St. Louis Completes Sweep Over Arizona

Don’t look now, but St. Louis is currently on the right side of the playoff picture

Another day, another one-run win for the Cardinals (30-23) over the Diamondbacks (26-27).

After eking a 4-3 win over Arizona Friday night and a 6-5 win Saturday afternoon, St. Louis had one more dramatic win against the Diamondbacks ready to go, rallying back from 2-0 to win 4-3.

Brendan Donovan, once again, had a three-hit game. It was Donnie’s Major League-leading ninth three-hit game of the season, while Masyn Winn homered for the first time in 2025 at Busch Stadium; Iván Herrera continues to be transformative for St. Louis with a pair of RBI, and Jordan Walker is still riding his hot streak going 2-3 at the plate. Walker proved to be the winning run after Victor Scott II drove him home in the seventh.

Arizona tagged Sonny Gray for two first inning runs, but St. Louis got a run back in the home half of the inning. Donovan hit his 17th double of the season, and was brought home four pitches later by Herrera.

Two innings later, Winn told Arizona’s Brandon Pfaadt exactly what he thought of his MLB-best seven wins, and took him deep to left field to tie the game at 2.

The Diamondbacks and Cardinals traded runs in the sixth inning to keep the game level at 3-3. Pavin Smith singled to right field to score Eugenio Suarez to put Arizona back on top 3-2, but Herrera returned the favor in home half, hitting a sacrifice fly to score Winn. It was really good and really aggressive base running by Winn to come home because Herrera’s fly out wasn’t hit as deep as you normally to score a run; even better, Donovan, standing on first, was able to advance to second base. It’s the kind of play that’s been emblematic of this St. Louis Cardinal team in the early portion of 2025: making the smart, heady play to win games.

John King came on for Gray in the seventh inning and ended up getting credited with the win, his first of 2025. Gray went 1-2-3 in the seventh, threw a first pitch strike to all three batters he faced, and let his No. 1 ranked defense do all the work for him: fly out to right, groundout to short, line out to first.

St. Louis broke through for the lead in the seventh inning, and the rally was kickstarted by an infield single from Walker, who is batting .375 (9-24) with 8 RBI over his lat nine games. A productive ground out by Pagés put Walker in scoring position, and VS2 drove in the game-winner.

The Cards still had a job to finish, however, and no Ryan Helsley to call upon to close it out. JoJo Romero was tasked with handling the eighth inning, and while he did walk the potential tying run, he stranded the runner at first and kept St. Louis’ lead in tact.

Romero handed the ball to Maton in the ninth and boy was it a turbulent three outs he recorded. Maton had Alek Thomas down on an 0-2 count, but Thomas redirected a cutter to left field for a lead off double. Things got worse for St. Louis when Maton hit Geraldo Perdomo to put two on with nobody out.

Down but not out, Maton finished the job. He rebounded with a massive strikeout of Corbin Carroll for the first out of the inning, and then Nolan Arenado made the play of the game with a pop out in foul territory. Arenado’s pursuit took him to the net and all the way into the third base stands, and he ended up staying down for a minute or two after the catch.

After the game Arenado said he lost his breath for a minute and that he took a shot to the kidney. On a related note, Arizona challenged the catch, and upon replay it was ruled that, while Arenado’s catch was good, since he fell into the net, by rule the runners are allowed to advance a base, which…that’s a thing? When has that been a thing?

Be that as it may, Maton, undoubtedly inspired by Arenado putting his body on the line, went out and struck out Lourdes Gurriel Jr. to end the game and finish off the sweep.

St. Louis has now won 16 of its last 20 games and are playing as good of baseball as anyone else in the MLB. The Cards will try to keep the momentum going as they head out for a six-game road trip. Up next, St. Louis will head out east to take on lowly Baltimore for a three-game series, then they’ll head to Texas for a series against the Rangers.