ST. LOUIS — Not that they were concerned about the various possibilities, but the Cardinals took the most direct route available to baseball’s postseason Sunday at Busch Stadium. They won their game.
With Harrison Bader tripling to ignite a four-run third inning and hitting a 425-foot homer into Big Mac Land in the fourth, the Cardinals jumped on the Milwaukee Brewers early as they posted a 5-2 victory in the final game of the regular season.
Their next destination, as the second-place team in the National League Central Division, will not be to Detroit for a makeup game or two on Monday. It will be to San Diego for the start of a wild-card round, two-out-of-three playoff series to start on Wednesday. All the games will be played in San Diego.
The Brewers’ next destination is not home but to Los Angeles. Thanks to both Philadelphia and San Francisco losing, the Brewers became the final wild-card team in the NL derby and first team to finish under .500 (29-31) to make baseball’s postseason, which has expanded to 16 teams this year for the first time.
Four Cardinals pitchers, beginning with Austin Gomber (four innings), held the Brewers to five with Alex Reyes locking up his first save in four years by recording the final five outs.
To make the playoff field, the Cardinals had to fight off a coronavirus outbreak that cost them 10 players and several staffers at various points in the regular season and shut them down for 17 days from playing games. They finished the season at 30-28 and they made some history as Yadier Molina bounced into a 5-4-3 triple play to end the eighth inning.
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