Willson Contreras' two homers lead Cardinals past Royals

Willson Contreras belted a pair of two-run homers to fuel the visiting St. Louis Cardinals to an 8-5 victory over the Kansas City Royals on Friday.

Contreras opened the scoring with a blast off Michael Lorenzen in the first inning and capped his three-hit performance with a mammoth homer to left field off Angel Zerpa in the ninth.

St. Louis' Alec Burleson, who also had three hits, went deep to lead off the third inning with his team-leading 20th homer of the season.

Victor Scott II ripped a go-ahead two-run double in the eighth inning for the Cardinals, who rode a 13-hit attack into their third win in four games.

Michael Massey (3-for-4) drove in two runs and Kyle Isbel, Salvador Perez and Maikel Garcia each added an RBI for the Royals, who have lost three of their past four games.

Kansas City scored five consecutive runs to claim a 5-3 lead before Paul Goldschmidt scored on a groundout by Tommy Pham to halve the Cardinals' deficit in the sixth inning. St. Louis pulled ahead in the eighth after Scott's double into the right field corner off Chris Stratton plated Brendan Donovan and Pham.

Both runs were charged to Will Smith (0-4).

The late uprising made a winner of Matthew Liberatore (3-3), who struck out three batters over three scoreless, hitless innings of relief of Miles Mikolas.

Andrew Kittredge bridged the gap to Ryan Helsley, who induced Vinnie Pasquantino to ground into a game-ending double play to secure his 37th save of the season.

Kansas City erased an early three-run deficit by scoring three runs in the third inning off Mikolas. Garcia singled and scored on Isbel's triple to the base of the wall in right-center field. Isbel came home on Massey's single to center. Massey advanced to second on a groundout and came around to score on Perez's two-out single to left field, forging a 3-3 tie.

Garcia gave Kansas City the lead when his RBI double plated MJ Melendez in the fourth inning. Garcia later scored on Massey's sacrifice fly to increase the Royals' advantage to 5-3.

--Field Level Media