Major League Baseball
BOXSCORE | RECAP
St. Louis 9, Pittsburgh 2
When: 12:35 PM ET, Thursday, September 23, 2010
Where: PNC Park, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Temperature: 81°
Umpires: Home - James Hoye, 1B - Lazaro Diaz, 2B - Wally Bell, 3B - John Hirschbeck
Attendance: 15802

Albert Pujols hit his 40th and 41st homers of the season and Dan Descalso added three hits and two RBIs as the St. Louis Cardinals avoided a sweep with a 9-2 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates on Thursday.

Matt Holliday added an RBI and scored two runs and Nick Stavinoha doubled in a run for the Cardinals, who snapped a three-game slide and improved to just 5-20 against sub-.500 teams since August 11.

After failing to generate much offense against Paul Maholm and Charlie Morton in the first two games of the series, Pujols sparked a four-run rally against Brian Burres (3-4) with his 40th blast of the season in the third - a two-run shot. Stavinoha added his RBI double and Descalso doubled in a run later in the frame.

St. Louis kept the pressure on Burres in the fourth, adding two more runs on Holliday’s RBI single and stealing one when Pujols scored on a wild pitch.

The Cardinals added another run in the fifth and two more in the sixth, including Pujols’ solo blast.

Jeff Suppan (2-7) kept it together for St. Louis on the mound, allowing one run on four hits while walking two and striking out two in five innings.

Top Game Performances
Starting Pitchers
St. Louis   Pittsburgh
Jeff Suppan Player Brian Burres
Win W/L Loss
5.0 IP 2.1
2 Strikeouts 1
4 Hits 6
1.80 ERA 15.43
Hitting
St. Louis   Pittsburgh
Daniel Descalso Player Ronny Cedeno
4 Hits 2
2 RBI 0
0 HR 0
5 TB 2
.800 Avg .667
Team Stats Summary
 
Team Hits HR TB Avg LOB K RBI BB SB Errors
St. Louis 15 2 24 .375 20 3 8 5 1 1
Pittsburgh 8 0 9 .258 15 6 2 3 1 0
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