Padres 9 - 5 Cardinals
Final
  for this game

Cards' Miller faces welcome foe in Padres

Aug 16, 2014 - 3:04 PM (SportsNetwork.com) - The bad news for St. Louis Cardinals hurler Shelby Miller is that he has just one victory over his last 11 starts.

The good news is that win came against the San Diego Padres, who he faces on Saturday night in the third contest of a four-game series in St. Louis.

Miller is coming off a setback to Miami on Monday in which he gave up five runs on eight hits over five innings. He struck out five, but yielded a pair of homers.

That dropped the 23-year-old righty to 8-9 with a 4.17 earned run average on the year.

Miller, though, did beat San Diego on July 31 with six innings of two-run ball. Both runs he allowed came on solo homers in the second frame, hit by Jed Gyorko and Will Venable.

In three previous meetings with San Diego over his career, including two starts, Miller is 1-1 with a 4.30 ERA.

San Diego rookie Jesse Hahn gets his second crack at the Cardinals, having bested them on July 30. Hahn held St. Louis to a run on four hits and two walks over seven frames of a 12-1 triumph.

The 25-year-old is winless in his past two starts after winning three in a row, yielding three runs in each outing and walking a total of seven.

Hahn lost 3-1 at Minnesota on Aug. 5, then did not factor into a 4-3 win over Colorado on Monday. The righty lasted five innings and is 7-3 on the year with a 2.52 ERA.

The Cardinals have won the first two games of this series, riding Lance Lynn's six strong innings to a 4-2 win on Friday night. Lynn yielded one run to win his 13th game of the campaign.

"Another good night of using his fastball, the two-seam, four-seam," Cardinals manager Mike Matheny said of Lynn. "I saw some good breaking balls too. He has a real nice feel for all of his pitches right now."

Matt Adams and Jhonny Peralta each had a pair of hits and an RBI for the Cardinals, who posted their third straight win and remained two games behind Milwaukee for first place in the NL Central.

Venable doubled in San Diego's first run in the fifth inning and pinch-hitter Yasmani Grandal hit a two-out homer off Pat Neshek in the ninth.

Tyson Ross loaded the bases on walks in the first inning and ended up yielding five hits and three runs over six frames to suffer his first loss since July 13 at Dodger Stadium. The right-hander had been 4-0 over a five-start span.

"It's kind of hard when you shoot yourself in the foot like that," Ross said of the first inning. "Innings two through six were a lot better than the first one."

The Padres have lost back-to-back contests since a five-game winning streak.

San Diego took two of three from the Cards in late July.






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