Cardinals 13, Yankees 7: Alec Burleson's Three-Homer Night Erases a 6-Run Deficit

August 3, 2026 - Bronx, New York - Three batters into the game, Alec Burleson had already done something for the Cardinals that most nights never require: made the deficit before it happened.

He turned on a first-inning fastball from Cam Schlittler and lined it into the short porch in right. That was homer one. St. Louis trailed 13-7 by the end of the night on paper, but the story is that they trailed by six runs at one point and still walked away with a laugher.

A quiet middle, then chaos

Schlittler settled in after that opening blow, and the Yankees built a lead of their own through the middle innings, six runs deep before St. Louis had an answer. Burleson provided the first crack, taking lefty reliever Tim Hill deep to the short porch in the fourth for a two-run shot that cut into it. It didn't feel like a turning point yet. It was.

The Cardinals bullpen held the line just long enough for the lineup to turn over one more time, and that's when Angel Chivilli walked into the eighth inning and never walked back out clean.

The seven-run eighth

This is the inning that decided the game, and it happened fast. Nathan Church led it off with a go-ahead three-run homer to right, the kind of swing that flips a scoreboard and a dugout mood in one motion. Two batters later, rookie catcher Jimmie Crooks went deep to the same field. Then Burleson stepped in against Chivilli one more time and lifted a 2-2 slider to right for his third home run of the night, a mark no Cardinals hitter had reached since Iván Herrera in April 2025.

Three homers, six RBIs, one inning that outscored most full games. St. Louis put up seven runs before New York could find an out that mattered, and a 13-7 final was really a 7-1 eighth inning wearing a final score's clothes.

What the Yankees have to answer for

New York had chances to close this out clean and didn't. Schlittler's final line, four runs allowed with six strikeouts over three innings, tells part of the story, but the bullpen's inability to hold a multi-run lead against a lineup that had already shown its power is the bigger issue. Luis García Jr. and Cody Bellinger kept the Yankees competitive on the scoreboard for most of the night. It wasn't enough once Chivilli couldn't find outs in the eighth.

For a Yankees club that spent the trade deadline reshaping its bullpen and lineup, this is exactly the kind of late-inning collapse the front office was trying to prevent.

AthX Engine angle

Burleson's night was the best of the slate by a wide margin: 18 hitting fantasy points on three home runs and six RBIs, the top individual score anywhere in baseball on August 3. Church added 12 FP on his own three-run blast, and St. Louis as a team led every club on the night with 22 AthX Engine team fantasy points, the highest mark of any of the eight games played. New York finished at 0, a stark illustration of how a blown multi-run lead reads on the platform's scoring, not just the standings.

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What it means

St. Louis snapped a night that looked lost by the sixth inning into a laugher by the ninth, the kind of comeback that swings a clubhouse's momentum for a week. New York now has to answer bullpen questions with the stretch run bearing down and very little margin left in a crowded AL East race.

*Sources: MLB.com gameday final, ESPN box score, AthX Engine daily scoring for August 3, 2026. Information only; not financial advice.*