WASHINGTON (AP) — As Jaime Garcia rediscovered his winning form, pitching counterpart Max Scherzer lost the strike zone and then the game by allowing yet another home run.

Stephen Piscotty hit a grand slam off Scherzer during a five-run third inning and Garcia quieted the Washington Nationals lineup as the St. Louis Cardinals won 6-2 on Friday night.

Coming off consecutive ineffective starts, Garcia held Washington to two runs and seven hits over seven innings. The Cardinals had lost four of five.

“You can tell when his (sinker) is there,” Cardinals manager Mike Matheny said of Garcia, who opened the game with four scoreless innings. “He had very good movement and used his changeup and slider, but the sinker was a great pitch for him tonight.”

Scherzer allowed two earned runs in each of his previous three starts including his 20-strikeout gem on May 11 in a victory over Detroit. That version didn’t show early against St. Louis. He walked four batters and allowed five runs, all by the third inning. Scherzer surrendered three hits over seven innings.

Danny Espinosa’s second home run in as many games broke up Garcia’s shutout bid in the fifth.

Bryce Harper went 1 for 4 after hitting the go-ahead home run in Washington’s 2-1 series-opening win Thursday.

Greg Garcia homered for St. Louis, which scored six runs on four hits.

Jaime Garcia’s one-out single in the third was the first hit off Scherzer and started a stretch of five straight batters to reach base. After Scherzer walked Matt Holliday with the bases loaded to score Garcia, Piscotty made it 5-0 with his first career grand slam deep into the stands in left field.

“It wasn’t the home run pitch,” Nationals manager Dusty Baker said of Scherzer’s troubles. “It was the walks before the home run. That’s what really hurt.”

Piscotty recognized Scherzer fell into slider-heavy rut against him.

“Including the (previous) at-bat he threw me four straight sliders,” the right fielder said. “Luckily I got that one.”

Scherzer, who finished with six strikeouts, then reversed course by retiring the final 14 batters he faced. He leads the majors with 15 home runs allowed and has alternated wins and losses over his last six starts.

“I know I’ve been giving up a ton of home runs,” Scherzer stated, “but that one, that’s just an execution thing. That’s just me not throwing the right pitch at the right time and with poor execution.”

With the victory, St. Louis improved to 25-24, avoiding falling below .500 for the first time since a 13-14 record on May 3.

In his previous outing against the Nationals this season, Garcia allowed four runs over 6 1/3 innings in a 6-1 home loss on April 30. He gave up eight runs and 15 hits combined over his last two starts.

“I made some adjustments I needed to make,” Garcia said. “That’s part of baseball, that’s part of pitching.”

NOT HERE FOR LONG

INF Greg Garcia began his second stint with St. Louis this season after being recalled from Triple-A Memphis on Thursday with Matt Carpenter placed on the paternity list. Along with the home run, he walked twice, scored two runs and started a double play. Yet with Carpenter expected back Saturday, he will probably return to Memphis despite batting .615.

STRANDED AT THE DRIVE-IN: Washington went 1 for 10 with runners in scoring position. Harper and Ryan Zimmerman each grounded into double plays with two runners on base. Zimmerman’s scored Harper in the sixth to make the score 5-2.

TRAINER’S ROOM

Cardinals: 1B Matt Adams did not start, but was available despite leaving in the fifth inning of Thursday’s loss due to mid-back stiffness.

Nationals: RHP Taylor Jordan, who pitched for the Nationals during each of the previous three seasons, underwent Tommy John surgery on Thursday. Jordan, who made three appearances for Triple-A Syracuse this season, had the same procedure in 2011.

UP NEXT

Cardinals: RHP Adam Wainwright (4-3, 5.77 ERA) makes his first appearance against the Nationals since 2014. He is 7-3 with a 2.18 ERA all-time versus Washington.

