(Busch Stadium) Suffice to say, the night did not go as planned for St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Mike Mayers. The 24-year old lasted just 1.1 innings and allowed 9 runs in his Major League debut.

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“I thought I did a pretty good job the first two batters and then it just snowballed on me,” said Mayers afterwards about controlling his emotions in the difficult situation. “I felt like that was probably the hardest part–just to slow the game down. Definitely need to do a much better job of that.”

“He was amped up for sure,” agreed Mike Matheny. “Every kid that’s picked up a baseball, that’s their dream to be in that kind of situation. I thought he had pretty good composure to him overall. He was in the zone a good bit. He was so amped up, maybe over-throwing his off-speed pitches a little bit where he couldn’t put guys away. He’d get into some pretty good counts and then foul ball after foul ball and then tries to get too fine and got a little trouble.”

The first five batters Mayers faced reached base safely–including a grand slam by Adrian Gonzalez. A strikeout and ground out followed, which raised hope the inning would be coming to a close. However, a walk and then a 2-RBI single from pitcher Scott Kazmir followed before lead-off hitter Chase Utley grounded out to finish the frame.

The 2nd inning didn’t fair much better as the first two batters reached base and Howie Kendrick then hit a 2-run homer. Mayers left the game having thrown 62 pitches.

St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Seth Maness“We were in survival mode at that point,” said Matheny. “Just trying to figure out if we were going to be able to get through it. Fortunately, Seth was very good for us–just like Tyler was last time we got into a little bit of a spot. The rest of the guys came in, we used a couple pitchers we didn’t necessarily want to use but they figured out how to get us through it. Now just keep moving forward.”

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Seth Maness delivered a career-best 3.2 innings, yielding only three hits.

“It was one of those things, in the moment, knew we were short down there and needed to get some innings,” said Maness. “That’s part of the game. Some guys have to step up at certain points of the year and luckily I was able to do that tonight.”

The temperature was still near 100 degrees when the game began, which didn’t make the task any easier.

“I think I was slowly depleting,” said Maness when asked if he got a second wind. “I was running out of gas–it was hot out there. Was just taking it one out at a time.”

Trevor Rosenthal, Matt Bowman, and Seung Hwan Oh followed to finish the rest of the game.

As for Mayers, the 9 runs allowed was the most by a Cardinals starting pitcher in their MLB debut since Mike Busby gave up 13 runs to Atlanta in 1996 and the four outs was the shortest outing for a starter since Memo Luna threw 0.2 innings in his MLB debut against Cincinnati in 1954.

“Had a lot of family and friends here, I really appreciate all their support–the guys in the clubhouse have been great to me,” said Mayers, who was able to gather some perspective. “I’m sure as the days go long, you don’t have that feeling in your gut as much and start to lose that a little bit. Start to think back, wow that was an awesome once-in-a-lifetime experience, will never happen again. At the same time, it’s good to have that feeling in your gut because tomorrow, I’m going to go back to work and make sure I get better.”

photo credit: Bill Greenblatt/UPI

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