By MATT PIKE
A rebuilding season is complete for the St. Louis Cardinals, who started the season showing playoff aspirations, and ended the season on a massive downhill slide that had trouble being slowed down.
The Cardinals fell the Milwaukee Brewers in the regular season finale for both teams 6-4, as Brewers ace Jacob Misiorowski continued his push for the Cy Young award, striking out five and giving up just two hits over 5.1 innings while walking two batters. St. Louis managed as many hits as they did runs on the day, with four overall, against for Brewers pitchers putting nine total Redbird baserunners on through the game.
Back-to-back-to-back singles opened the game against Cardinals starter Andre Pallante, with Jackson Chourio driving in Garrett Mitchell to open the scoring for Milwaukee in the first inning. A fourth straight single by Brice Turang scored Jake Bauers, and after Pallante recorded the first out of the inning, another single by Christian Yelich brought home Chourio to put the Brewers up 3-0 at the end of the first inning.
Chourio led off the third inning with a single and with one out Gary Sánchez extended the lead with a two run home run. In the fourth the Brewers added their final run with another RBI single from Chourio, with two runners on after Pallante gave up a single to David Hamilton and walked Mitchell, Chourio's RBI single driving in Hamilton for a 6-0 Milwaukee lead after four innings. Through four innings Misiorowski gave up just one hit and walked two while striking out three.
After Misiorowski exited in the sixth, giving up a single to Pedro Pagés and striking out Jordan Walker, the Brewers brought on DL Hall who struck out one and walked one over 1.1 innings. The Cardinals finally got on the scoreboard against Chad Patrick in the eighth inning, starting with a leadoff triple from César Prieto and a walk to Pagés before Walker grounded into an out at second, scoring Prieto. Iván Herrera walked moving Walker to second, and Leo Bernal hit his fifth home run of the season to cut the lead to two.
Shane Drohan relived Patrick from there and retired the next five Cardinals batters to earn his second save of the season, striking out two. On the season, Misiorowski, a graduate of Grain Valley High School, appears the heavy favorite to win the Cy Young Award finishing the regular season ranking the best in Major League Baseball with 252 strikeouts (1st), a 1.80 ERA (1st), 0.80 WHIP (1st), and .157 BAA (1st)
Also among the best in the MLB was Cardinals first baseman Alec Burleson, who finished the season with 116 RBIs. At the plate on the day, four Cardinals had one hit each. Bernal was 1-for-2 with a home run and three RBIs with two walks. Thomas Saggese, Prieto, and Pagés each had one hit as well.
Pallante finished the season 12-9 taking the loss pitching five innings and giving up all six runs on 10 hits with four strikeouts and one walk. After Pallante earned his 12th win of the season on August 5th, he was 0-3 with four no decisions. His 12 wins were the most among Cardinals pitchers, just ahead of Kyle Leahy's 10.
As the MLB Playoffs begin, the National League Central champion Brewers will host either the Chicago Cubs or San Diego Padres in the opening game of an NL Division Series on Saturday.
You can follow Matt on X @KfeqMatt.