NEW YORK — The Cardinals left the Bronx late Wednesday night having lost plenty during their visit but finally winning something they haven’t in weeks.

In the days that followed Monday’s trade deadline sell-off of three major league players, two from the active roster, the Cardinals won a series against their hosts, the contending New York Yankees. The Cardinals held tight to a 3-1 victory Monday night at Yankee Stadium. The Cardinals avoided their first seven-series losing streak since 1995 by winning two games against the Yankees.

The Cardinals had not won a series since before the All-Star break, had gone nearly a month without winning a series or single-game matchup, and were in jeopardy, according to Elias Sports Bureau research, of the longest stretch of losing series in nearly 21 years.

All of that provided context for part of why the Cardinals traded Dustin May, JoJo Romero and Lars Nootbaar at the deadline and left a thin lineup for the interleague series.

The Cardinals left behind provided a counterargument.

JJ Wetherholt and Ivan Herrera paired doubles together in the fifth inning for the only scoring rally of the entire game. Wetherholt finished with two RBIs. Closer Riley O’Brien pitched a perfect ninth for his 27th save of the season and first since July 22. O'Brien ended the game with a strikeout and the potential tying run at the plate.

The start of the series finale was delayed an hour by rain and then delayed twice in its first 30 minutes by light outages. Full sections of lights along the first base line at Yankee Stadium blinked out during Herrera’s at-bat. The lights flipped off again in the bottom of the inning, causing a brief delay each time the stadium operations tried to get them aglow again.

For the first half of the game, it seemed like the offenses had been unplugged.

Andre Pallante (12-6) started his 5 1/3-inning start with four scoreless, and the lone run he allowed on his line scored after he turned the game over the bullpen. The inherited runner scored on a bases-loaded walk. Entering the ninth inning, the Yankees were 0 for 9 with runners in scoring position, and there was nothing the stadium ops could do to jolt the lineup to life.

The Yankees did get the go-ahead run to the plate in the bottom of the eighth after a pair of two-out walks. Veteran reliever Ryne Stanek, who the Cardinals opted not to trade at the deadline, got two quick outs before walking the next two batters and inviting a visit from pitching coach Dusty Blake.

Yankees rookie George Lombard Jr. stood waiting near the batter’s box.

Lombard homered on Tuesday for his first major league hit in his major league debut, and throughout his first 18 innings in pinstripes he’d made impressive defensive plays. In the third inning, he dove behind second base to snare a sharp grounder and rob Wetherholt of a hit. Lombard had singled earlier in the game, and any hit from him was likely to at least produce a run for the Yankees.

An extra-base hit might have tied the game.

Stanek challenged him with three consecutive strikes.

Each was faster than the previous one.

Lombard took an 87.9-mph slider.

He swung awkwardly at a 97.8-mph fastball.

He was late on a 99.9-mph fastball for the inning-ending, threat-squelching strikeout.

Walks, error cause trouble; challenge limits it

An eventful bottom of the sixth inning could have gone a lot worse for the Cardinals and their catcher Herrera.

In the inning that saw Pallante’s start end, Herrera committed an unusual error that allowed a runner to turn a wild pitch into safe passage to third. That mattered slightly less when reliever George Soriano entered the game to load the bases by hitting the first batter he faced.

Soriano would later walk a runner in.

But it was an out sandwiched in between that Herrera saved.

That avoided a bigger mess for the Cardinals.

Pallante got a leadoff groundout to start the sixth before walking No. 2 hitter Ben Rice. That put a series of events in motion that would knock Pallante from the game without allowing a hit in the inning. The right-hander spiked a wild pitch that carried to Herrera’s right. The catcher scrambled to get the ball — and then chose to throw off balance and wildly to second base. Pallante’s wild pitch that gave Rice second base was aggravated by Herrera’s wild throw to center field that allowed Rice to reach third.

When Luis Garcia Jr. earned an 11-pitch walk from Pallante to put runners at the corners and the potential tying run at the plate, Pallante’s evening was over.

Soriano entered and plunked Heliot Ramos to load the bases.

The next batter, left-handed-hitter Spencer Jones took what he thought was a ball and what home-plate umpire Cory Blaser called a ball. The full-count pitch on the upper corner of the strike zone would have put Spencer on base with a walk and forced home a run. Herrera challenged the call, and as Spencer started walking toward first the Automated Ball Strike (ABS) system showed that the pitch caught the edge of the zone.

There would be no walk, only an ABS-called third strike.

That proved essential when Soriano walked to the next batter, Jazz Chisholm Jr., to force home the run didn’t score at the end of Spencer’s at-bat. Herrera’s challenge may have saved a run or more, and that one run was all the Yankees would get in the inning.

Doubling up on doubles

A pair of doubles pushed the Cardinals into the lead with their first runs since Monday’s bonanza of power.

The Cardinals’ lineup got whiplash going from Monday’s five-homer, 13-run binge to Tuesday’s shutout. For the first three innings of the series finale, the Cardinals appeared closer to Tuesday than Monday. A lineup drained of Jordan Walker (sore knee), Masyn Winn (rest), and Lars Nootbaar (trade), mustered only two baserunners in the first two innings against Yankees starter Will Warren.

Alec Burleson’s double in the fourth offered a hint of what was to come.

In the fifth, the bottom of the line primed the bases. A leadoff single by Blaze Jordan eventually led to two runners on base after designated hitter Jimmy Crooks’ single.

Once they had the top of the order back up, the Cardinals capitalized.

Wetherholt doubled to center field to score Crooks and Bryan Torres for a 2-0 lead. Herrera followed with a blistering liner to dead center that hopped over the wall for a rulebook double. Wetherholt scored for the 3-0 lead.

One of the curiosities of the Cardinals’ season has been a decided lack of doubles. They entered the game with the fourth-fewest in the majors. In the National League, only the Phillies (154) and Mets (143) had fewer than the Cardinals’ 157. The three doubles in the span of two innings on Wednesday closed the gap between the teams ahead of the Cardinals but didn’t catch them. It’s the absence of doubles that is at the core of the Cardinals’ low slugging percentage.

And yet, doubles created a lasting lead.

Pallante takes what’s left

Emerging as the Cardinals’ most consistent starter as well as their best starter, Pallante had 11 swings and misses through the early innings of his start Wednesday.

The Yankees stuffed their lineup with left-handed batters to face the right-handed Pallante. That used to be a counterintuitive mistake for opponents because of how left-handed batters struggled against Pallante’s unusual fastball. In the past few years, as lefties leaguewide adjusted their approach to the right-hander, they’ve become more successful. And this season, left-handed batters have hit .270 against Pallante while right-handed batters hit .215.

Left-handed batters slug .411 off the starter to a right-handed batter’s .308.

The first three batters in the Yankees lineup were left-handed and six of the first seven Pallante faced were left-handed. His first time through the Yankees’ lineup, he retired them all. The only Yankee to get a hit in the first eight batters was Ramos, a right-handed hitter. Pallante limited the Yankees to two hits through four innings and four baserunners total through five.

When the Cardinals took a 3-0 lead, Pallante pitched a scoreless bottom of the fifth with help from a double play that he started by fielding a ground ball.

It came from a left-handed batter.

©2026 STLtoday.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.