The St. Louis Cardinals almost had the perfect day on Tuesday. In addition to winning two games over the Pittsburgh Pirates, which helped them pull to 2.5 games clear of the Milwaukee Brewers in the NL Central, they also nearly had a no-hitter in the second game of the doubleheader. The key word? Nearly. Miles Mikolas was one strike away from achieving immortality when Cal Mitchell hit a ground-rule double in the bottom of the ninth in the Bucs’ 9-1 night cap loss.
Prior to the day, they had been beaten 3-1 as well, making it nine losses consecutively for Pittsburgh. Elsewhere, Troy Gonsolin continued to put up ridiculous numbers as he improved his record on the season to 8-0 as the Los Angeles Dodgers won 2-0 at home over the Angels. The runs came from a Justin Turner walk when the bases were loaded and a Mookie Betts solo shot in the eighth while Gonsolin got into the seventh inning for the first time this campaign. He is not only tied, with Justin Verlander and Alek Manoah, for wins, but he also has the lowest ERA in the majors as he sits at a cool 1.42. And finally, the Atlanta Braves kept on winning on Tuesday evening as they hit five homers in a 10-4 drubbing of the Washington Nationals. That makes 13 wins in a row for the defending World Series winners, and they remained five games off the pace of the Mets in the division courtesy of New York’s 4-0 home victory over the aforementioned Brewers.
