Liberatore Cruises As St. Louis Cardinals Stymie Skenes (Again!)

ST. LOUIS — I know how it seems, but the St. Louis Cardinals don’t actually torch Paul Skenes every time they face him.

The five-run outburst against the Pirates phenom when the Cards saw him in April was incredibly impressive—no opponent in Skenes’ life had ever done anything like it to him. But on the overall numbers, their success against Skenes has been, well, relatively speaking. 

Entering play Tuesday, the club had tagged Skenes with an 0-3 record in four career starts, but it’s not like St. Louis hitters had battered him quite like the win-loss record indicated. Skenes came into this start with a 2.70 ERA against the Cardinals, holding their lineup to a .194 batting average and .486 OPS.

So when he held the Cardinals to a single hit over his first 5.2 innings of work on Tuesday, it wasn’t as though things were progressing in an especially unfamiliar manner from the majority of Skenes’ previous appearances against St. Louis. But in a way that's hard to put your finger on and explain, what came next seemed pretty familiar, too.

When Nolan Arenado singled and Willson Contreras worked a walk in the seventh inning, it set up the Cardinals with their first runner in scoring position all night against Skenes—so the Pirates pitching coach figured he’d better at least go out and chat with his starter.

Nobody in MLB had more hits against Skenes coming into Tuesday than Alec Burleson, who had gone 5-for-12 against Skenes in their prior meetings. Lo and behold, due up for that key spot as the Cardinals threatened for the first time all night: Burly.

Burleson drilled the first pitch he saw from Skenes the other way into the left-field corner to clear the bases and give the Cardinals the lead against one of the best arms in baseball. The 99-mph heater was the Skenes’ 101st delivery of the game as the Cardinals’ approach throughout the night finally bore some fruit.

“Sticking to it for three at-bats, because once you start trying to play the game with him, he’s really tough,” Burleson said of staying true to his approach throughout a long night against Skenes. “You can’t—he’s a guy that you’ve got to stick to what you want. Don’t try and play chess with him.”

Burleson’s swing held up in a 2-1 Cardinals win as Matthew Liberatore ventured back out for a shutdown inning in the top of the seventh before giving way to Steven Matz and Gordon Graceffo out of the St. Louis bullpen.

Though his ninth-inning entrance may have lacked the pizzazz of Ryan Helsley’s Busch Stadium routine, the result for Graceffo was just as impressive as what his teammate often delivers in that closing role.

“I don’t think I deserve those yet,” Graceffo laughed when asked about the lack of red lights for his entrance from the bullpen ahead of his first save. “We’ll see on that one, I don’t think so.”

Graceffo’s breezy, six-pitch top of the ninth inning was followed by a spin in the clubhouse laundry cart for the rookie—his second such treatment of 2025 after he earned one following his first big-league win in Cincinnati last week.

The laundry cart trip is always accompanied by various liquids being sprayed onto the recipient—and Tuesday was no exception.

“This time it was way colder, whatever they were throwing at me, it was freezing,” Graceffo said. “But it was fun.”

After his brilliant start opposite Skenes, Liberatore participated in the clubhouse tradition, although he wasn’t entirely sure what he helped pour onto his teammate.

“I think I got some apple juice or some iced tea, maybe,” Liberatore noted. “But straight out of the fridge, so it was definitely cold.”

Before pouring beverages onto the newly-minted leverage reliever, Liberatore was busy pouring pitches into the strike zone all night against the Pittsburgh lineup. The 25-year-old lefty logged 70 strikes on 99 pitches and trimmed his season ERA down to 3.07 in seven innings of one-run baseball. 

“There’s just a conviction: He doesn’t give a damn who’s in the box. He’s going to go right after you,” Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said of Liberatore. “We saw that tonight at an extremely high level. That was fun to watch.”

Liberatore pumped fastballs with a consistent velocity in the mid-90s that he maintained throughout the duration of his outing. He saw a bite on the cutter that made for uncomfortable at-bats and kept guys off the barrel. He mixed sliders and changeups effectively through the outing, and wasn’t rattled when close calls on the edge of the strike zone went against him on multiple occasions. Liberatore matched a career-high in strikeouts, fanning eight Buccos in the win.

His one slip, allowing a Ke’Bryan Hayes RBI double on a perfectly placed fly ball in the right-center field gap, arguably shouldn’t have happened, either. It appeared that Brendan Donovan had applied a timely tag on base-thief Oneil Cruz earlier in that top of the sixth inning, but replay review, as is becoming tradition during this Pittsburgh series, ruled against the Cardinals and kept the inning alive for Hayes’ go-ahead swing.

But Liberatore didn't flinch. He responded to navigate the rest of the frame cleanly, then watched as his teammates eventually got to Skenes in the bottom half of the inning. Libby returned to the mound with a rising pitch count to set down the Pirates one final time in the seventh.

“Really just trying to take it one pitch at a time and execute every pitch that I throw,“ Liberatore said. “Really trying to slow the game down and think about what I’m doing out there. I’ve talked about it a lot so far but I think it comes from the processes and the routines and the consistency in between starts. That freed me up to be really present when I’m out there on the mound.”

In a Cardinals season that could still veer in a variety of directions--a .500 record is in sight with Sonny Gray on the mound for this series finale Wednesday afternoon--the club has to be thrilled with what its found by extending the tiniest bit of latitude toward the former first-round pick of the Tampa Bay Rays organization.

In an outcome that has been years in the making, Liberatore has grabbed hold of a spot in the Cardinals starting rotation. Outdueling Paul Skenes on Tuesday is the latest indication that he has no intention of giving it back any time soon.