St. Louis Cardinals at Chicago Cubs

Oliver Marmol wasn't talking about the home runs. Not Masyn Winn's three-run blast. Not Nathan Church's towering drive into the right-field bleachers. Not Bryan Torres adding one more for good measure. He was talking about the pitches the Cardinals *didn't* swing at. "The guys just didn't give anything away," Marmol said. On a day when St. Louis piled up a season-high 17 runs, the manager's favorite plate appearances might've been the ones that ended with walks. The Cardinals didn't simply overpower the Cubs in Friday's 17-1 rout at Wrigley Field. They exhausted them. Every inning felt like another test of patience. Another parade of hitters refusing to chase. Another baserunner forcing the pitcher to work from the stretch. By the time it was over, St. Louis had turned one of baseball's iconic ballparks into an assembly line of quality at-bats, posting its highest run total since scoring 18 against Milwaukee on May 15, 2023. "We're aggressive," José Fermín said. "We're getting good pitches to hit, we're not missing them. We kept the line moving." That line never seemed to stop moving. The Cardinals scored in six consecutive innings, collecting 17 hits while drawing four walks. Five different players drove in at least two runs, the club's most in a game since Sept. 30, 2023. Remarkably, 13 of their runs crossed the plate with two outs, the franchise's most two-out RBIs in a game since MLB began expanding in 1961, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. It wasn't one swing. It wasn't one inning. It was wave after wave. Church ignited the afternoon in the second inning, grinding through an eight-pitch at-bat before jumping on a hanging curveball for a three-run homer. The rookie's recent surge has come with a noticeably different approach, something Marmol believes is no coincidence. "He's done a much better job of just controlling the strike zone and honing in on the pitches that he's trying to hunt," Marmol said. "He's made some really good progress."