After coming back from a major deficit early, St. Louis Cardinals ultimately lost 10-9 to the Philadelphia Phillies on Thursday night. The loss ends a three-game winning streak for the Cardinals and drops the team out of first place in the NL Central after Cincinnati won a sixth consecutive game today.
After trailing 6-0 through two innings, the Cardinals came back to tie the game, 7-7, after five innings of play, but the bullpen couldn't hang on. In the top of the sixth inning, the Phillies strung together four hits on Cardinals reliever Fernando Salas to take a 9-7 advantage.
A homer by David Freese in the seventh inning, his tenth of the season, brought the score to 9-8, but the Phillies matched that homer with one of their own in the eighth inning. After Ty Wigginton's homer expanding Philadelphia's lead to 10-8, the Cardinals had the game-tying run at second base in the bottom of the eighth, but Carlos Beltran struck out to end the inning.
Both Beltran and Yadier Molina finished the game with three hits apiece, with Rafael Furcal and Freese adding two hits apiece on their own. For the Phillies, Placido Polanco, Carlos Ruiz, Freddy Galvis and Wigginton all had three hits apiece as part of an 18-hit effort by the team.
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