St. Louis, Mo. — The Tigers were down to their last strike in the ninth inning, one strike away from wasting a brilliant pitching performance by rookie lefty Tarik Skubal.
Trailing 2-1 with two outs in the ninth, Miguel Cabrera walked off the bench and lined a double to right field off Cardinals closer Alex Reyes. The Tigers didn’t have another bench player to pinch-run for him, which seemed ominous at the time.
Harold Castro, the third straight pinch-hitter used by manager AJ Hinch in the ninth, got behind in the count 1-2. First he lined a ball just foul down the left field line. But on the next pitch, he drilled a single up the middle and Cabrera scored without a play at the plate — tie game.
BOXSCORE: Cardinals 3, Tigers 2 (10 innings)
It was a repeat of Castro’s two-strike, game-tying pinch-hit in Toronto on Sunday. Only this time the Tigers didn’t complete the comeback.
Tommy Edman was the free runner for the Cardinals in the bottom of the 10th and with one out, he stole third base against reliever Michael Fulmer and catcher Grayson Greiner.
With the bases loaded, Fulmer got Paul DeJong to hit a ground ball into the drawn-in infield. Second baseman Willi Castro threw home to force out Edman for the second out.
Lars Nootbaar then drove a single to right, giving the Cardinals a 3-2 win at Busch Stadium.
Castro wasn’t as clutch on the bases as he was at the plate. He was the free runner to start the 10th inning — Derek Hill made that last out in the ninth, but was out of the game in a double-switch with the pitcher. Jonathan Schoop, who had three hits on the day, hit a long line drive to right field.
Inexplicably, Castro didn’t tag and try to advance to third with one out. He ended up being stranded.
Until the ninth, though, the story was Skubal. He dominated eight-ninths of the Cardinals batting order in five impressive innings in the intense heat Wednesday afternoon.
The first six outs he recorded were strikeouts. He punched out nine through four innings. He finished with 10 strikeouts, getting 17 misses on 47 swings — 11 of those with his four-seam and two-seam fastballs, which was zipping in on an average clip of 95.5 mph, up a full mph on his season average.
The one-ninth of the Cardinals lineup that got him, though, was named Paul Goldschmidt. And he was the reason the Tigers trained 2-1 in the ninth.
Goldschmidt ambushed maybe the one pedestrian fastball Skubal threw all game, a first-pitch 93-mph four-seamer in the first inning and bombed it 427 feet to left field.
In the third inning, Skubal got ahead of Goldschmidt with a change-up and then flipped a 74-mph knuckle-curve on the outside part of the plate. Goldschmidt waited on it just long enough to punch it into the right-field seats.
Impressive hitting by a decorated hitter who now has 21 home runs on the season. The rest of the Cardinals lineup was 1 for 13 against Skubal.
Goldschmidt came up with two on and two out in the fifth. It would be the last batter of the day for Skubal and he finally got him. Staying mostly with 96- and 97-mph heaters — matching the temperature on the field — he got him to pop up to first ending a seven-pitch fight.
It was the second double-digit strikeout performance by Skubal this year, making him just the third rookie in baseball to do that (Triston McKenzie and Alek Manoah). He’s two strikeouts away from tying Spencer Turnbull’s Tigers rookie record of 146 strikeouts. He’s also the only rookie pitcher in franchise history to post at least four strikeouts in 19 straight outings.
The Tigers, though, didn’t give him much offensive support. They couldn’t deliver any kind of scoring blow against struggling but savvy veteran lefty Jon Lester. Through three innings, they put six runners on base without cashing one in.
They finally nicked him in the fifth, on a two-out double by Hill and an RBI single by Schoop.
Relivers Alex Lange, Joe Jimenez and Jose Cisnero kept a one-run game through eight innings, but the Tigers offense never fired.
Jeimer Candelario led off the sixth with his 34th double of the season and was stranded at third. Schoop who had three hits, doubled to lead off the eighth and never moved.
chris.mccosky@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @cmccosky