Molina provides a dose of payback for Cardinals

One day after Jesus Aguilar proved to be a one-man wrecking crew for the Milwaukee Brewers, Yadier Molina returned the favor for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Molina drove in all of his team’s runs with two homers as the Cardinals bounced back from a discouraging loss the previous evening with a 3-2 victory Saturday afternoon at Miller Park.

After getting no-hit into the seventh inning Friday night, the Brewers struck for two first-inning runs against righthander Miles Mikolas. With the bases loaded and one down, the man of the hour, Aguilar, sent a drive to deep right that easily scored Christian Yelich from third.

Brad Miller, called up earlier in the day from Class AAA Colorado Springs, made his first at-bat a successful one by dunking a single into shallow left-center to score Lorenzo Cain and make it 2-0.

The Cardinals got one of those runs right back when Molina led off the second inning by sending a 3-1 fastball from Chase Anderson out to right-center for his 10th homer of the season. It was a battle after that for Anderson to keep St. Louis off the board during his five-inning stint.

Jeremy Jeffress took over in the sixth with a 2-1 lead and the Cardinals quickly struck to go on top.

The Brewers had the man they wanted at the plate in the eighth when they loaded the bases with two down, in large part to Yelich and Travis Shaw being hit by pitches. But Aguilar grounded out to short against Sam Tuivailala and that threat was extinguished.