During an enjoyable three-game visit to Kansas City, patience was more than just a virtue for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Patience was also key in producing 41 hits, 30 runs and a three-game sweep of the shell-shocked Royals, who had won two out of three the previous weekend in St. Louis.

“Guys aren’t chasing many pitches out of the (strike) zone,” said manager Mike Matheny. “That’s kind of what’s going on here.”

In heaping three days of abuse upon KC pitchers, the heavy-hitting Cardinals rapped out 17 hits and 11 runs on Friday and 16 hits and eight runs on Saturday before completing their first sweep in Kansas City since 2009 with an 11-8 victory on Sunday.

The plate-patient Cardinals hitters drew nine walks on Sunday, six from starter Jonathan Sanchez and three from loser Tim Collins.

“When you set in to play these games, you want the opposition to beat you,” said Royals manager Ned Yost. “When you are walking guys and making errors, you are actually beating yourself.”

Carlos Beltran had a three-run home run and Matt Holliday and Allen Craig each drove in two runs for the Cardinals, who had scored just eleven runs their three previous games.

“We know we’re a good offensive team that’s going to be able to score runs. It’s good to see guys getting healthy and swinging the bat a lot better,” said Beltran.

Beltran gave the Cardinals an early lead in the first, lining Sanchez’s 0-2 pitch 389 feet over the fence for his 20th home run after Craig doubled and Holliday walked.

Beltran is tied with Milwaukee’s Ryan Braun for the NL lead. The three RBIs boosted his total to 56, one more than league-leader Andre Ethier had prior to the Dodgers’ game at the Angels. For the three-game series between the state rivals, Beltran had five hits and eight RBIs.

He’s also one homer shy of 200 in the National League. He has 322 overall.

“I don’t really focus on numbers,” he said. “I do look at my numbers at the end of the year and decide what type of year I have. Right now, we have a lot of baseball to play. I just need to focus and help this team win as many ballgames as we can.”

Mike Moustakas had two home runs for the Royals while Jeff Francoeur had one.

Moustakas, the second overall pick in the 2007 draft, hit a two-run, 442-foot shot off Lance Lynn in the first inning and led off the fourth with a 387-foot shot for his first multihomer game. He also had a single and three RBIs.

“I just got some good pitches to hit today and I didn’t miss them,” Moustakas said.

Lynn agreed.

“I made mistakes and both the guys who hit them are good hitters,” he said. “Moustakas is a great young power hitter and I threw him two fastballs over the plate and he hit them. Then I hung a breaking ball to Francoeur. You’ve got to make better pitches to those guys.”

In the second, Holiday hit an RBI double that that also put Craig on third, allowing him to make it 5-2 when Sanchez uncorked a wild pitch.

With the Cardinals leading 7-6 in the eighth, Collins (4-2) intentionally walked Rafael Furcal, loading the bases with one out. Craig then lined a two-run single into center and Daniel Descalo went from first to third when Jarrod Dyson bobbled the ball for an error. Holliday’s sacrifice fly made it 11-6. Collins went 1 2/3 innings and was charged with five runs, four earned, on three hits and three walks.

Victor Marte (1-1) got two outs in the sixth and faced one batter in the seventh for the win.

Cardinals starter Lynn, bidding to move into a tie for the NL lead with his 11th victory, went 5 1/3 innings and gave up nine hits and six runs, including three home runs. He had allowed only five home runs total before Sunday.

Moments after Francoeur’s solo homer in the fourth made it 5-4, Brayan an Pena hit a line shot right off the back of the 6-foot-5 right-hander for a single. Lynn continued after tossing a few test pitches, and one out later gave up Dyson’s RBI triple that tied it 5-all.

“I’m fine,” said Lynn. “It just grazed my back.”

Yadier Molina’s home run made it 6-5 in the sixth. In the seventh, Holliday walked, stole second and made it 7-6 on David Freeze’s RBI single. Billy Butler had a two-run home run for KC in the ninth.

Sanchez gave up only four hits in 5 2/3 innings but walked six, allowed two home runs and threw a wild pitch while allowing six runs.

— Associated Press —

Cardinals manager Mike Matheny is under no illusions that his team will be able to put up the kind of offense it has the first two games of its three-game series against Kansas City all the time.

Might as well take advantage of it while it’s happening, though.

Matt Holliday had four hits and drove in a pair of runs, Allen Craig belted a two-run homer and finished with three RBIs, and Adam Wainwright enjoyed all that run support while shutting down the Kansas City Royals in an 8-2 victory on Saturday.

”That’s the way it’s mean to be,” Matheny said. ”We know this isn’t the kind of offense you produce every night, but it gives you a lot of confidence.”

The Cardinals came into the series scuffling on offense, but they’ve broken out of it in style while taking the first two games. They matched a season high with 17 hits on Friday night en route to an 11-4 victory, and were nearly as proficient at the plate during the Saturday matinee.

All to the delight of a crowd of 37,240 that was primarily dressed in red.

”When you have a lineup like we have, just keep us in the game,” said Wainwright (6-7), who allowed two runs on four hits and two walks over seven sharp innings.

”That was a pretty dominant outing,” Matheny said. ”You can tell he’s in a good place.”

The Cardinals certainly feel like they’re in a good place in Kansas City, where they improved to 26-15 in franchise history, and took a 3-2 lead in the season series.

”Everyone’s working their tail off,” Royals manager Ned Yost said. ”They’re doing what they need to do in terms of their work and preparation. They just need to take it to the field.”

