ST. LOUIS -- At one point during the top of the ninth inning between the Cardinals and Marlins on Sunday, it started to feel like Heriberto Hernández could do this all day.
By ‘this’ I mean fouling off Riley O’Brien sinkers.
After O’Brien fell behind in the count, 3-0, with each pitch out of the zone having been a sinker, he locked back in to deliver a pair of called strikes to climb back into the count. Both of those pitches, too, were sinkers.
From there, Hernández had to start protecting -- and the last thing O’Brien wanted to do was put him on base as he and the Cardinals clung to a 2-1 lead.
For the subsequent three pitches, O’Brien stuck with what he knew, working to put a sinker past Hernández, or to at least get him to pound one into the dirt for the second out of the inning.
What ensued was a healthy battle between pitcher and hitter, with Hernández taking some vicious hacks and staying right on the sinking heat. Three more sinkers from O’Brien were fouled back, with a couple of the swings indicating that Hernández was growing a little too comfortable with the proceedings.
After eight straight sinkers, I snapped a quick photo of the imagery created by the sequence on the Busch Stadium video board, eagerly awaiting what might come next from O’Brien’s right arm.
Just as it seemed Hernández was honing in on O’Brien's stuff, the Cardinal closer dialed up the perfect pivot.
A sweeper froze the batter and drew the emphatic strike three call from the home plate umpire. It was then narrowly upheld by ABS challenge. The screen showed just a sliver of baseball meshing with the bottom of the strike zone for the key out in a Cardinals’ win.
“When he fouled off a few of ‘em on the full count, I felt like it was a good time to mix it up,” O’Brien said. “Just glad that sweeper kind of clipped [the zone].”
O’Brien retired the following hitter, Javier Sanoja, on a grounder to first base to secure the win, marking his 20th save of the season.
His efforts capped a banner day for the bullpen, which produced four scoreless innings as JoJo Romero, Ryne Stanek and George Soriano pitched clean outings ahead of O’Brien’s ninth.
“It was cool to see,” O’Brien said of the bullpen’s collective performance in Sunday’s win. “I was kind of joking around with JoJo after the game, I was like, you all shoved...
“I had to make sure that I came in there and closed the door,” he grinned.