It's not a baseball series if, at least once, you aren't compelled to throw up your hands and say, hopefully to yourself and hopefully without moving your lips, "That's baseball."
Tony La Russa's decision to swap Allen Craig for Lance Berkman against a left-hander worked perfectly, Matt Holliday hit a ball well out of the infield, and the pitching was competent as ever. The offense successfully exploited Randy Wolf's weakness and hit two home runs.
But the home runs were solo shots, and Wolf was otherwise at his best, and the Cardinals couldn't get to him before closers A and B, John Axford and Francisco Rodriguez, came in to finish things off. Two home runs from the middle of the order, two runs scored. That's baseball.
This is baseball: The Cardinals have Jaime Garcia, by fielding-independent pitching statistics their best pitcher after Chris Carpenter, going against Zack Greinke in their last game of the series at Busch Stadium. They don't need to win it, but it would certainly work out nicer that way.
Whatever happens, there'll probably be some more "That's Baseball" on the horizon—Garcia and Greinke were each the official enigma of their respective rotation, and they've been that way so long that it will be surprising enough to be frustrating whether they're brilliant or terrible.
One thing to watch out for, besides frustration: The state of the Cardinals' heavily worked bullpen. Fernando Salas, official rotation backstop, is almost certainly out after throwing three innings in two days; the rest of the pen will be active, but given how much they've been used in the postseason the Cardinals could really use seven innings from a starting pitcher, any starting pitcher.
