The St. Louis Cardinals are hitting their stride on both sides of the ball as the calendar flipped to May. With Sonny Gray on the mound in Wednesday’s series finale, the de facto number one of the rotation sliced through the Pirates lineup for a dominant performance to seal the series sweep. The win was the Cardinals’ fifth in a row and moved them back to an even .500 winning percentage on the year.

A day after a shutdown performance by Matthew Liberatore, Gray (4-3) did one better, throwing seven shutout innings with eight strikeouts and only allowed two harmless singles on the day. Wednesday’s matinee looked like another pitcher’s duel right out of the gate as both starters traded zeroes for the game’s first two-and-a-half innings. In the third, though, the Cardinals took advantage of a one-out walk to speedster Victor Scott II.

With Lars Nootbaar at the plate, Scott took off on a 1-1 pitch and Nootbaar smoked the fastball 96.8mph for a single. In a scoreless game without many opportunities to score at this point, third base coach Pop Warner waved Scott around third who beat the high throw home for the first run of the game. Any other player would have most likely been held up at third but he made it to home in just 9.28 seconds, the sixth fastest time by any player in the league this season. Shortstop Masyn Winn, back in the lineup for the first time since leaving the doubleheader with an ankle sprain, knocked in Nootbaar with a well-placed double to right field.

From there, it was all Gray. The veteran righty cruised through his outing with minimal traffic and finished his day with an efficient 89 pitches. He received more support in the fifth on yet another Winn double, driving in Scott who had to again motor in all the way from first making the score 3-0.

After Steven Matz and Gordon Graceffo combined for the victory in last night’s win, manager Oli Marmol had his best weapons back in action before Thursday’s off day. Marmol called upon Kyle Leahy for the eighth and, despite two singles, kept the Pirates off the board with some help on a nice defensive play from second baseman Brendan Donovan. The Cardinals had a chance to add some insurance in the bottom of the inning and after Nolan Gorman struck out, Jordan Walker cashed in two more runs with a single to make the score 5-0 going into the ninth.

Closer Ryan Helsley was warmed and ready to come in for the save but after throwing three times in the past five game, Marmol opted to sit Helsley in a non-save situation and brought in Chris Roycroft, who has only thrown two-thirds of an inning since being recalled from Memphis. Roycroft set the Pirates down in order, notching a strikeout, to clinch the win, the series sweep, and to bring the Cardinals back to .500 on the year.