It's not a surprise that the St. Louis Cardinals lost to Zack Greinke at Miller Park. The Milwaukee Brewers carried a huge home-road split all year—they were 57-24 there during the regular season—and Zack Greinke is an outstanding pitcher who had the same kind of season Jaime Garcia did this year, posting an average ERA despite even more exceptional peripherals.
The problem is that the Cardinals have just gotten too good. They're not losing games in the usual way anymore.
In June, when the Brewers stopped losing games at all, Greinke and company could have rolled Garcia over for two or three runs in the first and then watched as the Cardinals never threatened at all, and they would lose and we would feel depressed and resigned about it. Such is the way of things.
What happens now is more exciting and more insidious—the Cardinals have begun to rally so frequently it's become almost obligatory, and for all the improvement in the bullpen and the starting pitching the staff can't make all those rallies stick. When David Freese drove in three on a wind-aided opposite-field home run and Lance Berkman made the lead 5-2, the game seemed over. It very quickly was not.
The Cardinals' newfound reluctance to fold has made them a great team, but it hasn't made them invincible—and it's made losing distinctly losable games endlessly frustrating in a way nobody quite expected. Monday the Cardinals will send Edwin Jackson out against slumping third starter Shaun Marcum, a matchup that's more winnable at first blush; if they split the first set of games at Miller Park they'll be very well positioned to take the series.
Especially if they keep rallying. You'll lose some of those, but you won't lose most of those.
