Stuck in a four-start stretch where he lost twice and surrendered a troubling seven homers, Cardinals left-handed pitcher Matthew Liberatore seemed to be in a fight for his spot in the rotation.

Fortunately for Liberatore, he figured out a way to stop his slide with not one, but two victories over the slumping Atlanta Braves.

Two weeks after limiting the Braves to one hit and one earned run over five innings, Liberatore shut out Atlanta over six innings and got run support in the form of a Lars Nootbaar three-run homer as the Cardinals rolled to a 4-1 victory at Busch Stadium.

“He was unbelievable and in the first couple of innings I thought we were going to be able to take a day off on defense,” Nootbaar joked to Cardinals.TV after hitting his third homer since returning from double heel surgery last October. “When (Liberatore) is one like that, he’s one of the best pitchers in baseball. He proved it tonight and had a great game.”

For the Cardinals, it was a second straight victory and the 50th win on the season. They beat the Braves 2-1 on Friday night despite a two-hour, 43-minute rain delay, and outplayed the NL East leaders again on Saturday night to bounce back nicely from a difficult series where they lost four of five against the rival Brewers.

The Cardinals locked up another series victory and the season series with their fourth win over the Braves in five meetings in 2026.

"Just the consistency of not allowing the previous game to leak into the next," Cardinals' manager Oliver Marmol said of his team's bounce-back abilities after getting beaten up by the Brewers. "You have that Milwaukee series, which was a tough series. ... Not allowing one day to leak into the next, we've done a really nice job of that. That's been part of our identity from the beginning. The fact that we're holding to that -- good or bad we're moving onto what's next and what's in front of us. They've done that and this (Braves) series is an example of that."

Liberatore, who struck out nine Braves in his win in Atlanta on June 30, fanned another six and walked just one on Saturday night. Riley O’Brien walked a batter and hit another, but he closed out the ninth inning for his 24th save in 28 opportunities. O’Brien, an All-Star while will be in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, also had to hurdle a broken bat during the final inning before getting Joey Bart looking to close out the Braves.

The Cardinals got first-inning singles from All-Stars Ivan Herrera and Jordan Walker to set the stage for Nootbaar’s heroics. Braves starter Reynaldo Lopez, who came into the night having allowed just three earned runs over his last three starts, left a 1-2 curveball over the middle of the plate and Nootbaar punished it. His shot over the right field wall travel 435 feet and left the bat at 108.8 mph to give the Cardinals all the run support they would need in a tidy two-hour, 19-minute game.

Rookie third baseman Blaze Jordan added an RBI single in the fourth inning after Nootbaar walked and stole second base. Nootbaar's movement on the bases is a sign of how much better he is feeling after having the Haglund's deformities surgically removed from his heels.

"I obviously feel better now than I did over the past year or a year or two ago, but it's still a work in progress on that," said Nootbaar, who boosted his batting average to .265 and his OPS to .781 in his 31 games played before the break for the MLB All-Star Game. "With my hitting, it's why we love baseball -- you feel good one day and you feel bad the other. But you grind through it."  

Liberatore allowed only one Atlanta runner to reach second base before the sixth inning. In the sixth, Michael Harris II and Matt Olson singled, but Liberatore wiggled out of the jam by getting reigning Rookie of the Year and Missouri State product Drake Baldwin to ground into an inning-ending double play.  

Remember to join our CARDINALS on ROUNDTABLE community, which is FREE! You can post your own thoughts, in text or video form, and you can engage with our Roundtable staff, as well as other CARDINALS fans. If prompted to download the Roundtable APP, that's free too!