Cardinals turn steady contact into a 7-3 win over White Sox after Chase Meidroth’s early homers

Every early punch had an answer

The most interesting part of this game was how quickly St. Louis refused to let it tilt. Meidroth opened the scoring with a solo shot to center in the first inning, and he did it again in the third with another solo homer, this one to left-center. On a night when Chicago hit two home runs and St. Louis hit none, that could have been the outline of a road win.

Instead, the Cardinals answered each jolt almost immediately and kept the game from settling into Chicago’s preferred script. Alec Burleson tied it in the first with a double to right that scored Ivan Herrera. In the second, Masyn Winn’s fielder’s choice brought home Leo Bernal for a 2-1 lead. When Meidroth tied it again in the third, Joshua Baez put St. Louis back in front in the bottom half with a single to center that scored Jordan Walker. It was not a flashy response, but it was a consistent one: give up one, get one back, then make the next inning belong to the home side.

That pattern mattered because Meidroth’s line was good enough to change a game by itself. He went 2-for-4, scored twice, drove in two, and both hits left the park. The Cardinals did not neutralize him so much as outnumber him. Walker scored twice, Burleson drove in two, and Baez began to turn the middle innings into a St. Louis parade of productive at-bats.

The fifth inning where it broke

The game’s defining stretch came in the fifth, when the Cardinals finally turned their one-run edge into something sturdier. Burleson singled home Walker to make it 4-2. Baez followed with a double to left that scored Burleson. Then Bernal added another single to left, bringing home Baez for a 6-2 cushion. Three runs, three scoring plays, and the shape of the night changed for good.

That inning also revealed the style of the Cardinals’ offense. They did not need one big swing. They finished with 13 hits, five of them doubles, and every bit of their scoring came through strings of contact. Baez went 3-for-4 with two runs and two RBI. Bernal matched him at 3-for-4 and also drove in two. Burleson added two hits and two RBI of his own. Walker scored twice. For a lineup that drew only two walks, that volume of solid contact was enough.

Chicago never disappeared entirely, but the White Sox spent the rest of the night trying to patch a leak that kept widening. Trevor Richards was charged with the three-run fifth and finished with five hits and three earned runs allowed in 2 innings. Tyler Schweitzer gave up one more run across the final 2 innings he covered, with Bernal’s second RBI single in the seventh stretching the margin to 7-2. By then, St. Louis had pushed the game into a simpler place: make Chicago build rallies instead of waiting for another solo blast.

Our take: traffic told the truth

Our take: the White Sox can leave Busch Stadium thinking less about power and more about missed accumulation. They had enough traffic to do better than three runs. Chicago finished with nine hits, six walks and two hit batters, yet scored only three times and left 23 runners on base. Kyle Teel reached with two hits in two at-bats. Sam Antonacci scored in the eighth. Munetaka Murakami added an RBI on a fielder’s choice. The opportunities were there; the innings just did not connect often enough behind Meidroth’s home runs.

That is the clearest area for Chicago to improve. This was not a night ruined by silence. It was a night undone by separation between baserunners and run production. Seven strikeouts is not an overwhelming total, but when paired with that many stranded runners, it points to too many plate appearances that stopped momentum instead of extending it. The White Sox also did not make defensive mistakes, committing no errors, so this loss sits mostly with sequencing: plenty of access to the bases, not enough damage once they got there.

Our take on the Cardinals is a little different. The offense earned the headlines, but the pitching line still carries a caution sign. St. Louis used 155 pitches to record 27 outs, issued six walks, hit two batters and allowed two Meidroth homers. Matthew Liberatore lasted 4 1/3 innings and gave up both of those long balls. The bullpen was steadier over the final 4 2/3 innings, allowing one run while Gordon Graceffo, Luis Gastelum, Justin Bruihl, Ryne Stanek and Riley O'Brien pieced the rest together. Still, cleaner control would make a seven-run night feel safer than this one did. The Cardinals were better Friday because they kept answering and kept hitting, and in baseball that is often the most convincing argument of all.

Scoring moments

1. 1st Inning

   Meidroth homered to center (398 feet).

2. 1st Inning

   Burleson doubled to right, Herrera scored.

3. 2nd Inning

   Winn grounded into fielder's choice to third, Bernal scored, Saggese out at second.

4. 3rd Inning

   Meidroth homered to left center (391 feet).

5. 3rd Inning

   Báez singled to center, Walker scored, Báez to second.

6. 5th Inning

   Burleson singled to center, Walker scored.

7. 5th Inning

   Báez doubled to left, Burleson scored.

8. 5th Inning

   Bernal singled to left, Báez scored.

9. 7th Inning

   Bernal singled to left, Báez scored.

10. 8th Inning

    Murakami grounded into fielder's choice to first, Antonacci scored, Teel out at second.