Cardinals 11, Tigers 4: Death by a thousand papercuts

St. Louis didn’t hit the ball hard often, but they did just enough to do the damage they needed to win. Then they just piled right on, which was rude.

After a series win in Toronto in which every game was decided by one run, the Detroit Tigers rolled into St. Louis armed with the best record in baseball for the opener of a three-game series. Well, as they say, “Ya gotta play the games,” and the Cardinals took Monday night’s game in convincing fashion, 11-4 in a game that got out of hand late.

Casey Mize’s turn in the rotation came up tonight (see below), and AJ Hinch decided on a little Pitching Chaos by going with Sean Guenther as an opener. The lefty’s previous outing was a scoreless two-inning stint a week ago against the Red Sox , surrendering a harmless hit in the process. He was a fantastic, if underrated, member of the Tigers’ bullpen in the second half last year, with a miniscule 0.86 ERA and bonkers 0.524 WHIP in 21 innings across 17 outings. This was his seventh appearance and first, um, “start,” this year.

Sonny Gray started for the Cardinals, his tenth of the year. He’s been around a long time, with memorable and successful years in Oakland, Cincinnati and, most recently, Minnesota. (This guy gets around more than certain diseases we can all name!) It’s been going decently well for him in 2025 so far, but two of his previous three outings were pretty lousy, sandwiched around a sensational seven-inning, two-hit, eight strikeout performance against the Pirates. As you’ll see, he righted the ship tonight.

Guenther had a rough go of it: a double and a single from Lars Nootbaar and Masyn Winn put runners on the corners with none out. Dillon Dingler threw out Winn stealing at second, which was handy because Brendon Donovan followed with a single to score Nootbaar for a 1-0 Cardinals lead. Having pitched to three batters and two lefties — and not very well, in this writer’s opinion — Guenther gave way to Keider Montero, who has been the go-to sixth starter. Montero struck out Willson Contreras looking, then got the red-hot Iván Herrera to pop out to shortstop and end the inning.

Montero got in a little trouble in the second with a walk and a double to put runners on second and third with two outs, but a flyout to centre by Nootbaar for the third out quelled the threat. He settled down nicely in the third for a 1-2-3 inning, which is nice.

Meanwhile, Gray cruised through the first four innings against the Tigers, giving up a single and a double but nothing else, striking out five. Guess he righted the ship from his previous clunker of a start. He used a variety of sweepers, sinkers, changeups and curveballs, and kept the Tigers thoroughly off-balance.

After a pair of singles put runners on the corners with one out for St. Louis in the fourth, Montero caught his spikes on the mound while delivering a pitch, uncorking a wild one that scored Herrera from third for a 2-0 lead. Riley Greene, though, prevented another run (at least) with a nice diving catch for the third out.

The hits off Montero kept coming in the fifth with a trio of singles to start off the inning, loading the bases with none out. A soft grounder to shortstop scored Nootbaar for a 3-0 score, another to second base scored the speedy Wynn for a 4-0 Cardinals lead, and yet another soft ground ball to shortstop couldn’t be turned into an inning-ending double play and, yes, a fifth run scored. Montero then took matters into his own hands and picked Nolan Arenado off first base for the third out, and baseball is dumb, and I hate it.

One batter after the Seventh Inning Stretch, the game went into a rain delay; after it, Montero departed with a final line of 5 ⅔ innings, 7 hits, 4 runs, a pair of walks and three strikeouts. He didn’t give up a lot of hard contact, but the Cardinals kept putting the ball in just the right spot to do damage. Some days are like that, you know? You do a good job but Lady Luck just isn’t on your side. Shake ‘er off, Keider. With Olson set to miss a couple of starts, Montero is going to get a few more chances before the rotation is hopefully fully reassembled.

John Brebbia came in and, well, the Cardinals just blew the thing open: a pair of singles, a double and a dinger and it was 10-0. A sharp double later, Brebbia was out and Tomás Nido — yep, our backup catcher — was brought in to save the rest of the bullpen. He surrendered a sacrifice fly to make it 11-0 but got a forceout to mercifully end the seventh.

The Tigers finally got on the board in the eighth with a pair of singles and an Akil Baddoo double. You don’t want to get shut out. It looks ugly. I mean, 11-1 looks pretty awful, but 11-0 is just downright embarrassing, isn’t it? To lighten the mood here, let’s take a listen to Don Drysdale’s call of Kirk Gibson’s home run in the 1988 World Series .

I’d never heard this call before, only Vin Scully’s. Like Scully, Drysdale lets the stadium do the talking after describing what happened. I wish more baseball announcers would take this approach.

Nido’s five-pitch eighth inning went three-up three-down, which means he’s the best pitcher the Tigers have ever had, and that’s math, and you can’t argue.

In the ninth the Tigers really made it a real nailbiter: after an error and a single, Andy Ibáñez doubled to narrow the lead to 11-2. Trey Sweeney hit a sacrifice fly to score Spencer Torkelson for a 11-3 score, and a Dingler RBI groundout closed out the scoring.

Game two of the series goes at 6:45 pm CDT (7:45 pm EDT), and it’s going to be a Skubal Day™. Here’s hoping that one goes a little better than this one.

Injury Report

Well, that’s not great.

But, hold on…

Relax, everybody! We’ve got this.

Numbers and Whatnot

• People have been sharing a fun statistic about Tigers rookie Jackson Jobe: he’s started eight times for the Tigers this year, and Detroit has won all eight of those games. Granted, one of those wasn’t exactly a great outing in Colorado, but I think Sandy Koufax himself would’ve had trouble getting breaking pitches to move there.
• Sonny… Gray? Grey looks more reasonable to me. Is this the difference between Canadian and American spelling? Anyway, his actual first name is Sonny; it’s not a nickname.
• Happy Victoria Day to everyone who celebrates! Her birthday was May 24, but in a lot of countries, the holiday in her honour is observed on the Monday before her birthday (or on May 24 itself if that’s on a Monday). In Canada, because it’s the unofficial kickoff to summer, and there are often outings to cottages and such, and because those outings often involve 24-packs of certain adult beverages, and since in Canada those packs are sometimes called a “two-four,” and because it’s in May, the holiday is sometimes unofficially called “May Two-Four.” That was a long walk, but I hope you learned a little bit if you’re not from here.