Nationals: LHP Gio Gonzalez (3-2, 2.87) allowed seven runs and 10 hits over five innings in his previous start, a 7-1 loss to the New York Mets.

— Associated Press —

WASHINGTON (AP) — Even when he’s struggling at the plate, Bryce Harper knows how to put a good swing on a bad pitch.

Harper hit a slump-busting home run, Danny Espinosa also went deep and the Washington Nationals got seven strong innings from right-hander Joe Ross in a 2-1 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals on Thursday night.

Washington trailed 1-0 in the sixth inning before Harper ended a 4-for-33 skid with a no-doubt-about-it shot into the upper deck, far beyond the wall in right field. It was his 12th homer of the season, the first since May 13.

“It felt good to get one,” Harper said. “It was the kind of pitch I could handle and do some damage.”

The light-hitting Espinosa snapped the tie in the seventh with a drive to right. Batting eighth, Espinosa came in with a .199 batting average and three home runs.

Both homers came off Mike Leake (3-4), who won his previous three starts while allowing only two runs over 21 innings.

“Hanging changeup and a hanging slider, right where hitters want the ball,” Leake said. “If you take those back, it’s a zero-run ballgame.”

The first-place Nationals have been winning in spite of Harper’s recent dry spell, but he was delighted to contribute to this one.

“It was good to get the `W,” he said.

Harper, the reigning NL MVP, is batting .245 after a 1-for-4 performance.

“I feel good. Swing feels great, hands feel good,” he said.

Ross (4-4) gave up one run and six hits over seven innings. He had lost four straight decisions since beating the Cardinals in St. Louis on April 30.

“I was hoping for him to get the win,” manager Dusty Baker said. “He had been trying so long.”

Felipe Rivero worked the eighth and Jonathan Papelbon got three straight outs for his 13th save.

Aledmys Diaz homered for St. Louis, 0-4 against Washington this season.

The Cardinals were without their top run producer, Matt Carpenter, who was placed on the paternity list earlier Thursday. He leads St. Louis with nine homers and 32 RBI.

“A couple solo home runs shouldn’t be enough to do that to us,” manager Mike Matheny said after the loss, “but we just had trouble doing anything offensively.”

Washington, in turn, went through the game with torrid-hitting Daniel Murphy on the bench. He was given the day off by Baker, who said, “One of their big bats is out of the lineup, so they offset. It worked out perfectly.”

The Nationals got runners on second and third with two outs in the second before Espinosa grounded out.

Diaz led off the fourth with his seventh home run, a drive to left into the St. Louis bullpen.

I GOT IT

One play before Espinosa’s home run, Stephen Drew hit a popup that was converged upon by third baseman Greg Garcia and Diaz, the shortstop, both of whom had their gloves raised to make the catch. The players collided and the ball popped out of Garcia’s glove — right into the mitt of catcher Yadier Molina, who was trailing the play.

TRAINER’S ROOM

Cardinals: 1B Matt Adams left in the fifth inning with mid-back stiffness. He will be re-examined Friday. … INF Jhonny Peralta will report to Double-A Springfield on Friday after going 3 for 13 in five rehab games at Single-A Peoria. Peralta was operated on in March to repair an injured ligament in his left thumb. Matheny says, “He’s one guy on the immediate radar to help us.”

Nationals: Reliever Matt Belisle (right calf strain) will make a rehab appearance Saturday with Class A Potomac. The 35-year-old tossed a scoreless inning in both his previous outings with Potomac.

UP NEXT

Cardinals: LHP Jaime Garcia (3-4, 3.59 ERA) enters Friday night’s game in bounce-back mode after giving up a total of eight runs and 15 hits in his last two starts.

Nationals: RHP Max Scherzer (5-3, 3.80) is 1-2 lifetime against St. Louis, but he threw seven shutout innings against the Cardinals on May 1.

— Associated Press —

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Jake Arrieta got some help from the Cubs’ offense to stay perfect.

