Crooked innings sink Memphis as Redbirds fall 13-6 in Toledo

Two crooked innings turned a winnable night into a long one for Memphis, and the Redbirds paid for it in a 13-6 loss to the Toledo Mud Hens on Saturday night at Fifth Third Field in Toledo, Ohio.

The damage began early and never fully stopped. Quinn Mathews was tagged for six runs, five earned, on six hits in his start, and five of those runs came in the second inning. That left Memphis chasing almost immediately, with the kind of margin that forces a lineup to press and a pitching staff to spend the rest of the night trying to keep the game from breaking open again.

Memphis still found offense in the middle of the order, and Jimmy Crooks supplied the loudest swing of the game for the Redbirds. The 24-year-old catcher from Euless, Texas, launched his 12th homer of the season in the fourth inning, a two-run shot to right-center that cut the deficit to one and briefly gave Memphis a path back into the game. Crooks finished with two hits, as did Leo Bernal, another key name in the organization’s current prospect wave.

That pairing mattered because Memphis opened the season with eight of the Cardinals’ top 30 prospects on its Opening Day roster, including Bernal, the Cardinals’ No. 6 prospect, Mathews at No. 7 and Crooks at No. 8. The idea in Triple-A is that those players are supposed to sharpen into immediate help, but nights like this also show how fragile that progress can look when the pitching staff cannot contain an opponent’s first surge.

Toledo never let the Redbirds settle in. The Mud Hens added enough later to make sure the early rally did not stick, and Memphis was forced to absorb another defeat in a stretch that had already featured consecutive losses for the third time in 2026. After Friday’s game, the Redbirds’ lead over Gwinnett had been trimmed to half a game, a reminder that every blowout on the road can carry real weight in a tight International League race.

Matt Pushard provided the lone scoreless outing for Memphis, striking out two in a perfect frame, a brief relief from a night otherwise defined by traffic and damage. The Redbirds now head back to AutoZone Park, where they open a six-game series against the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp on Tuesday, May 12, with first pitch set for 6:45 p.m. CDT. After Toledo, the takeaway is plain: Memphis has enough bat speed to answer, but until it stops the bleeding in one bad inning, those answers will keep coming in defeat.