"It was awesome," Glasnow said. "It's great to be a starting pitcher behind a lineup like that."

He was talking about the entire lineup and, indeed, Max Muncy added two RBIs, James Outman knocked in a run, and Will Smith kept that first inning alive with a hit.

All of which led Freeman to make one thing clear: He doesn't want folks talking about The Big Three without mentioning The Other Six.

"It's not just the top of the order. There's nine guys in this lineup," Freeman said. "I will deflect that for every single question from here on out. It is nine guys in this lineup. We did a good job today.".

OK, team player, understood, but this is a superstar town, and the three superstars will spend all summer as the focus, which made Thursday both a revelation and a relief.

Maybe they are that good?

"Yeah, it's tough to navigate three times through for a starter," Roberts said.

How interesting that the Cardinals' starter Thursday was Miles Mikolas, who earlier this spring ripped the Dodgers for trying to buy a championship.

"We're not exactly a low payroll team, but you got the Dodgers playing checkbook baseball," Mikolas told reporters recently. "We're going to be the hardest working group of Midwestern farmers we can be. … It would be great to stick it to the Dodgers."

Well, at least on this day, the "checkbook baseball" did the sticking, as a trio with a combined contract total of around $1.2 billion knocked out the "farmer" in the fifth inning.

...continued

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.