Cincinnati Reds at St. Louis Cardinals

On Friday night, after a Reds victory in the first game of this three-game set, closer Emilio Pagán laid out a simple -- if ambitious -- hope for his team in the waning days ahead of the Aug. 3 Trade Deadline. “Just trying to make it weird,” he said that night after recording his 10th save. “We’re trying to win as many games as we can to hopefully put us in a spot where you know guys aren’t leaving and we’re adding some guys, and we can go on a run. On Sunday, it got a little weirder. Sal Stewart’s pinch-hit RBI single leading off the 10th inning broke a stalemate and gave the Reds their first lead of the day -- and the only lead they would need. They grinded to a 5-3 win in the series finale, taking the three-game set from the Cardinals and giving oxygen to their hopes of keeping the band together. The collective Reds pitching staff did yeoman’s work to keep the Cardinals off the board and give the offense time to strike, even as both teams labored in oppressive conditions with the temperature on the field feeling as though it climbed well into the triple digits. St. Louis did not record a hit between Iván Herrera’s third-inning homer and Alec Burleson’s eighth-inning single, which deflected off Nathaniel Lowe’s glove at first base.