Bullpen can't hold Cards' late lead

Despite solid start by Pals and three hits by Minges, Springfield unable to hold off Wichita. 

Kary Booher
News-Leader

This one hurt. You could feel it in the Springfield Cardinals clubhouse, quiet as could be.

A three-run third. A beauty pitched by Jordan Pals, and a couple of runs to pad the lead. And yet not good enough. Not with a leaky bullpen.

"I didn't go after them with steam coming out of my ears," reliever Josh Axelson said.

Across the way, there sat reliever Chris Mears. Fuming. Just like his manager across the building, only he was upset that a strikeout wasn't called for reliever Anthony Rawson.

And so it went for the Cardinals on Saturday night as the trio of relievers imploded, coughing up five runs in a wild eighth inning, to let the Wichita Wranglers make out of town with an 8-5 win in front of 8,163 at Hammons Field.

With it, the Cardinals were left to think about what might have been after blowing a chance to take three out of five from the Texas League East leaders and to waste went a seven-inning masterpiece by Pals and a 3-for-5 effort from right fielder Tyler Minges.

All that was really left to think about in the clubhouse was Justin Huber's two-run single and Brennan King's double that brought in two more that pushed Wichita in front.

"Pals pitched great," Maloney said. "He deserved a lot better fate than a no-decision."

When Pals handed it over to the bullpen, he left with the Cardinals leading 5-2 and only six outs away from pulling within a game of the division leaders.

But the trio of Axelson, Rawson and Mears failed to make it stick, and by the end of the inning the boo birds came out in full force.

What chafed Maloney were the losses of two appeals on two-strike check swings by the left-handed hitting Shane Costa. He had summoned Rawson, a lefty, from the bullpen exclusively to retire Costa after Axelson had given up a leadoff single and issued a walk.

Home plate umpire Joe Maiden didn't ring up Costa, and neither did third base ump Delfin Colon on the appeal. Costa ended up walking.

"I thought he struck the guy out," Maloney said. "I did and so did everybody else on the bench."

That set the stage for a wild turn of events and led the Cardinals straight into a hornet's nest.

Summoned to the mound, Mears (0-2) got torched and eventually saddled with the loss. Huber hit two-run single up the middle to pull Wichita within 5-4. Costa was caught in a rundown between second and third on the same play, and Huber advancing to second base forced Mears to issue Josh Pressley an intentional walk.

A double play forthcoming didn't pan out. Instead, King drilled a shot to the center field wall. Huber scored easily, and Pressley jogged in from third after the throw from center fielder Shaun Boyd short-hopped the cutoff man. Pressley scored the go-ahead run, and Mike Aviles followed two batters later with a run-scoring single.

Wichita added a run in the ninth off Oscar Alvarez.

"It couldn't have come at a better time," Huber said of the eighth-inning rally. "No one was blowing it out and taking advantage."

Huber finished the night 2-for-5 with four RBIs. He was 9-for-22 in the series with six RBIs and three home runs.

"The bottom line is," Mears said, "I gave up runs no matter what happened there. They got the runs across the board and I didn't do the job."