Carlson leads Cards to Gulf Coast League title

The GCL Cardinals bent but didn’t break in the deciding third game of the Gulf Coast League championship on Wednesday, rallying to beat the GCL Phillies, 4-2, to take home the title.

In the final game, the Cardinals overcame a 2-0 first-inning deficit, scoring a run in the fourth and taking the lead for good with a three-run sixth, while their pitchers shut out the Phillies the rest of the way. Starter Juan Alvarez allowed just the two runs, one earned, in 5 1/3 innings, and Colton Thomson closed out the game and the championship with 3 2/3 innings of scoreless relief.

Phils first baseman Danny Zardon accounted for both his team’s runs with a two-RBI knock in the first, capping a strong postseason in which the 21-year-old batted .357 with a 1.009 OPS.

• Box score

The Cardinals’ comeback started in the fourth inning, when left fielder Dylan Carlson, the organization’s No. 21 prospect according to MLBPipeline.com, worked a two-out walk. He eventually scored on a Wadye Ynfante single to get his team on the board.

The score was still 2-1 in the sixth when Carlson, St. Louis’ second first-round pick in the 2016 Draft, brought home the game-tying run with an RBI groundout. Two batters later, the 17-year-old scored the go-ahead run, which would hold up as the series-winner, on a throwing error by Phillies shortstop Cole Stobbe.

Special group of players and coaches! Awesome way to start off the first professional season #GCL champs pic.twitter.com/muzHszJviK

— Dylan Carlson (@DCarls_06) September 7, 2016

Special group of players and coaches! Awesome way to start off the first …

continue reading in source mlb.mlb.com