CINCINNATI — All it took was almost everything they could want for the Cardinals to win as many road games in one day as they had won at all in the previous month.

Mix strong starting pitching with a raucous offense spiked with power and — voila! — the Cardinals romped to a doubleheader sweep of the host Cincinnati Reds on Wednesday at Great American Ball Park. The Cardinals, held to a single run in Monday’s loss to the Reds, slugged five home runs total during the day and took an early, mammoth lead with two homers in the evening game on the way to a 9-1 victory.

Willson Contreras greeted Reds rookie Chase Petty to the majors with a three-run homer in the first inning. Pedro Pages followed with an 11-pitch at-bat against Petty that ended with a solo homer.

All that was before the Cardinals’ five-run jubilee in the third inning.

The Cardinals began the season with only two wins in their first 14 road games, and then got back-to-back emphatic wins Wednesday to put themselves in position to win their first road series of the season in Thursday’s finale against the Reds.

Steven Matz started and provided four shutout innings to echo Miles Mikolas’ scoreless start in the afternoon game. In a game started by one of the Reds’ top pitching prospects it was Cardinals right-hander Gordon Graceffo, fresh up from the minors for a cameo, who earned his first major league win for five innings of relief and five strikeouts.

RISP and reward

With a second look at the young Reds’ prospect making his first start, the Cardinals were even less hospitable than they were taking a four-run lead.

Sparked by a leadoff double by Masyn Winn — his sixth time on base in the doubleheader — the Cardinals raged for five runs on five hits in the third inning to chase Petty from his big league debut after getting one out in the inning. Jordan Walker’s two-run double that landed like a thunderclap ejected the 22-year-old right-hander from his start. The line-drive double left Walker’s bat at 113.1 mph and it scored teammates Brendan Donovan and Contreras to increase the Cardinals’ lead to 7-0.

Entering Wednesday’s final game, the Cardinals were 2 for 22 with runners in scoring position (RISP) in their previous three games.

They took the first game because the one in their 1 for 5 was a home run.

They lost Sunday’s game to Milwaukee going 0 for 11.

After that 2 for 22 in their previous three games, the Cardinals were 4 for 9 in their first three innings Wednesday night with RISP. Contreras’s three-run homer came with runners in scoring position as did Walker’s two-run double. When Victor Scott II singled to score Walker from second, the Cardinals took a 9-0 lead.

Matz with an encore

In his second start as the sixth member of a five-man band, Matz continued to press for looks as a featured player, not just recurring guest appearances.

Out of the bullpen and into the rotation once more, Matz threw four shutout innings. He countered five hits allowed with six strikeouts, did not walk a batter, and whenever he got into an iota of trouble had the ability to miss bats to get back int control of an inning. He struck out Gavin Lux after back-to-back singles in the second inning to unplug Cincinnati’s threat. In the fourth, a one-double went nowhere when Matz carved up catcher Austin Wynn on four pitches for a looking strikeout.

Matz, who won his only other start of this season, did not qualify for the win because he was lifted after four innings. He had thrown 73 pitches, and it’s possible he was nearing a cap of 75 or 80 pitches due to recent relief use or future use as the Cardinals adjust their rotation in the coming week.

Paired with Mikolas’ 5 1/3 scoreless innings in the first game Wednesday, and the Cardinals starters held the Reds scoreless for their 9 1/3 innings, struck out 10 Reds, did not walk a Red, and allowed only eight hits.

They arrive three by three

After being hit twice in the afternoon game, Contreras finally got to hit in the evening.

Spelling Nolan Arenado for the night as the Cardinals’ cleanup hitter, Contreras came up in the first inning and delivered what the Cardinals so rarely did a year ago. With two teammates on base, Contreras welcomed Reds prospect Petty to the majors with a first-pitch, three-run homer that traveled 421 feet and over the center-field wall.

Contreras’ third homer of the season struck a quick lead for the Cardinals just a few hours after their 6-0 victory in Game 1.

It also gave the Cardinals something that curiously absent from last season.

The Cardinals hit only 10 three-run homers in 2024 — the fewest in a single season for more than three decades. With Scott’s three-run homer Wednesday afternoon and Contreras’ bolt that night the Cardinals already have eight three-run homers this season. That is the most in the National League and second most to Boston’s 12 in the majors. And the two Wednesday both came on the first and technically came in consecutive innings.

Scott’s purchased the Cardinals a comfortable lead in the ninth inning of Game 1, and Contreras’ launched them to a lead they would not lose in the first inning of Game 2.

Graceffo brings the heat

Invited to the majors as the 27th player on the roster for the evening game, Graceffo flashed the kind of power repertoire that continues to make him an intriguing relief option for the big league staff. By the end of the seventh inning, Graceffo had thrown the seven swiftest pitches in the game. That included a stunning 98.9-mph fastball for a strikeout to end his first inning, the fifth. Graceffo averaged 96.9 mph on his fastball, touches 93 mph with his slider and dropped a hammer of a curveball a few times at 86.9 mph. Consistently showing and then sustaining that kind of velocity has been the catch for the young right-hander.

Nootbaar walks way toward history

Leadoff hitter Lars Nootbaar ended the month exactly like he started a record-setting amount of games.

Nootbaar walked to start Game 2 and finish April with 11 leadoff walks to start games. If March and April are fused together for consideration as the regular season’s first month, Nootbaar’s total of 11 leadoff walks is the second most for any month in recorded major league history. Eddie Yost had a dozen leadoff walks for Washington in August 1952. Stick to the calendar month of April and Nootbaar’s walk Wednesday night gave him 10.

That ranked the third most in MLB history.

Hall of Famer Richie Ashburn had that many in a month twice in his career.

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