Arrieta remained unbeaten on the season despite allowing as many as four runs for the first time in nearly a year and the Chicago Cubs beat the St. Louis Cardinals 9-8 on Wednesday.

“I picked a good day to be (bad),” Arrieta said.

“I was aggressive but they had a good game plan coming in and it was a good thing our offense was able to be extremely productive today.”

Arrieta (9-0) joined the White Sox’s Chris Sale as the only nine-game winners in the majors.

Arrieta allowed four runs in a regular-season game for the first time since June 16, 2015.

“We grind whoever it is,” Cardinals manager Mike Matheny said. “We acknowledge the fact that he’s a good pitcher and has had a good start, but I think for us to give him too much credit and go up defeated it a bad route.”

Arrieta became the first Cub to win his first nine decisions since Kenny Holtzman in 1967 and it is the best start to a season for the franchise since Jim McCormick went 16-0 in 1886.

The Cubs have won Arrieta’s past 23 starts, a franchise record.

“There was not any good flow to his pitching today,” Cubs manager Joe Maddon said. “You look at the gun everything’s normal. The guy competes.”

Kris Bryant hit a three-run homer and Jason Heyward and Ben Zobrist each drove in two runs for the Cubs.

Bryant drove a 3-2 pitch from Seung Hwan Oh about 411 feet in the sixth inning, giving the Cubs a 9-4 lead. Bryant has homered in three of his past six games.

The Cubs sent 11 men to the plate in a six-run second, five of the runs scored with two outs. Heyward’s two-run double and Zobrist’s two-run single capped the scoring as Cardinals starter Carlos Martinez threw 38 pitches.

Hector Rondon earned his eighth save.

Stephen Piscotty, hitting .360 in May, had an RBI single in the first to give the Cardinals a 1-0 lead. It was the first run Arrieta had given up in the first inning of a regular-season game since May 29, 2015.

Randal Grichuk’s solo homer in the second inning cut the Cubs’ lead to 6-2 and was the first homer Arrieta had given up in 51 regular-season innings, which was the longest active streak in the majors.

The Cardinals made it 6-4 in the fourth on RBI hits by Matt Adams and Grichuk and they loaded the bases again in the fifth, but Cubs third baseman Tommy La Stella bailed out Arrieta with a diving stop on Grichuk’s grounder and forced Yadier Molina at second.

“I think that was one of the turning moments in the game,” Bryant said. “The momentum could have completely changed. I think that was the play of the game.”

Matt Holliday snapped a 3-for-39 slump with a three-run homer in the sixth to make it 9-7. Adams hit his second homer of the series in the seventh to cut it to a one-run deficit.

“Grichuk I mean is really swinging the bat well,” Maddon said. “Adams got toasty at the wrong time and up and down their lineup Piscotty’s a good player, (Aledmys) Diaz does swing the bat that well, they don’t quit that’s why they win championships.”

Martinez (4-5) lost his career-high fifth straight start.

BUNDLE OF JOY

Cardinals’ Matt Carpenter, hitless in 16 at-bats against Arrieta, was out of the lineup Wednesday because he was with his wife, who went into labor before the game with their first child. Kolten Wong hit in Carpenter’s leadoff spot.

TRAINER’S ROOM

Cardinals: Acquired OF Jose Martinez from the Kansas City Royals for cash considerations and assigned him to Triple-A Memphis. RHP Mitch Harris (elbow) was moved to the 60-day disabled list to make room for Martinez on the 40-man roster.

UP NEXT

Cubs: LHP Jon Lester (4-3, 2.60 ERA) will kick off a 10-game homestand Friday against the Philadelphia Phillies. Lester is 4-0 with a 1.76 ERA in six starts against the Phillies.

Cardinals: RHP Mike Leake (3-3, 4.07 ERA) will make his 10th start of the season, starting a seven-game road trip at the Washington Nationals. Leake is 3-0 with a 0.86 ERA in his past three starts.

