To keep Monday's game from slipping away, Matthew Liberatore called his own number with one of the biggest pitches of the Cardinals season

ST. LOUIS — In a key spot in Monday’s game against the rival Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals starter Matthew Liberatore called his shot on one of the most crucial pitch selections of the season.

Liberatore was straining to cling to the lead that Lars Nootbaar had provided with a two-run homer in the bottom of the fourth inning. One Cubs run had already crossed the plate in the top of the fifth, and now Cardinal killer Ian Happ was due up with the bases loaded and one out.

The situation called for some guidance from pitching coach Dusty Blake.

“Dusty came out and told me I could throw a heater up. I could spin him under. He asked what I wanted to throw—I told him I wanted to throw a cutter,” Liberatore explained, flashing a knowing grin in front of his locker after the game.

Liberatore acknowledged that Blake's visit was well-timed, allowing the lanky left-hander to take a breather before a significant moment in the game. But the 25-year-old starter had conviction in how he wanted to approach it before Dusty ever got to the mound.

“I knew that I wanted to throw the cutter to him before Dusty came out,” Liberatore said. “We had attacked (Happ) primarily, fastballs, changeups and curveballs all night long. And we had thrown him away most of the game. So I felt like the one thing he wasn’t sitting on there was something moving towards his hands, and it happened to be that a cutter is a great ground ball pitch, too.

"So it felt like the stars aligned there for that to be the pitch to get me out of it.”

Liberatore’s analysis proved to have been spot on, as the aggressive lead-off man of the Chicago Cubs pounded the first-pitch cutter into the dirt, allowing Nolan Arenado to start a 5-4-3 double play that ended with a stretch from the first base bag by former Cub Willson Contreras. 

Liberatore’s conviction in his repertoire had produced one of the most critical pitches of the Cardinals’ season—a fact that he acknowledged with a clap of his hands and an emphatic fist pump on his way off the field following the inning-ending double play.

The Cardinals proceeded to launch three more home runs against Cubs’ starter Ben Brown en route to an 8-2 victory, starting the Cardinals-Cubs rivalry off on the right note in the first meeting of the season between the NL Central foes.