Quinn Mathews took a no-hitter into the sixth inning Monday night and the Cardinals rode it to a 2-1 win over the Giants, with Alec Burleson delivering an RBI single that added to the best RBI total in the majors. Two runs. That was the whole margin for error, and St. Louis never needed more than that.

This is the kind of September game that doesn't make a highlight package and stays with you anyway. A young starter finding a version of himself that nobody can touch for five innings, a lineup scraping together exactly enough, and a one-run finish where every pitch after the sixth felt heavier than the one before it.

What happened in Cardinals vs. Giants on Monday night

Mathews was the story from the jump. No hits through five, into the sixth before the Giants finally put one on the board sheet. I don't have his full line in front of me yet, so I'm not going to pretend I know his pitch count or his strikeout total. What I know is the shape of it, and the shape of it is a kid who had San Francisco guessing for most of a night.

Burleson's single provided the run that mattered most in a 2-1 game. He leads the majors in RBIs, which is the kind of stat the sharp crowd loves to wave off as a product of opportunity, and fair enough, RBIs need traffic in front of them. But somebody still has to hit the ball with people on base in the middle of September, and he has done it more than anyone else in the sport this year. Credit where it's earned.

The Giants got their run and got the tying run's worth of innings to work with. They just never got the hit.

Quinn Mathews and what a no-hit bid means for a young Cardinals arm

Mathews arrived in the organization with a reputation built on an absurd college workload, the Stanford lefty whose NCAA tournament complete game ran to 156 pitches and became a small piece of folklore before he ever signed a professional contract. That reputation cuts both ways. It tells you he competes. It also tells you people have been counting his pitches with one eyebrow up since before he was a pro.

Monday night is the other side of that ledger: a live arm in a big-league rotation doing something rare in front of a home crowd that has watched a lot of baseball and knows exactly what inning it is when the scoreboard still has a zero in the hit column.

checked the almanac: the last Cardinals no-hitter came from Bud Smith on September 3, 2001, at San Diego, a rookie who had barely unpacked. That's a long time for a franchise with this much pitching history to go without one. Busch Stadium knows the math, which is why sixth innings like this one get loud.

What comes next for the Giants and Cardinals

The two clubs go again Tuesday at 7:45 PM ET in St. Louis, and the Giants have the more urgent business. One run on a night when your opponent's starter was untouchable for five is one thing. Two nights in a row is a pattern, and San Francisco's bats have to answer for it.

For the Cardinals, the question is simpler and more fun: does Mathews's next turn look anything like this one? A no-hit bid is a great night, not a projection. The next three starts tell you far more about the arm than the loudest one does.

I'll be watching Burleson's at-bats with runners on, and I'll be watching how deep Mathews gets into the season with his stuff intact. Both of those matter more to this franchise than one 2-1 result.