— Associated Press —

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Jason Hammel had a lot to do with the early six-run cushion.

The pitcher went above and beyond in helping end the Chicago Cubs’ first three-game losing streak of the season with a 12-3 win over the St. Louis Cardinals.

“Right out of the gate, took my first swings before I made my first pitch,” Hammel said after working 7 1/3 stingy innings and contributing a two-run double to Chicago’s big first.

Hammel has beaten the Cardinals twice this season, allowing two runs in 13 1/3 innings. This was his longest outing of the year, and manager Joe Maddon thought he could have thrown a complete game.

“It’s important for us, it’s important for him psychologically to be able to do that,” Maddon said. “It’s important that they know he can.”

Michael Wacha (2-5) gave up a career-worst eight runs in four innings and has lost five consecutive decisions for the first time. The 24-year-old right-hander was a 17-game winner last season and the NL championship series MVP as a rookie in 2013, but this season has a 5.04 ERA.

“It’s a pretty discouraging start,” Wacha said. “I never really gave the team a chance.”

Jorge Soler drew a bases-loaded walk in the first and hit a two-run home run in the fifth.

The six-run inning was a season-best for the NL Central leaders, who snapped their first three-game losing streak of the season. David Ross had an RBI double for his 500th career hit on a ball that somehow eluded center fielder Randal Grichuk’s glove at the warning track, and Kris Bryant had an RBI single in the outburst.

Hammel (6-1) bounced back from his first loss in his previous start, allowing one run on four hits and retiring the side in order five times. The two-run double gave him a career-best five RBI on the year and his sixth hit in 23 at-bats.

“Nice, let’s focus on that,” Hammel said. “And I’ve got four months to go.”

The outing was his longest since throwing 7 2/3 innings against the Dodgers on June 23, 2015. He’s 6-1 for the second time in his career, also doing it in 2012.

“Honestly, I really wasn’t that good tonight,” Hammel said. “I got away with a lot of stuff.”

Wacha had no losing streak longer than three games prior to this season. In his last three outings he has allowed 20 runs, 16 earned, in 12 innings with all three lasting four innings.

“When the season broke he was as good as anybody,” manager Mike Matheny said. “He found a real good spot and we know what it looks like when he can get into a good rhythm.”

Pinch hitters Tim Fedorowicz and Matt Szcur had an RBI apiece in a four-run ninth off Dean Kiekhefer.

GREAT GRABS

Cardinals rookie SS Aledmys Diaz made an outstanding over-the-shoulder catch in shallow left, the start of a highly unusual 6-4-3 double play to end the second. Kris Bryant singled and had rounded second when Diaz snared Anthony Rizzo’s flare. Diaz tossed to second baseman Kolten Wong, who flipped to first.

Cubs reliever Justin Grimm fielded a smash by Diaz between his legs in the eighth.

UP NEXT

Cubs: Chicago has won Jake Arrieta’s last 22 starts, a franchise record. He’s 19-0 since his last loss on July 25, 2015 against the Phillies. Arrieta leads the majors with a 1.29 ERA and .153 opponents’ batting average.

Cardinals: Carlos Martinez (4-4, 3.56) has lost four consecutive starts for the first time in his career. But he’s 3-0 for his career against the Cubs.

TRAINER’S ROOM

Cubs: RF Jason Heyward (ribs) returned after missing three games and had two walks.

Cardinals: Jhonny Peralta (thumb) was 2 for 3 and scored a run in a rehab start for Class A Peoria.

GOOD TOSSES

J.R. Hildebrand, who’ll start from the fifth row in the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday, was one of two celebrities throwing first pitches. David Eckstein, the World Series MVP in 2006, also got the honor.

— Associated Press —

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Randal Grichuk told reporters Monday afternoon that his sore back was OK. A few hours later, Grichuk proved it with his first career walk-off home run.

