>>Cardinals Top Mets

 

Paul DeJong had the first multihomer game of his young big league career Sunday and helped the St. Louis Cardinals beat the New York Mets 5-1 to avoid an opening three-game sweep.

 

A 2015 graduate of Illinois State who majored in biochemistry and pre-medicine, he was selected by the Cardinals in the fourth round of that year's amateur draft. During spring training last month, when the Cardinals gave him the big contract, he attended several social events of the Palm Beach Symphony - not a regular nightlife stop of most big leaguers.

 

DeJong sent a fastball from Steven Matz off the facing of the left-field second deck in the second inning and drove Jacob Rhame's slider off an orange M&M advertisement just over the left-field wall in the eighth for his second solo homer.

 

DeJong was 9 for 12 in a series against the Mets just before last year's All-Star break and is 15 for 41 versus New York with five doubles, six homers and eight RBIs overall. He is 3 for 3 with a pair of homers against Matz.

 

Marcell Ozuna broke out of an 0-for-9 start with three hits, including an RBI double in the third and a run-scoring single in the fifth.Yadier Molina hit a leadoff homer in the fourth for the Cardinals, outscored 15-6 in the first two games.

 

Miles Mikolas makes his first big league appearance since Aug. 25, 2014, when he starts Monday at Milwaukee. He spent the past three seasons with the Yomiuri Giants in Japan's Central League.

 

>>Marlins Blank Cubs

 

Dillon Peters threw six sharp innings, Brian Anderson hit a three-run double to highlight a five-run fifth and the Marlins beat the Chicago Cubs 6-0 on Sunday to split their opening four-game series against a team that could very easily be a championship contender.

Chad Wallach - who started the season 0 for 11 - had two hits for the Marlins, who were hitless in their first four innings before getting the offense going. Peters (1-0) helped out a well-worked bullpen in a big way, allowing six hits, striking out two and walking only one as the Marlins shut out the Cubs for only the second time in the teams' last 72 meetings.

 

Wallach's RBI single - the first run driven in of his career - got the Marlins on the board in the fifth, and they were off and running. Derek Dietrich's single under the glove of Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo drove home Wallach to make it 2-0, and Anderson's two-out line drive to right off Cubs starter Jose Quintana (0-1) cleared the bases.

 

Quintana gave up six hits and six runs in six innings. The last of the runs charged to him scored when he uncorked a wild pitch in the sixth.

 

Kyle Schwarber had a pair of hits for the Cubs, who stranded 10 runners on Sunday and 42 runners for the series - a lot even when considering one of the four games in Miami was a 17-inning affair on Friday night.

 

Tyler Chatwood gets the start in Cincinnati on Monday against Reds RHP Tyler Mahle.

 

>>White Sox, Royals Snowed Out

 

The season-opening series finale between the Kansas City Royals and Chicago White Sox was postponed Sunday with snow in the afternoon forecast and temperatures struggling to reach the freezing mark.

 

The game will be made up as part of a day-night doubleheader on April 28. The makeup game will begin at 1:15 p.m. and the original game will be moved back an hour to 7:15 p.m.

 

The White Sox won the opener Thursday with a six-homer barrage in a 14-7 rout, then rallied in the eighth inning for a 4-3 victory over their AL Central rivals on Saturday night.

 

Chicago continues its season-opening road trip Monday night in Toronto, while Kansas City departs for its own six-game road trip beginning Monday in Detroit.