While facing the 104-mph heat of Jacob Misiorowski didn’t necessarily work out for the Cardinals on Tuesday in a narrow loss, it certainly did help them get ready for the fastball of Brewers’ left-hander Kyle Harrison on Wednesday.

Alec Burleson crushed a 443-foot homer, José Fermín added a solo shot and Jordan Walker and Burleson added RBI doubles – all four of them coming off variations of fastballs – as the Cardinals gained a measure of revenge for their slow start in the series with a 5-1 defeat of Milwaukee at Busch Stadium on Wednesday night.

"It's been a struggle for me all year against lefties, and I was super fortunate to put two good swings off lefties tonight," Burleson told Cardinals.TV after coming into the game hitting just .181 versus southpaws on the season. 

The victory, made possible by strong work from right-handed pitcher Michael McGreevy, ended the Cardinals’ seven-game losing streak to the Brewers. The Cards won the first meeting between the two teams on May 4, but they were then blanked by Milwaukee over the next seven games. That included the first three games of this home series – a 4-3 loss on Monday, a 4-3 loss in Tuesday’s Game 1 against Misiorowski and a 10-2 defeat on Tuesday night for a doubleheader sweep.

McGreevy, who was celebrating his 26th birthday, limited the Brewers to five hits over 6 1/3 innings of work. McGreevy worked out of a bases loaded jam in the first inning by getting rookie Luis Lara to ground out to third. After allowing an infield single to Cooper Pratt – who was later erased while trying to steal second base – McGreevy retired the next 15 Milwaukee hitters he faced.

"He dealt today," manager Oliver Marmol said of McGreevy.

McGreevy, who picked up his fourth win, has often been a victim of little to no run support this season. He came into Wednesday having pitched with a lead in just 22 2/3 innings this season.   

Incredibly, the Cardinals have now won 13 games in a row when their starting pitcher worked on his birthday, per Cards PR. Before McGreevy’s birthday victory, Kwang Hyun Kim was the last to do so, winning while celebrating his 33rd birthday on July 22, 2021.

Luis Gastelum, who was promoted from Triple-A Memphis earlier in the day, came on in relief for his MLB debut in the seventh inning. He allowed Garrett Mitchell to score on a sacrifice fly – a run credited to McGreevy – and he surrendered a double down the third base line to Joey Ortiz, but he used his devastating changeup to get pinch-hitter Andrew Vaughn to tap out to end a threat in the seventh inning.

The Cardinals were ready for the fastball of Harrison, who had limited them to four hits over six shutout innings in Milwaukee in late May. Masyn Winn led off the bottom of the first by drilling a Harrison fastball for a double to right field. The Cardinals then got a 104.6 mph double from Walker and a 107.1 mph missile from Burleson for another double to build an early 2-0 lead.

Burleson is one of the just five hitters in the National League with at least 20 doubles and 60 RBI. As for Walker, who is headed for Tuesday’s MLB All-Star Game, he joined Cubs star Pete Crow-Armstrong as the only NL players with 100 hits, 10 stolen bases and 20 home runs. Walker, who was on base three times on Wednesday, leads all of MLB in RBI with 70.

Fermin, who started his seventh straight game, turned around a Harrison fastball for a 404-foot homer in the fourth inning. And in the sixth, Burleson showed more improvement of hitting against left-handed pitching when he drilled a homer off the façade of the second-deck at Busch Stadium. It was the second-longest homer of the season at Busch at 443 feet – one foot shorter than the 444-foot shots by Tommy Troy and Crow-Armstrong.    

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