The St. Louis Cardinals’ offense put on a fireworks display just a few days before the Fourth of July.
In the first inning of Saturday’s game with the Philadelphia Phillies, the Cardinals hit four straight home runs off of Phillies starter Kyle Gibson to get out to a 5-0 lead. Nolan Arenado started off the homer barrage with a two-run frozen rope to left field. Nolan Gorman, Juan Yepez and Dylan Carlson all followed with solo homers. All four blasts were hit with no outs in the inning.
Gibson has now allowed 13 home runs in 16 starts this season, tied for the 19th-most among MLB pitchers. Gibson gave up 17 long balls last season, and a career-high 24 in 2017. The right-hander was pulled after four-plus innings on Saturday, and allowed a total of six earned runs on seven hits.
Back-to-back-to-back-to-back homers are incredibly rare in baseball. Including the Cardinals, the feat has only happened 11 times in MLB history. The Milwaukee Braves were the first team to hit four straight homers in an inning when Eddie Mathews, Hank Aaron, Joe Adcock and Frank Thomas did so in the seventh inning against the Cincinnati Reds on June 8, 1961. The most recent team to do so was the Chicago White Sox in 2020, when Yoan Moncada, Yasmani Grandal, Jose Abreu and Eloy Jimenez hit consecutive home runs in the fifth inning against, coincidentally, the Cardinals.
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