Back at .500 and sitting seven games out of a Wild Card spot, the Cardinals were dealt another tough hand on Saturday afternoon, held to just three hits in a 7-2 loss to the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre.
Adding injury to insult, Nolan Arenado starred in one the most bizarre scenes of this unusual Cardinals season. It was the bottom of the eighth, and Arenado was minding his own business at third.
“A bee flew near my ear, I wiped it with my glove and I thought it was gone,” Arenado said. “I put my glove on — got stung. It was stuck in my glove and it stung me [on] my pinky.”
In a bit of good news, Arenado says he’s fine, nothing that a Benadryl can’t fix. Still, this was a painful first for the 12-year veteran.
Some misfortune is avoidable, some of it is flat-out strange.
“Only in 2024, man,” said Arenado. “This year is — I don’t know how to describe it. … 2024 has been a trip.”
This wild ride of a season continued with a loss that brought the Cards back to square one, with a 74-74 record and very little time to make up the deficit. No one is waving the white flag yet, but the tone seems to be slowly shifting.
“We’ve got 14 games left,” said Arenado. “You just try to end the year strong and compete. I’m not really looking at the standings, not too worried about it. [We’ll] just try to take care of business, and we’ll see where we end up. Obviously, we dug ourselves a hole, and we need [other] teams to play bad for us to get to where we want to go. So at the end of the day, just focus on ourselves, try to end the year strong. That’s it.”
Jordan Walker did his part in the third inning, launching a solo homer that left his bat at 104 mph and traveled a Statcast-projected 397 feet to give the Cards an early lead. But that was the one true moment of impact for the offense.
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