MILWAUKEE — Lorenzo Cain fired the ball high into the air and jumped up and down in the outfield, yelling and shaking his head from side to side.
“I let them know. Not today,” a grinning Cain said.
Not today, indeed.
Cain soared above the wall to rob Jose Martinez of a tying home run for the final out, lifting Christian Yelich and the Milwaukee Brewers over the St. Louis Cardinals 5-4 on Thursday.
With at least one Cardinals player in the bullpen already raising his arms to celebrate, Cain pulled back the pinch-hit drive by Martinez in right-center. A fired-up Cain and Yelich then started celebrating an opening day that looked a lot like Milwaukee’s run to the NL Championship Series last October.
“I think we know our identity as a team, how we win games,” Yelich said. “That seems to be our formula.”
Big Island natvie Kolten Wong homered twice for St. Louis and Harrison Bader also connected. The Cardinals blew a 3-0 lead in their fifth consecutive loss against the Brewers, including a three-game sweep last September that helped propel Milwaukee to the NL Central title.
Paul Goldschmidt went 0 for 3 with three strikeouts and a walk in his first regular-season game for St. Louis since he was acquired in an offseason trade with Arizona. The All-Star slugger had a short conversation with plate umpire Gary Cederstrom after he looked at a called third strike in each of his first two at-bats.
“It would have been nice to come back and win,” Goldschmidt said. “It was a great play by Cain there at the end.”
Yelich got right back to work after winning the NL MVP award last season, putting Milwaukee ahead to stay with a three-run homer off Miles Mikolas in the third. The Miller Park crowd of 45,304 roared as Yelich glided around the bases.
Mike Moustakas and pitcher Jhoulys Chacin also connected for the Brewers. Josh Hader retired five in a row before Cain’s play finished off the save.
“These kinds of wins make baseball fun,” Moustakas said.
Chacin (1-0) struck out seven in 5 1/3 innings in his third opening-day start. He also helped himself with two hits, singling and scoring on Yelich’s drive before hitting a 2-2 pitch from Mikolas into Milwaukee’s bullpen in left-center for his second career homer in the fifth.
Mikolas (0-1), a surprise star last season when he went 18-4 in his first year with the Cardinals, allowed five runs and five hits in five innings.
“I thought I made some good pitches but they hit my mistakes pretty hard,” he said.
Wong’s second homer made it 5-4 in the seventh, but Milwaukee’s depleted bullpen held on. Hader struck out four, fanning Goldschmidt, Paul DeJong and Marcell Ozuna in the eighth and Dexter Fowler in the ninth.
Hader was a key figure for the Brewers last year, and he became even more important when key relievers Jeremy Jeffress and Corey Knebel opened this season on the injured list. Jeffress is coming back from a sore right shoulder, but Knebel could be headed for season-ending elbow surgery.