Cardinals fans shocked with team's horrific scoreless night vs Royals: "Even they took Memorial Day off"
The St. Louis Cardinals seemed to be out of touch on Memorial Day as they suffered a blowout loss against the Kansas City Royals. To their fans' bemusement, their entire batting lineup came six outs from giving away a perfect game.
A perfect game is recorded in baseball where one or more pitchers complete a minimum of nine innings with no batter from the opposing team reaching any base. This includes no walks, no hits, no errors or even uncaught third strikes recorded in defense.
Josh Staumont and Mike Mayers completed seven innings without a runner on base. Mayers came to the mound in the second innings and got 18 batters out consecutively. He recorded three strikeouts in his 76 pitches. St. Louis had no answer for the Royals' pitcher.
That finally changed in the eighth innings when Nolan Arenado got a single. Willson Contreras followed it immediately with one of his own as Taylor Clarke replaced Mayers on the mound. The score was 4-0 then, with the Cards having an opportunity to get back. However, three more runs in the top of the ninth won the game for Kansas.
“You're definitely aware of it,” Mayers said of a perfect game. “I tried to keep it business as usual. The goal was to throw up as many zeroes as you possibly can and that's the mindset I stayed in.”
Cardinals fans took to Twitter as they blasted their team for their poor performance on Monday night:
Cardinals manager speaks after team's tough outing against the Royals
St. Louis manager Oliver Marmol accepted that the Kansas defense was hard to get by for his team's offense. This was the first time the Royals had blanked the Cardinals since 2015.
“It was just hard to get anything going offensively,” Marmol said. “Today was a tough one.”
Marmol and his team will head back to the drawing board as they look to come back in the series after dropping to a 24-32 record.