Carpenter homers twice, Cardinals win on Garcia’s walk

From St. Louis, the Rockies will return home for a three-game set against the Seattle Mariners, before hitting the road again for a long, tough east coast road trip.

Colorado Rockies starting pitcher Kyle Kendrick throws during the first inning of a baseball game against the St. Louis Cardinals, Friday, July 31, 2015, in St. Louis.

Axford (3-5) took his third loss in his last four outings.

“We battled really well offensively”, Rockies manager Walt Weiss said. “Physically he’s fine. Just the command, particularly with the fastball. That’s the important thing”, said Matt Carpenter, summing up an uncharacteristic game for the home team.

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t comfortable there”, Carpenter said. “Everything was solid. Everything was good”. I get you want a fast runner at third in case there’s a force at home, and Wong gets thrown out, but why not just wait until that actually happens? I know we talk about the importance of putting your best reliever in the highest leverage situations, but there’s definitely value in having that lights out closer. “Right now, I’m trying to chew over a lot of it”. Carpenter is a blistering 6-for-9 with five RBIs and as many runs scored in the series, but his fortunes are decidedly different when facing Saturday starter Jorge De La Rosa – going 0-for-9 with four strikeouts. The multi-homer game and 4 runs scored are career highs for Carpenter as he also established a new single-season best 12 bombs. Side note. I don’t expect the Cardinals and GM John Mozeliak to do much else today on the trade front.

Cardinals starter Carlos Martinez gave up five runs on 10 hits in five innings.

The Cardinals’ Carlos Villanueva (4-3) gets the win.

In the first two games of the series, the Cardinals had put up a total of 16 runs.

St. Louis wraps up the week hosting the Colorado Rockies this weekend. Seth Maness gave up a home run in the sixth to Nick Hundley to re-tie the game 6-6. The Rockies capitalized on a pair of throwing errors by Kevin Siegrist to snap that tie with two runs in the eighth. Nolan Arenado leads the NL with 78 RBI while DJ LeMahieu is fifth in the NL with a. 335 batting average and Charlie Blackmon is fourth in the Senior Circuit with 62 runs.

As for Martinez getting raging about LeMahieu’s hit through the box, Dickerson said: “You can’t expect for us not to go up there and swing the bat”.

After intentionally passing Jason Heyward, the Rockies opted for a 5-man infield hoping to get the Cardinal catcher to ground into a twin killing.

The St. Louis Cardinals are going to need some offense with seven-time All-Star Matt Holliday (quad strain) expected to be sidelined for an extended period of time.

The Cardinals’ Brandon Moss, recently acquired in a trade with Cleveland, hits a walkoff single to drive in the winning run during the ninth inning of the Cards’ win over the Colorado Rockies on Sunday at Busch Stadium. When the inning ended, more words were exchanged.

“It wasn’t an accident”, LeMahieu said. “I hit the ball back at him the at-bat before and I guess he thought I tried to hit it back at him or something”.