ST. LOUIS (AP) — Mike Matheny stared at a weather map that seemed to recycle unfavorable conditions every half hour or so, signed some items and made sure no one fell for the inevitable rumors that the game would be rained out.

“There’s always a jokester walks around who says, `They banged it and it’s over’ and nobody knows what’s truth. So I have to kind of make sure we monitor that,” Matheny said after Sunday’s game against the Kansas City Royals was postponed after a delay of 2 hours, 31 minutes.

“Mark Reynolds wrote that on the board the other day and it wasn’t even raining,” he said. “You get stuck in these dungeons, sometimes you don’t know what’s going on outside.”

During the delay, Matheny also firmed up the rotation. Call-up Tyler Lyons will get at least one more shot, on Friday at Philadelphia, after making a solid showing and earning the victory on Saturday.

The manager could have moved the rest of the starters up. Instead, he looked at the big picture.

“Over the long haul, anytime we can go out there and compete with one of our starters and not continually put the work load on just a few, I think it’ll pay off for us down the road,” Matheny said.

No makeup date has been determined for the final game of the season series. The teams have two mutual open dates, July 23 and Aug. 4.

“I was willing to wait as long as we could,” Royals manager Ned Yost said. “Those off days are precious and we’re here and I liked the matchup.”

The Cardinals decided it had already been long enough.

Matheny said the forecast was “just kind of repeating itself” with cells coming into St. Louis.

“I think Lackey got ready six times,” Matheny said. “Keeping the fans around here all night around a lot of uncertainty, it looked like something we weren’t going to be able to get around.”

The Cardinals lead the season series 3-2 and outscored the Royals 7-2 the first two games of this three-game set.

St. Louis will stick with John Lackey, the scheduled starter Sunday, on Monday against Minnesota. Lackey said he didn’t do much more than play catch.

“I would have had to get in a game for it to be a big deal,” Lackey said. “I don’t anticipate any problems.”

The Royals will alter their rotation for a two-game series in Milwaukee with Edinson Volquez starting Monday and Chris Young, the scheduled starter Sunday, moving to Tuesday.

“It gives him a day to get his homework done and prepare himself to pitch against Milwaukee, and then stay on regular rotation after that,” Yost said.

Like Lackey, Young was not frustrated.

“Look, it’s life,” he said. “It’s part of the job and what we do. It’s not the first time it’s happened and I hope it’s not the last.”

The Tuesday starting spot had been undetermined with Joe Blanton the probable pitcher. Blanton is now the fallback in case Yordano Ventura, who left Friday’s start after three innings with right hand weakness, has an issue on Wednesday.

The rainout sent home a third straight sellout crowd for the series matching teams with the best record in the National and American leagues.

The postponement is the first at Busch Stadium since May 14, 2014, against the Cubs.

The Cardinals are 41-21 overall and 24-7 at home, both major league bests. They’ve won three in a row and 14 of 19, with pitchers posting a 2.13 ERA, entering a four-game home and home series with the Minnesota Twins starting Monday night in St. Louis.

Yost was true to his word and had resisted shaking up the lineup even though his team has scored two or fewer runs in 12 of the last 17 games.

The Royals were 0 for 11 with runners in scoring position the first two games and are 5 for 33 the first five games of a trip that ends in Milwaukee.

— Associated Press —

ST. LOUIS — Jason Heyward closed his eyes in the bright glare of the sun, dropped slowly to the turf on his backside, and hoped for the best.

The St. Louis Cardinals right fielder made the key defensive play against the cross-state rival Kansas City Royals strictly by feel, preserving an eighth-inning lead by snaring a sinking liner by Kendrys Morales.

“I saw it off the bat and that was the last time I saw it until I went to throw it in,” Heyward said after the 3-2 victory on Saturday. “I felt it hit my glove and I was surprised when it hit my glove.”

The catch for the second out of the eighth with a man on was certainly deflating for the visitors.

“That was a lucky catch,” Royals manager Ned Yost said. “I mean, there’s some skill involved with that, but if you watch the replay he wasn’t even looking.

“That’s when you start thinking, `Whoa, we may be in trouble here.”

Call-up Tyler Lyons had a solid outing and Mark Reynolds hit the go-ahead homer in the fifth for the Cardinals, who held the Royals’ offense down for the second straight day.

“I figured it was either out or it was going to be a can of corn,” Reynolds said. “So I just jogged anyway.”

Alex Gordon and Salvador Perez homered for the Royals, who took two of three from the Cardinals at home last month and will be trying to avoid a sweep in the finale. The series matches teams with the best records in each league and the Royals have been held to two runs and 10 hits.

