Cardinals Bite Back At Tigers

Kent Bottenfield is tied for the NL lead with nine wins, and he owes it all to Detroit. Specifically, he owes it to Tigers pitching coach Rick Adair.

"Rick Adair is the reason I'm still in baseball," Bottenfield said Saturday night after pitching six strong innings in the St. Louis Cardinals' 7-2 win over the Tigers.

Bottenfield (9-2) had been knocking around the big leagues for three years when he signed with Detroit as a minor league free agent in 1995. He spent the season with the Tigers' Triple-A farm club at Toledo, where Adair was the pitching coach.

As fate would have it, Bottenfield is tied with Houston's Jose Lima for the NL lead in wins. Lima also spent his formative years working with Adair in the Detroit system.

"Kent had good stuff when I got him," Adair said. "But sometimes he tried to outstuff himself. We changed his delivery and tried to make him a sinker pitcher."

All of Bottenfield's wins have come after a St. Louis loss.

"He's really intelligent," Adair said. "Kent's a student of the game. He was a fun guy to coach, always asking questions. He'd open up so you could coach him. We watched a lot of film. That's how he learned to make adjustments to hitters as the game wore on."

Still, the Tigers gave up on him and Bottenfield signed as a free agent in 1996 with the Chicago Cubs' Triple-A team in Iowa. He was signed by the Cardinals as a free agent before the start of the 1998 season.

"I've been at the bottom, as far down as I can go," Bottenfield said.

Boston's Pedro Martinez leads the majors with 11 wins.

Eli Marrero drove in two runs and Fernando Tatis extended his hitting streak to a career-high 11 games for the Cardinals, who snapped a three-game losing streak.

The second game of the interleague series drew 43,679 fans, the ffth largest non-opening day crowd at Tiger Stadium in the 1990s.

Juan Encarnacion hit a two-run homer for Detroit, but the Cardinals broke the game open with four runs in the seventh.

Willie Blair (1-6), making his first relief appearance of the season, started the seventh for Detroit and walked Joe McEwing. McEwing, who moved up on Shawon Dunston's sacrifice, scored the go-ahead run on Edgar Renteria's double.

Mark McGwire, who had gone hitless in his first seven at-bats in the series, singled and scored on a single by Tatis. Matt Anderson, the third of four Detroit pitchers in the inning, walked Darren Bragg with the bases loaded to force in another run.

"In a situation like today, there's no excuse for that," Detroit catcher Brad Ausmus said. "A pitcher should be embarrassed by that. I know I am."

Marrero made it 6-2 with an RBI single off Masao Kida and Ray Lankford had an RBI single in the eighth.

Bottenfield gave up two runs and five hits with seven strikeouts over six innings.

"Letting him know he was going to be a starter, instead of in the bullpen, probably helped Kent, too," St. Louis manager Tony La Russa said. "I think he goes out there with more weapons than when he was back and forth."

Ricky Bottalico pitched three perfect innings for his fifth save.

Walks, which have been a problem for Detroit starter Dave Mlicki all season, started a two-run fourth for the Cardinals. Lankford, who drew a one-out walk, moved up on a single by Tatis and scored on Bragg's RBI single. Marrero singled Tatis home for a 2-0 lead.

Encarnacion's fifth homer, following Gabe Kapler's single, tied it in the bottom of the inning.

Mlicki, who had an average of 5.3 walks per nine innings through his first nine starts for the Tigers, gave up two runs, seven hits, two walks and hit a batter in six innings. He had a season-high six strikeouts.

"We started slow," La Russa said. "I was really worried, because Mlicki is crafty."

Lankford, celebrating his 32nd birthday, made a big defensive play in the second. He bounced off the left-field scoreboard, fell backward and rolled over but held onto Frank Catalanotto's fly ball ending the inning and stranding Kapler at third.

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