Cardinals - Padres Playoff Series Update

On to San Diego for Game 3; Return Ticket for Padres Unlikely

My distaff half predicted the Padres were so bad, they'd be eliminated by the Cardinals in only two games in the best of five LDS. She was wrong: the Padres were eliminated in one game. Padre ace Jake Peavy not only gave up eight runs in four-plus innings, he mysteriously cracked a rib somewhere along the way and is doubtful for the rest of the series. The macguffin of how and when this event occured in such a way that Mr. Peavy did not notice it belies the larger truth inherent in the bleak fact of his inability to hurl for his squad, neither in game 1 of this series nor in any subsequent match - Game 5, 4, or 3. So the miracle the Padres required to win the series has turned into the impossible even in a parallel universe kind of feat. I, the coroner, say the Padres were flat-lined in Game 1, and only the obituary has to be writ before the plug can be pulled on the ailing patient.

Game 1 was more of a blowout than the 8-5 final would suggest, as the Cards popped out to an early lead and built it to 8-0 by the halfway point. Jim Edmonds started out the merriment with a solo shot in the first, followed by Peavy bleeding across three runs in the third. The torture to the fans of the bayside club was akin to that of the peculiarly diabolical water-drip of the late dynasties. So, better to be cudgeled, thought I, and the Cardinals were only too happy to oblige. By the fifth, Peavy's pitch count mounted, and after pitching gingerly to Larry Walker, Edmonds, and Prince Albert Pujols, he faced the gettable-but-pesky Reggie Sanders. Sanders has been part of a lot of playoff teams in years past, in the best Lonnie Smith tradition, but this is the first year he's gone to the dance with the same team in back to back years. St. Louis management had more confidence in Sanders' mercurial performances than other employers, and Sanders has benefitted from hitting behind Murderer's Row Missouri-style. On this occasion he did not disappoint, and belted a grand salami of the extra spicy variety to double up on the Padres.

The Pads felt like they were going gently into that good night after Jake got raked and was given the heave-ho, but they crept back into it with a steady trickle that turned into a big ninth-inning rush. Cards' starter Chris Carpenter was untouchable for six plus, and La Russa saw his chance with an eight-to-gooseegge head start on the flyweight Padre swat team to rest his ace up, so yanked him for the relief squad. A sac fly plated one off one Reuben name of Brad Thompson. The inexplicably young-old and still-employed Eric Young, pinch-hitting at the plate for the quadriceps-inhibited Dave Roberts, led off on a junior leaguer named Randy Flores with a solo shot in the eighth. Silent Cal Eldred of the Missouri Eldreds was inserted in the ninth to mop up, but gave up a leadoff double and a long out of a flyball. La Russa had seen enough of the bear cubs and decided to go with the big lion, Jason Isringhausen, in the non-save situation. A steal and a groundout brought the big tote to 8-3 but with two down. Then Isringhausen proceeded to give up four straight hits, plating two and leaving the bags choked with Friars for Ramon Hernandez. You give up enough hits, you'll find a flailer at the bottom of the barrel, and that Mr. Isringhausen so found, as Hernandez weakly waved at a poor breaking pitch outside and in the dirt to end the Padres' late incipiency on a three-pitch strikeout: final score, San Diegans 5, Saint Louisans 8.

Thanks to the nearly universal ignoration of this series which has relegated it to 9 AM starts on ESPN3, the next contest was held two days later during an empty time slot between Celebrity Bowling and the Extreme Three Card Monte Hour, so as to accommodate viewers to the other three baseball series going on at later hours. In this contest, Mark Mulder, late of the Oakland Athletics and a G-man of note in his TV persona, got the nod for the redbirds against the former parolee by unscheduled release of the Texas Rangers, one Pedro Astacio. In this imbroglio, the hapless Southern California Nine managed to get to the third frame before allowing some crooked numbers in their opponents' column. A walk, an error, a sacrifice, a misplayed fielder's choice resulting in a run, a walk, and a walk, another run: some might call it small ball, this writer considered it to be grand sloppiness. The newly wild Astacio struck out Mr. Walker and Mr. Sanders to get out of the bases-loaded jam, but the tone had been struck and the notes continued to be played out by the big band from San Lou as if they were reading from a symphonic score written out well ahead of time.

As the blue-and-gray clad visitors went relatively quietly under Mulder's ministrations, the home town red and white continued to tally chits according to the old rules of "Scientific" baseball. In the fourth, they notched two on a ground rule double following a single, with timely right-side hitting and a genuine suicide squeeze plating said runs. Astacio exited, and some no-name wunderkinds from the Padre pen managed to keep the Cards in check for a couple of innings. A second-and-third no out Padre rally in the seventh chased Mr. Mulder from the proceedings, but Julian Tavarez managed to convince the Padres to return to form, and they plated but a single run in their efforts to make the rally fizzle, thanks in large part to Miguel Olivo's double play groundout. The now ubiquitous Sanders doubled in Pujols and Edmonds in the seventh, a familiar story of runs batted in after Padre pitching failed to go after the big dogs. The Padres managed to squeeze one across off the Cards' Junior Leaguer bullpen again, on the ignominy of a hit batsmen with the bases loaded, but could not capitalize further. It seems the big wood was all used up in the construction of Petco Park and none could be spared for the long railroad ride to the Gateway City. Without ninth-inning histrionics akin to that of the first contest, Isringhausen put the visitors back on their pullman sleepers with an easy one-two-three ninth, and the final of Game 2 read 6-2, Redbirds, on the venerable scoreboard of Busch. The old place may be seeing yet a few more games, but this scribe seriously doubts it will be in Game 5 of this series, as the dulcet ocean breezes, swaying palm trees, and light-hitting statistical resume of the new host city promise the traveling college of Cardinals only more opportunities to upbraid the tenuous Friars of mission San Diego.

With the fragile Adam Eaton requiring extra rest, former Cardinal Woody Williams will take the pill for the Pads on Saturday (game time: 11 PM eastern; to be shown, we think, on the Lifetime Movies Network or possibly Home Shopping Two) against his former pupil, Matt Morris. Williams comes off the best and worst starts of his year, respectively, in the last and next to last games of the regular season, while Morris struggled mightily down the stretch after a reasonable "comeback" "year" in the first half. The slight home team advantage afforded to the Padres by those lusty ocean breezes and the pitching-friendly Petco confines cannot seem to be but overwhelmed by the tempest of run-scoring storm that would seem to accompany these two hurlers of late, on balance. The Padres seem on the brink of slipping below the .500 mark, post-season included, one last time this season, and the Cards, having seen the damage done in 2004 by the failure to reset their rotation after a long LCS, will be eager to put them to sweet rest for the year and get a few days of rest themselves before moving on to the winner of the Braves-Astros contests. That we speak not of the portent of miracles of mission San Diego, not even of any potential emulation of the now-vanquished Red Sox in their 2004 march from the brink of death, tells either of this writer's exceeding inadequacy at predicting the highly improbable, or, as would seem more likely, the better merits of the St. Louis ballclub.