JJ Wetherholt Goes Off in Cardinals Thriller: Two Homers and a Highlight-Reel Catch in Stunning Win

ST. LOUIS — Some nights, a baseball game just has everything. Tuesday at Busch Stadium was one of those nights.

Cardinals rookie JJ Wetherholt, just 23 years old, turned in a performance that St. Louis fans will be talking about for a long time. He hit two home runs, made the defensive play of the game — and possibly the season — and helped the Cardinals complete a remarkable comeback to beat the Cleveland Guardians 6-5 in 10 innings.

The final result was a 10th-inning sacrifice fly from Nathan Church that sent the downtown St. Louis skyline alight with fireworks. But it was Wetherholt who set the tone all night long.

Both of his home runs came off left-handed pitchers. Both came on the first pitch of his at-bat. And both could not have been more different in nature.

The first was a dead-pull solo shot in the third inning that cleared the right-center wall. The second, in the eighth, was a two-run blast drilled to the opposite field. Even Wetherholt himself preferred the second one.

"Lefties sometimes can clean up my direction because I am trying to stay inside the ball," Wetherholt said. "I was really happy that I went the other way because I have really not done that since being here. Driving balls to the opposite field is something for me that if things are not going well, it is usually because I am not hitting the ball the other way. So that one felt better than the pull-side homer, to be honest."

That kind of self-awareness from a 23-year-old in his rookie year is notable. Even more remarkable: Wetherholt admitted he did not even know the score when he stepped up for that eighth-inning at-bat.

"Going into that at bat I honestly do not even think I knew the score," he confessed. "And that is usually when stuff like that happens because when you know the score you kind of let the moment get too big. Then, when I am rounding the bases I am like, Oh shoot, now it is a close game! But it was definitely a good feeling."

Wetherholt's two-homer night might have been forgotten amid the chaos of the finish were it not for the defensive gem he turned in between them. In the fifth inning, with the game still tied, he somehow elevated his 5-foot-9 frame high enough to snag a 104-mph liner off the bat of Cleveland's Bryan Rocchio.

"I was smiling because Masyn was yelling at me," Wetherholt said, laughing. "When I do something cool, I will show emotion in certain situations and sometimes I will just keep a keen face. But that is hard to do when Masyn is screaming and hyping you up."

The Cardinals needed every bit of Wetherholt's heroics because the game seemed destined to slip away. Down 5-4 in the ninth with two outs and nobody on, they got a reprieve when Guardians second baseman Juan Brito booted a ground ball. Masyn Winn reached, moved to third on a wild pitch, and Yohel Pozo delivered a clutch two-out double to right-center to tie it.

"I calmed myself to see what the game is telling me to do," said Pozo, who had six hits and seven RBI as a pinch-hitter for the Cardinals last season.

Pozo said the approach has been the same all year: compete every night. "We are a young team but we are hungry and we want to win," he said.

And win they did. Their fourth extra-inning victory of the season improved the Cardinals to 4-0 in games that go past the ninth. With Wetherholt leading the way, the future in St. Louis looks very bright.