St. Louis Cardinals: Missed chances doom club

Oct 27, 2013; St. Louis, MO, USA; Boston Red Sox first baseman Mike Napoli (12) celebrates picking off St. Louis Cardinals pinch runner Kolten Wong (16) to end game four of the MLB baseball World Series at Busch Stadium. Red Sox won 4-2. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports

The St. Louis Cardinals were fresh off their wild win the previous night and had a chance to put the Boston Red Sox in a deep hole.

That did not happen with Boston winning by a score of 4-2 and tying the World Series at 2-2. Boston had Clay Buchholz pitching for them in this game, but were unsure what to expect from him.

This seemed like it would give the advantage to the Cardinals in this game. For the beginning part of the game their starter Lance Lynn was putting away hitters with ease.

Then came the fifth and sixth innings where Boston fouled off plenty of pitches and put on pressure on Lynn to make quality pitches. It seemed like he lost his composure when Boston was able to put men on base against him.

He finished with 5.2 innings pitched and gave up three runs while striking out five batters.

Buchholz made it through four innings and gave Boston all he could. He surrendered three hits with one unearned run allowed.

Carlos Beltran helped bring the first run home in the third inning with a single to center. Then in the seventh inning Matt Carpenter hit another single to right that scored their last run of the game.

The Red Sox scored their first run in the fifth from a sacrifice fly by Stephen Drew.

When Lynn had trouble in the sixth Mike Matheny brought in Seth Maness and Jonny Gomes crushed a sinker that stayed up in the zone to left field for a three-run home run.

The Cardinals went 2-for-8 with runners in scoring position and they missed plenty of chances to score in this game.

The best chance came in the seventh with Matt Holliday at the plate with two men on and two out, but he grounded out facing Junichi Tazawa.

There was another chance in eighth when a Xander Bogaerts throwing error put Yadier Molina on second base with one out.

However both Jon Jay and David Freese were unable to bring him home.

Then in the ninth inning St. Louis had the tying run at the plate in Beltran facing Koji Uehara with two outs and Kolten Wong was picked off first base to end the game.

The Cardinals will need to improve at cashing in opportunities to score runs in the next couple of games.