Grichuk’s solo homer in the bottom of the ninth lifted the St. Louis Cardinals to a 4-3 win over the Chicago Cubs.

“I was trying to battle and get a pitch in the zone and put good wood on it and get on,” Grichuk said. “Luckily, I was able to get a homer.”

Matt Adams tied the score with a two-run homer in the seventh for St. Louis’ major league-leading ninth pinch-hit homer of the season. It also ended a streak of 13 innings of one-run pitching by Chicago starter John Lackey against his former team.

“This is a team that can do damage in a hurry,” Cardinals manager Mike Matheny said. “That’s something we haven’t had in the past as much, the ability for quite a few guys in that lineup that feel good about getting the ball over the fence and create instant offense.”

Grichuk drove a 2-2 pitch off of Adam Warren (3-1) for the win.

Adams drove a high change-up to straight-away center to revive what was a stagnant offense against Lackey. It was Adams’ second pinch-hit homer this season and he’s hitting .500 off the bench.

“It’s no secret,” Adams said. “I just make sure I’m ready to go when my name’s called.”

Trevor Rosenthal (2-1) pitched a scoreless ninth.

The Cubs’ Ben Zobrist had three singles and a walk, extending his streak to 29 starts with reaching safely. He is hitting .387 during that span.

St. Louis starter Adam Wainwright pitched in and out of trouble throughout his six innings, scattering seven hits and stranding eight runners, while throwing 68 of his 108 pitches for strikes.

“I had great stuff tonight,” Wainwright said. “I loved my stuff. I just have to attack a little better than I did in a couple of those innings. But that stuff translates. That’s going to play well the rest of the season.”

Lackey gave up three runs in seven economical innings. He struck out nine while throwing just 87 pitches.

“He was really, really, sharp,” Cubs manager Joe Maddon said. “They hit a lot of pop ups, a lot of soft contact.”

Miguel Montero’s second single of the game tied it at 1-1 in the fourth, breaking a 26-inning scoreless streak Wainwright had against the Cubs dating back to May 13, 2014.

Javier Baez followed with a bunt, but was awarded an infield single after Cardinals second baseman Kolten Wong failed to backup first on the play, setting up a fielder’s choice from Addison Russell that made it 2-1 Cubs.

Anthony Rizzo drove in his 35th run of the year with a broken-bat single in the fifth.

“Sometimes in my position when they’ve pushed couple across, they get ducks on the pond, you have to limit those innings and keep your team in the game and we kept it close enough so (Adams) could make a big swing and (Grichuk) could make a big swing,” Wainwright said.

Aledmys Diaz gave the Cardinals’ an early lead with a sacrifice fly in the third.

FLYIN’ HAWAIIAN RELEASED

The Cubs released OF Shane Victorino from his minor league contract. Victorino won World Series titles with Philadelphia and Boston and played earlier this month for Triple-A Iowa.

TRAINER’S ROOM

Cubs: OF Jason Heyward (contusion) took swings in the batting cage and did other exercises. He was out of the lineup for s second straight game and is day-to-day.

“If it was up to me I’d be playing right now, but obviously you have to go through stuff and test it out,” Heyward said. “We’ll see what they say and we’ll see how it feels after a couple of days.”

Cardinals: SS Jhonny Peralta (thumb) went back to Single A-Peoria after being examined by the team Sunday. Peralta, who Matheny said was progressing, was placed on a 20-day rehabilitation assignment on May 20.

UP NEXT

Cubs: RHP Jason Hammel (5-1, 2.31 ERA) will make his second start of the season against St. Louis. He earned the win, allowing one run in six innings on April 19 and is 3-3 with a 5.26 ERA in eight career starts against the Cardinals.

Cardinals: RHP Michael Wacha (2-4, 4.03 ERA) is trying to break a career-long four-game losing streak. He is 3-3 with a 4.86 ERA in 10 career appearances against Chicago.

— Associated Press —