St. Louis started its offensive onslaught in the third inning against Luis Mendoza (2-4), when Rafael Furcal worked a two-out walk and back-to-back singles by Jon Jay and Holliday made it 1-0.

Mendoza eventually escaped the jam, but everything fell apart in the fifth.

Daniel Descalso started a run of five straight singles in the fifth for St. Louis, and RBI base hits by Jay and Holliday knocked Mendoza from the game. Kelvin Herrera came in and promptly gave up another RBI single to Carlos Beltran, staking the Cardinals to a 4-0 lead.

Furcal added another run with a single in the sixth, and even though Kansas City got two back in the bottom half on Alex Gordon’s run-scoring triple and Yuniesky Betancourt’s RBI groundout, St. Louis wasted little time in matching them with two more runs in the seventh inning.

That’s when Holliday doubled off reliever Greg Holland, and Craig belted a full-count pitch over the bullpen in left field for his ninth homer of the season.

”They were pitching me tough, a lot of sliders and fastballs off the plate,” Craig said. ”I just tried to put the barrel of the bat on it, and when you do that good things happen.”

All the offense sure took the pressure off Wainwright.

The former 20-game winner spent most of the afternoon looking like the guy who finished second in the 2010 Cy Young voting – before he needed season-ending Tommy John surgery last February.

Wainwright erased Gordon’s bunt single in the first by inducing a double play, and then set Kansas City down in order the next two innings. He didn’t allow a runner to reach second base until giving up two runs in the sixth, but he bounced back to work a scoreless seventh inning.

”I didn’t really have great stuff, I just tried to mix and keep them off balance,” Wainwright said. ”I knew if I kept making pitches, I had a big lead.”

— Associated Press —

Carlos Beltran spent time chatting with some old friends Friday night and reminiscing about his days playing for the Kansas City Royals.

Then he made everyone at Kauffman Stadium remember what he looked like as a youngster.

Beltran hit two-run doubles his first two times at the plate, leading a St. Louis Cardinals offense that matched a season high with 17 hits to an 11-4 victory over their I-70 rivals.

”You know what? It was good to be back,” said Beltran, who was playing in Kansas City for the first time since the Royals traded him in 2004. ”But it was better to put a good couple of swings together and get some runs.”

David Freese and Tyler Greene added two RBIs each for St. Louis, and everybody in the starting lineup had a hit before the fourth inning ended. Jon Jay returned from the disabled list to go 1 for 5 and score twice, and Matt Carpenter came off the DL to go 2 for 4 with an RBI.

It was plenty of offense for Joe Kelly (1-0), who gave up three runs over six shaky innings to pick up his first major league victory in his third career start.

”It feels pretty awesome,” Kelly said. ”I didn’t have my best stuff, but my teammates were awesome tonight. Good defense, and they really hit the ball.”

Most of the Cardinals’ offense came against Vin Mazzaro (3-2), who allowed seven runs, six hits, two walks and a hit batter while recording just four outs.

Mazzaro went six scoreless innings in a 3-2 win last Friday night at St. Louis.

”It was a tough one,” he said. ”Things didn’t go my way. I didn’t get down in the zone.”

Just about the only bright spot for Kansas City in the opener of a three-game series was the return of catcher Salvador Perez, who had been on the disabled list since spring training with a torn knee ligament. Perez went 2 for 4 with a monster two-run homer in the fourth inning.

Otherwise, a day that started off badly for the Royals – right-hander Felipe Paulino went on the DL with a torn elbow ligament – kept getting worse with every pitch Mazzaro threw.

His first three were balls to Rafael Furcal, and he eventually issued a walk. Jay was hit by a pitch, and Matt Holiday singled to load the bases for Beltran, whose two-run double off the wall in left field elicited a roar from a sellout crowd that included plenty of red shirts.

Yadier Molina added an RBI single, and Carpenter’s sacrifice fly made it 4-0.

Mazzaro managed to escape the inning, and Kansas City got a run back on three straight base hits, with Eric Hosmer’s slicing single to left bringing home Yuniesky Betancourt.

Mazzaro gave the run right back – and then some.

Furcal and Jay started the second with singles, and after Holliday flied out to left, Beltran delivered his second straight two-run double. Mazzaro was lifted from the game to a chorus of boos, and reliever Roman Colon didn’t fare much better as St. Louis took a 10-1 lead.

”We needed to get our offense off to a good start and get rolling,” Cardinals manager Mike Matheny said, ”but that’s not the kind of offense you’re going to get every time.”

It was the first time the Cardinals scored 10 or more runs in the first two innings since May 8, 2005, against San Diego, and their 17 hits in the game matched a season high.

Beltran was responsible for much of it in his return to Kansas City.

The six-time All-Star was drafted by the Royals in 1995, and drove in 100 or more runs four times over six-plus seasons. But the Royals traded him to Houston in June 2004, anticipating that they wouldn’t be able to pay Beltran the princely sum that he would get on the open market.

He eventually signed a seven-year, $119 million contract with the Mets.

Beltran landed with the Cardinals this season after a short stop in San Francisco, and faced the Royals for the first time last week in St. Louis, going 6 for 14 and driving in a run.

Beltran picked up right where he left off on Friday night.

This time, the rest of the Cardinals’ offense joined in the fun.

”It’s a good feeling any time you can contribute,” Beltran said. ”This place brings a lot of good memories. Kansas City was my home for six years and a half, and I got to meet some good people. I have a lot of good memories from here.”

— Associated Press —