PHILADELPHIA — After all the negative attention they’ve received this week, it certainly felt good for the Cardinals to bust out of their slump.
PHILADELPHIA — After all the negative attention they’ve received this week, it certainly felt good for the Cardinals to bust out of their slump.
Randal Grichuk homered and had three hits, and Kolten Wong and Yadier Molina also went deep as St. Louis set season highs for runs and hits in a 12-4 rout of the Philadelphia Phillies on Friday night.
The Cardinals avoided their second three-game losing streak of the season while breaking out of the offensive funk that followed Tuesday’s news of a federal investigation into whether club officials illegally hacked into the Houston Astros’ player database.
The Cardinals batted .211 with five runs in the first three games after the story broke. If the investigation had any bearing on the lackluster offense, they certainly put it out of their minds against the Phillies.
St. Louis pounded out 16 hits, including six for extra bases. Jhonny Peralta doubled and had three RBIs, Mark Reynolds had a two-run double and 10 Cardinals got hits.
“It’s good to see these kind of days to give everybody a good shot in the arm, confidence-wise, about our offense,” manager Mike Matheny said.
Ryan Howard homered for Philadelphia, which snapped a nine-game losing streak on Thursday. The last-place Phillies sank 23 games under .500.
Tyler Lyons (2-0) won his second straight after going 13 consecutive starts without a win dating back to 2013. He earned a victory Saturday over the Royals and cruised to his latest one behind double-digit run support.
Two-run homers by Wong, a 2008 Kamehameha-Hawaii graduate, and Molina highlighted a four-run second inning that gave the Cardinals a 4-0 lead.
In the fourth, Peralta drove in Matt Carpenter and Lyons — both of whom walked — to put St. Louis up by six. And the Cardinals scored five runs on six hits against Justin De Fratus in the fifth.
Keeping track of Kolten
Friday: 1 for 5, two RBIs in 12-4 win at Philadelphia
Season (67 games): .284 average, .337 OBP, .789 OPS, eight home runs, 29 RBIs, five steals