José Ramírez homers and drives in a pair, Ben Lively goes 5 innings, and Guardians top Cardinals 5-1

ST. LOUIS (AP) — José Ramírez had three hits including his 36th home run, drove in two and stole his 40th base as the Cleveland Guardians beat the St. Louis Cardinals 5-1 on Friday night to move closer to the AL Central crown.

“When you watch him play, it’s OK, this guy wants to play, he wants to be the best,” Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said of Ramírez. “Nothing he does will ever surprise me. He’s capable of great things.”

Ramírez has more goals this season.

“It feels good, but obviously it’s going to feel a lot better if I’m able to hit four more homers for the 40/40,” he said through an interpreter.

Ben Lively (13-9) pitched five innings, allowing just one earned run and three hits while striking out two and walking one. It was his third consecutive start of allowing fewer than two runs.

“A couple times in the past, I’ve kind of chilled out a little bit, thinking I’ve got it figured out a little bit, and bad things happened,” Lively said. “You know what you’re doing, (so) keep going. I’ve got plenty of time in the offseason to think about it.”

Erik Sabrowski gave up two hits in 2 1/3 innings for the first save of his professional career.

Andrés Giménez and Lane Thomas added solo home runs for the Guardians. Thomas, who began his career in St. Louis, hit his first homer at Busch Stadium since Sept. 10, 2020.

The Guardians magic number for the division is now one. The Cardinals’ loss and the Arizona Diamondbacks victory over the Milwaukee Brewers officially eliminated St. Louis from postseason contention for the second consecutive season.

Cardinals starter Kyle Gibson (8-8) allowed four runs (three earned) in six innings. He struck out two and walked three, allowing multiple home runs for just the fifth time in 29 starts.

“Felt really good, (but) we’d like to have two pitches back,” Gibson said.

“Especially against this lineup, I feel like (Gibson) actually navigated it well,” Cardinals manager Oli Marmol said. “You’ve got a ton of lefties in there, a lot of guys that make contact, they’re in the air quite a bit, they don’t swing and miss. He gave us a shot.”

Lars Nootbaar had two hits for the Cardinals, including a popup double to shallow left field in the fourth inning to drive in St. Louis’ run. Thomas Saggese had two hits in his first career start at third base. His fourth inning throwing error allowed Bo Naylor to advance to second base on a single and score on an RBI base hit by Daniel Schneemann.

The Guardians, who locked up a playoff spot on Thursday at home, will clinch the AL Central with one more win or one more loss by the Kansas City Royals.

“(Clinching at home) was really fun, and we should enjoy it, but that doesn’t mean the work stops,” Vogt said. “We have to continue to push all the way through to the end.”

TRAINER’S ROOM

Cardinals: Marmol said the Cardinals are still evaluating how the team will align its pitching rotation over its final eight games of the regular season. RHP Sonny Gray described pitching through undisclosed “lingering things” following his most recent start on Sept. 18.

Guardians: RHP Alex Cobb (right middle finger blister) is “building up volume” before pitching in a game, Vogt said. OF Steven Kwan (mid-back irritation) is eligible to come off the injured list on Tuesday, and Vogt said the team is “targeting” that day for his activation. “Obviously we don’t know what’s going to happen between now and then, but his progression is going well. He’s feeling better every day,” Vogt said. RHP Carlos Carrasco cleared waivers and accepted an outright assignment to Triple-A Columbus.

UP NEXT

Miles Mikolas (8-11, 5.49) starts for St. Louis in the second game of the series, opposed by Cleveland LHP Matthew Boyd (2-1, 2.52). Mikolas is trying to avoid becoming the first Cardinals pitcher since Kip Wells in 2007 to pitch at least 150 innings with an ERA of 5.50 or higher.

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB

Cleveland Guardians' Andres Gimenez (0) celebrates as he rounds the bases past St. Louis Cardinals third baseman Thomas Saggese after hitting a solo home run during the sixth inning of a baseball game Friday, Sept. 20, 2024, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

St. Louis Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol watches from the dugout during the seventh inning of a baseball game against the Cleveland Guardians Friday, Sept. 20, 2024, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

Cleveland Guardians' Lane Thomas, left, grounds out as St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Paul Goldschmidt handles the throw during the fifth inning of a baseball game Friday, Sept. 20, 2024, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

Cleveland Guardians' Lane Thomas arrives home after hitting a solo home run during the eighth inning of a baseball game against the St. Louis Cardinals Friday, Sept. 20, 2024, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

Cleveland Guardians starting pitcher Ben Lively throws during the first inning of a baseball game against the St. Louis Cardinals Friday, Sept. 20, 2024, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

St. Louis Cardinals starting pitcher Kyle Gibson pauses on the mound after giving up a solo home run to Cleveland Guardians' Jose Ramirez during the fifth inning of a baseball game Friday, Sept. 20, 2024, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

Cleveland Guardians' Jose Ramirez rounds the bases after hitting a solo home run during the fifth inning of a baseball game against the St. Louis Cardinals Friday, Sept. 20, 2024, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

Cleveland Guardians' Jose Ramirez rounds the bases after hitting a solo home run during the fifth inning of a baseball game against the St. Louis Cardinals Friday, Sept. 20, 2024, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

STOCKHOLM (AP) — John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for discoveries and inventions that formed the building blocks of machine learning.

“This year’s two Nobel Laureates in physics have used tools from physics to develop methods that are the foundation of today’s powerful machine learning,” the Nobel committee said in a press release.

Hopfield’s research is carried out at Princeton University and Hinton works at the University of Toronto.

Ellen Moons, a member of the Nobel committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said the two laureates “used fundamental concepts from statistical physics to design artificial neural networks that function as associative memories and find patterns in large data sets.”

She said that such networks have been used to advance research in physics and “have also become part of our daily lives, for instance in facial recognition and language translation.”

The Nobel Prize in physics was awarded Tuesday, a day after two American scientists won the medicine prize for their discovery of microRNA.

Three scientists won last year's physics Nobel for providing the first split-second glimpse into the superfast world of spinning electrons, a field that could one day lead to better electronics or disease diagnoses.

The 2023 award went to French-Swedish physicist Anne L’Huillier, French scientist Pierre Agostini and Hungarian-born Ferenc Krausz for their work with the tiny part of each atom that races around the center and is fundamental to virtually everything: chemistry, physics, our bodies and our gadgets.

Six days of Nobel announcements opened Monday with Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun winning the medicine prize for their discovery of tiny bits of genetic material that serve as on and off switches inside cells that help control what the cells do and when they do it.

If scientists can better understand how they work and how to manipulate them, it could one day lead to powerful treatments for diseases like cancer.

The physics prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by the award's creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. It has been awarded 117 times. The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.

Nobel announcements continue with the chemistry physics prize on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics award on Oct. 14.

Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands.

FILE - A close-up view of a Nobel Prize medal at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md., Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

FILE - A Nobel Prize medal is displayed before a ceremony at the Swedish Ambassador's Residence in London, Monday, Dec. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)

The Nobel Prize in physics is being awarded, a day after 2 Americans won the medicine prize

The Nobel Prize in physics is being awarded, a day after 2 Americans won the medicine prize

FILE - A bust of Alfred Nobel on display following a press conference at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, on Monday, Oct. 3, 2022. (Henrik Montgomery/TT News Agency via AP, File)