By the Iron_Throne

In a mirror image of the opening game of this brief set, the Cardinals defeated the Cubs 4-0 at Busch Stadium yesterday. The major story of this game was the excellent pitching of newly signed Chris Carpenter. With a second strong start after getting knocked around at Philadelpia in his second game, Carpenter again made Jocketty look like a genius for locking Carp up for two years for the paltry sum of $13 million, with an option for 2008.

With the Cubs showing little patience against a pitcher coming off an arm injury, Carpenter needed only 96 pitches to get through the first 8.2 innings. After a rough start with two medium-hit ground balls that scooted past the reach of the two new components of the infield, Carpenter induced a double play and set down the next ten Cubs quickly into the sixth inning. A looping single from the incomparable Neifi Perez (seriously, PECOTA lists his comps as thumpers such as Rey Ordonez and Rey Sanchez) was followed by a bizarre play. It initially appeared as if Cory Patterson had hit a weak grounder that Pujols grabbed for the force at first and Eckstein took the quick relay to nab Perez at second. However, in his swing, Patteson nicked the glove of an over-eager Yadier Molina to nullify the double play with a catcher's interference call. Carpenter battled back against the heart of the Cubs' order by striking out Aramis Ramirez and getting Burnitz on a soft fly out to center.

Through all this, the Cardinals weren't looking much better against the erratic Ryan Dempster. Not showing their best, the Cardinals looked impotent most of the night as Edmonds and Sanders took it upon themselves to keep the air flowing in the stadium with powerful strokes of the bats and Walker looked like Sisyphus trying to get the ball out of the infield. Molina continued to hit the ball hard, but always at someone. All this changed in the bottom of the eighth, as Dusty decided that everybody should get a chance to play and began to roll out his whole bullpen in what is becoming a tradition for these Cards/Cubs meetings. In a rare show of prescience, the ESPN announcers predicted that bringing in the left-handed Remlinger to face the slumping Walker could only end badly for the Small Bears, as Walker has dominated in their previous meetings. And Walker continued to own Remlinger by jacking a no-doubter into the stands for his second home run of the season to add a precious insurance run. Another reliever and a two-run homer by Rolen and the Cards were comfortably up 4-0 giving Carp the chance for the complete game. Instead of trying to dig into the bullpen by stretching out Carpenter, the Cubs decided to go after Carpenter by swinging at everything and popped up the first two pitches for outs. Looking pretty gassed at this point, Carpenter gave up a single to Lee and his first walk, to Hollandsworth, before throwing everything he had left at the pinch-hitting Michael Barrett and striking him out with a Darryl Kile-type curve to clinch the game.

In much the same way as yesterday, a good pitcher dominated some weak bats and a mediocre pitcher put up some good numbers against an impatient lineup. This time the hometown crowd rejoiced and the stage was set for a long, hot summer of the Cubs chasing the Cards in the standings.

Cardinals: 9-5, two games ahead of the fourth place Cubs.

the Iron_Throne