“Sometimes you go through slumps like this,” Gordon said. “But we’ll get out of it.”

Matt Carpenter and Jason Heyward added an RBI each for St. Louis, which is a major league-best 41-21 overall and 24-7 at home. The Cardinals used five relievers over the last four innings to hold a one-run lead with Trevor Rosenthal getting the last four outs for his league-leading 21st save in 22 chances.

The Royals’ eighth did not lack for dramatics. Rosenthal rallied from a 3-0 count to get Gordon on an infield popup with two on for the third out.

The first two games were sellouts, giving the Cardinals 13 on the year. Most of announced attendance of 45, 981 stuck around after a 24-minute rain delay before the top of the sixth.

Lyons (1-0) allowed two runs and three hits. He failed to make an impression in three starts earlier in the year in place of injured Adam Wainwright, entering with a 5.54 ERA, but fared much better replacing injured Lance Lynn.

Gordon’s eighth homer gave the Royals the lead in the second and Perez tied it at 2 with his 10th homer in the fourth.

The Cardinals scored two runs on five hits in the third, a rally that began with Kolten Wong’s leadoff triple. Reynolds’ fourth homer, in the fifth off Jeremy Guthrie (4-4), snapped a 2-all tie.

TRAINER’S ROOM

Royals: LHP Jason Vargas (forearm strain) was placed on the 15-day DL.

UP NEXT

Chris Young moves up a day to start the series finale for Kansas City. He took a no-hitter into the seventh his last time out. John Lackey is 6-1 with a 2.02 ERA in 11 career starts at Busch Stadium, including 4-1 with a 1.73 ERA this year.

TACTICAL PLAY

Both teams played the infield in with a man on third and one out in the first and didn’t get burned. The Cardinals clicked again in the sixth, helping to preserve the lead, when Matt Belisle got Salvador Perez on a broken-bat groundout.

WEAK PRAISE

Cardinals manager Mike Matheny said Lynn was the pitcher who had made the most improvement at the plate “by far — mostly because he couldn’t have gotten much worse.” Lynn is batting .182 with one RBI after entering the year a career .065 hitter.

— Associated Press —

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Jaime Garcia pitched eight innings of four-hit ball and saved some shutdown stuff for the media, too.

The St. Louis Cardinals lefty had little to say about perhaps his best outing in two years.

“I’m extremely happy for the team,” Garcia said without conviction after also helping himself with an RBI single in a 4-0 victory that ended the Kansas City Royals’ four-game winning streak Friday night in the opener of a high-profile interleague series.

“When you’re healthy and you’re going out and competing, you’re always happy,” Garcia added. “I’ll enjoy the win tonight for the team and turn the page and get ready for the next one.”

Garcia worked more than seven innings for the first time since May 5, 2013, when he went eight in a 10-1 victory at Milwaukee.

Jon Jay snapped a 2-for-24 slump this month with a two-out RBI triple in the second off Yordano Ventura (3-6), and Garcia followed with his 12th career RBI on an opposite-field single — his first since June 3, 2014, against Kansas City.

The Cardinals are 40-21 overall and 23-7 at home, both major league bests. They got a huge outing from Garcia (2-3), so far a success story off thoracic outlet surgery.

“He was as good as we’ve seen him,” manager Mike Matheny said. “I don’t know if you could ask for anything more.

“It’s no fun to catch, no fun to hit.”

Ventura lasted just three innings for the second straight start, removed as a precaution due to weakness in his pitching hand. In those two starts, he’s allowed six earned runs.

Royals manager Ned Yost said the team was watching closely because Ventura’s velocity was down and in the third the pitcher had trouble with his grip.

Yost said he couldn’t recall the last time he heard the term “right hand weakness.”

“Of course, you have a level of concern because you don’t really know what it is yet,” Yost added. “But we’ll wait till tomorrow and see what’s going on.”

The infield had a meeting on the mound during Ventura’s final at-bat, a flyout by Yadier Molina. Ventura said through translator Christian Colon that his thumb, right ring finger and pinky had gone numb and that he’d felt “really weird.”

Ventura also said he didn’t know whether he’d be able to make his next start.

Garcia struck out six with no walks, fanning Omar Infante to open the eighth for the 500th strikeout of his career, and retired the side in order five times. The lefty lowered his ERA to 2.06 and hasn’t issued a walk in 30 innings.

Garcia has made five starts — the Cardinals have been shut out in three of them — after totaling 16 starts from 2013-14. He’d been 0 for 8 with four strikeouts before the hit.

