Cardinals 2, Reds 1
ST. LOUIS -- One good swing was all it took to give St. Louis a win in its second straight pitchers' duel with Cincinnati.
Matt Holliday cracked a two-run homer in the bottom of the sixth inning Tuesday night and Jaime Garcia made it stand up with ninth inning help from Edward Mujica for a 2-1 win at Busch Stadium.
Holliday's third homer of the year, a line shot which barely cleared the fence in left-center field and plated Carlos Beltran, was one of just six hits for the Cardinals off Arroyo (2-3). It came off Arroyo's lone mistake, a hanging breaking ball.
Garcia (3-1) scattered seven hits over eight innings, retiring nine of the last 10 men he faced. Garcia walked none and struck out three, recording 18 outs on ground balls. Mujica struck out the side in the ninth for his fifth save.
St. Louis (15-11) snapped a three-game losing streak and dropped the Reds (14-13) to 3-9 on the road. The Cardinals pulled into a tie for first place in the National League Central with Pittsburgh, pending the result of the Pirates' game in Milwaukee.
As was the case in Monday night's 2-1 Cincinnati victory, the early storyline was starting pitching. Arroyo and Garcia used similar styles to baffle the hitters in their first two passes through the order.
Arroyo, who retired the first 15 men he faced on April 9 before faltering in the sixth inning of a 5-1 loss to the Cardinals, allowed just two hits and threw only 50 pitches through five innings. He didn't record a strikeout, but recorded nine groundball outs and didn't allow a runner to reach second base.
The Reds started innings two through four with leadoff singles but failed to convert any of those into runs as Garcia worked quickly and pounded the strike zone. Cincinnati pushed runners to the corners with one out in the top of the second, but Garcia induced a first-pitch 6-4-3 double play bouncer from Devin Mesoraco.
In the fifth, the Reds finally cracked the code as Shin-Soo Choo laced a two-out double off the base of the left-center field wall, scoring Derrick Robinson.
NOTES: After Wednesday's series finale with St. Louis, Cincinnati gets its first day off since April 11. It's the first of two stretches this season where the Reds play 20 straight days, the longest allowed by MLB rules ... Cardinals third baseman David Freese got the night off after another hitless game Monday evening dropped his average to .163. Freese has just two doubles, three RBI and 12 strikeouts in 49 at-bats ... St. Louis starting pitchers entered the game with an earned run average of 2.20, easily the best in MLB. Cincinnati's ranked second at 2.97.
