DeRosa: Small bright spot on an otherwise dismal day


On a night when starting pitcher Todd Wellemeyer was once again ineffective, the St. Louis Cardinals took their second consecutive loss to the Astros Tuesday night in Houston.

The ugly 11-6 loss dropped the still-hanging-onto-first-place Cards to 51-45 on the season. Their National League Central Division lead remains at two games though their six games over .500 (.539) mark is the poorest division-leading record in MLB.

The minor league system didn’t do much better on Tuesday. One has to drop all the way down to the New York-Penn League to find a victorious Cardinals club. In fact, Batavia was the only US-based affiliate to earn a win.

Leave it to Tom Orf to find a small nugget of positiveness to come out of a most forgettable day.

In the St. Louis game, Mark DeRosa’s bat awakened with a pair of home runs, his first as a Cardinal. The player brought in to help jumpstart the offense still has a lot of ground to make up after having spent most of the last month on the disabled list.

DeRosa joined some very select company in collecting his first two St. Louis home runs in the same game. It was only the seventh time this occurred in team history. The list includes one Hall of Famer, Frankie Frisch, and a pair of Reggies – Smith and Sanders.

First two Cardinals home runs in the same game – team history

Mark DeRosa 7-21-2009
Reggie Sanders 4-9-2004
Tino Martinez 5-1-2002
Darren Bragg 4-14-1999
Buddy Bradford 7-3-1975
Reggie Smith 4-15-1974
Frankie Frisch 4-30-1927