In the eighth, Randal Grichuk had an RBI triple on a ball that right fielder Alex Rios whiffed on, and Jay added sacrifice fly. Center fielder Lorenzo Cain, who’d also converged on Grichuk’s fly ball, called it a “miscommunication.”

The last four lineup spots combined for five hits, three for extra bases, and three RBI.

“I think you’ve seen that with our lineup before,” Jay said. “Everyone can hit everywhere.”

The Royals got two infield hits with two outs in the sixth but Garcia struck out cleanup man Eric Hosmer on an off-speed pitch that ended up at shoe-top level.

TRAINER’S ROOM

Royals: LHP Danny Duffy (biceps tendinitis) has made one rehab start for Triple-A Omaha, working four innings Wednesday, and could make a few more before rejoining the rotation.

Cardinals: Setup man Jordan Walden (right biceps) could be back before the All-Star break.

UP NEXT

Jeremy Guthrie is 3-0 with a 1.85 ERA in six interleague starts with the Royals. Tyler Lyons, recalled from Triple-A Memphis to replace injured Lance Lynn, was 0-0 with a 5.54 ERA in three starts earlier this season. He’s 3-1 with a 2.36 ERA in his last four minor league starts.

— Associated Press —

ST. LOUIS (AP) – For the first time in more than 70 years, baseball’s two best teams reside in Missouri this late into a season.

The St. Louis Cardinals dropped two of three in Kansas City last month but managed to defeat Royals staff ace Yordano Ventura.

With their offense sputtering a bit, especially when Jaime Garcia starts, the Cardinals look to get to the struggling Ventura early in Friday night’s I-70 Series opener at Busch Stadium.

Kansas City (34-23) took over first place in the AL Central by sweeping a series from Minnesota to push their winning streak to four following a 2-9 stretch. Alex Gordon hit a three-run homer in Wednesday’s 7-2 victory while Salvador Perez singled twice to improve to 8 for 19 in his last five games.

“To get out of town sweeping the series is a good feeling,” manager Ned Yost said.

Pulling off another sweep will be a tall order since the Cardinals (39-21) are a major league-best 22-7 at home.

Ventura’s struggles are another cause for concern in the first matchup between Missouri teams holding baseball’s top two records this late into the season since Aug. 18, 1944, when the Cardinals and St. Louis Browns were atop the standings.

Ventura gave up four runs and six hits in a season-low three innings in Saturday’s 4-2 loss to Texas.

“He has to continue to develop, to understand that with power stuff, you still have to be able to locate and execute your pitches,” Yost said.

Ventura (3-5, 4.62 ERA) got off to another shaky start, allowing four runs in the first two innings. In six outings since the start of May, the right-hander has a 7.50 ERA in the first two innings. Opponents are batting .333 off him in the first on the season.

Against the Cardinals on May 24, Ventura walked Kolten Wong and Matt Carpenter to lead off the game and both came around to score. He ended up allowing two more runs on a Carpenter homer and was lifted after the seventh in a 6-1 loss.

St. Louis’ offense, though, hasn’t exactly been clicking, averaging 2.8 runs while batting .205 over a 2/3 stretch. Wong is 3 for 19 with no walks in the last five and Carpenter snapped an 0-for-13 slump by going 2 for 5 Wednesday as St. Louis defeated Colorado 4-2 to avoid a sweep.

“We’ve got the kind of lineup that’s going to be able to put some runs across, but overall, we know that our sustained success begins with our starting pitching,” manager Mike Matheny said.

The Cardinals lead the majors with a 2.71 ERA. No team has finished a season with a better ERA since Houston had a 2.66 in 1981.

Garcia (1-3, 2.67) has been sharp since coming off the disabled list but has received no runs of support in three of four starts. He gave up two runs and six hits in seven innings of Saturday’s 2-0 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers. The left-hander hasn’t issued a walk in his last 22 innings.

Kansas City has regularly frustrated, Garcia, however, knocking him around for six runs and eight hits in five innings last June. He is 0-1 with an 8.31 ERA in four starts in the series.

The Royals had been going through a slump of their own before Wednesday, averaging 2.1 runs and hitting .173 with runners in scoring position in their previous nine games.

“You’re going to have slumps throughout the season. It’s how you respond to it,” Gordon said.

The Royals are 5-2 against the Cardinals since the start of last season and have won five of seven in St. Louis.

Gordon has hit safely in the last seven meetings, batting .381 with three homers and a .519 on-base percentage. He is 4 for 9 with a home run and double against Garcia.

— Associated Press —