight hits over five innings.
In his last outing on June 15 against San Diego, Cecil was rocked for five runs off seven hits over six innings in an 8-2 Blue Jays loss to the Padres.
"If he gets out of that inning then he pitched okay," came the assessment of Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston on Cecil's latest effort. "I didn't se the downward plane on his fastball and his cutter stayed up a little bit. Change-up wasn't bad."