LOS ANGELES — The count was 3-2. The automatic runner stood on third. Three runs separated the Cardinals from the Dodgers, and Shohei Ohtani, the highest-paid player in major league history, had already struck out three times. He struck out a fourth.
That is how the St. Louis Cardinals took a series from the defending World Series champions at Chavez Ravine. The Cardinals won 8-6 in ten innings Wednesday night, a night after winning 13-8. They outscored Los Angeles 21-14 across 19 innings and flew out of Southern California with a series win that neither their record nor their September position suggested was coming.
The Cardinals are 70-70. They have played exactly .500 ball for 140 games and nobody considered them a serious team. That was fair. But fair has a short shelf life at Dodger Stadium when your young players are hitting home runs and the best offensive player in the sport is striking out four consecutive times for the first time in his entire season.
Thomas Saggese, 24 years old and recently recalled after a difficult stretch in the minors, drove in three runs Wednesday on a home run. He had hit two home runs the night before in the series opener. Five home runs in two nights against a rotation that added Tarik Skubal at the deadline is not coincidence. It is a young hitter deciding that the opposition’s reputation has no bearing on his at-bats. Saggese arrived in Los Angeles to be evaluated for 2027, and spent two nights making that evaluation harder to defer.
Leo Bernal, a catcher recently brought up to fill a roster need, hit the first home run of his major league career in the seventh inning. Joshua Báez delivered a two-run double in the tenth to put St. Louis ahead for good. The Dodgers, who led 5-2 through six innings while Yoshinobu Yamamoto struck out eight batters across seven innings, gave up two in the seventh, one in the eighth, and three in the tenth.
Tanner Scott allowed the tying run in the eighth. From that point, the Cardinals’ young roster took over and the Dodgers were left trying to produce offense around an Ohtani whose bat has gone quiet.
According to Yahoo Sports, manager Dave Roberts confirmed after the loss that Ohtani is managing left knee and bicep issues that have affected his swing. The 0-for-4 night with four strikeouts was, Roberts said, visible to anyone watching. Ohtani went hitless in the series opener Tuesday as well. He is not searching for his swing in the ordinary sense. He is playing through a body that is telling him things it did not tell him in April, and the results are confirming what his manager said out loud.
The fourth strikeout, swinging through a full-count pitch in the tenth with an automatic runner on third and the Dodgers three runs down, finished the night. It was the first time Ohtani had struck out four consecutive times all season.
Freddie Freeman had kept the game reachable in the first inning. Back from a health scare that had raised questions about his September availability, Freeman hit a 416-foot three-run drive to center, snapping a 47-game homerless drought and scoring Ohtani and Tommy Edman. Mookie Betts added a two-run home run in the sixth. With Yamamoto pitching well and Freeman delivering in the first, the Dodgers should have held on. They did not.
Sports Illustrated noted the Cardinals won despite Yamamoto’s eight-strikeout performance, meaning they earned this series against a Dodger rotation that was doing its job. Saggese’s five home runs in two games is the kind of evidence a front office cannot fully account for in advance. The league has not adjusted to him yet, and some portion of what he did this week will not repeat at the same frequency. What will not disappear is the fact that he did it.
The Cardinals leave Los Angeles at 70-70 with 22 games to play. That is not a postseason position. It is, depending on how the final month resolves, an argument that is still alive. They will not be remembered for this series unless September gives them further cause.
For the Dodgers, the series loss matters less than what happened in the tenth inning. That image is the real question the front office is sitting with tonight. It is not a question about the Cardinals.
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