Cardinals 5, Reds 1
ST. LOUIS -- Cincinnati's Bronson Arroyo was perfect for five innings. The veteran right-hander was anything but perfect in the bottom of the sixth.
Pinch-hitter Matt Adams cranked a two-run homer to highlight St. Louis' four-run rally Tuesday night as the Cardinals evened their early-season National League Central showdown with the Reds, picking up a 5-1 win at Busch Stadium.
Lance Lynn (1-0) fanned 10 and allowed just four hits in six innings for St. Louis. Its bullpen, which coughed up 10 runs in the last two innings of Monday's 13-4 loss, worked three scoreless innings in this one.
Adams jumped all over a 1-1 curve from Arroyo in the sixth inning and jacked it over the right-center-field wall, yelling in delight as he rounded first base. The 403-foot blast was the first pinch-hit homer of Adams' short major-league career, which is less than a half-season old.
Allen Craig's bases-loaded groundout made it 3-1 and Carlos Beltran's RBI single to center field added the fourth run as the Cardinals (4-4) bounced back from their end-game meltdown on Monday, dropping Cincinnati to 5-3.
St. Louis tacked on another run in the eighth when Manny Parra wild-pitched Matt Carpenter home.
Both pitchers set the tone right away, retiring the first nine men they faced and doing so in different fashions.
Lynn did it with power, striking out six and touching 95 mph with a late-moving fastball. Arroyo varied speeds and spins, whiffing only two but permitting few hard-hit balls.
Lynn cracked a little bit in the fourth, yielding consecutive one-out singles to Zack Cozart and Joey Votto that put runners on the corners. Brandon Phillips followed with a sacrifice fly to deep left -- Matt Holliday made a nice sliding catch near the warning track -- for the first run.
Lynn kept notching strikeouts, reaching 10 with his punch-out of Arroyo to end the fifth. But the Reds' starter needed only 64 pitches to sail through five innings, thanks to Jay Bruce's diving grab of Yadier Molina's liner to right that ended the fifth.
NOTES: St. Louis general manager John Mozeliak announced before the game that closer Jason Motte's aching right elbow hasn't improved and that season-ending Tommy John surgery is likely if Motte remains "symptomatic" by May 1. Motte bagged 42 saves last year, his first as a full-time closer. ... Cincinnati's Derrick Robinson picked up his first start Tuesday night, batting seventh and playing left field in place of normal starter Chris Heisey. ... The Cardinals are the first team to be involved in nine-run innings in consecutive games since they did it in August 2003 against Pittsburgh. St. Louis scored nine in the fourth inning of a Sunday win at San Francisco and yielded nine in the top of the ninth Monday.
