Cards Pound Brewers 12-3 To Even Series

It might seem to you that Baseball Nation has been paying more attention to the American League than the National League. Maybe it doesn’t seem that way to you, and maybe it isn’t that way at all, but it seems to me that it might seem that way to you, and that’s probably because I personally have been paying more attention to the American League than the National League, and the way I am is the way everybody is. I’m so understanding!

Now, granted, “down in the zone” is one of those things that baseball men say so often that it’s almost completely lost its meaning. The key to every game against a good offense is that a pitcher has to stay down in the zone. If a pitcher is struggling to throw strikes, he needs to get calm and work down in the zone. And so on. But sometimes “down in the zone” has its merits, and it’s worth examining how the Brewers pitched Pujols last night. His four at bats that resulted in hits:

But Albert Pujols.

Yeah, not the story. Albert Pujols. If I had the clearance and the technological savvy, I would have stopped all this writing nonsense and just changed the front page:

It might have been the most irrelevant home run in NLCS history, but don’t call it unimpressive:

If nothing else, Fielder’s eighth-inning blast gave the Milwaukee fans -- most of whom have stuck around, even though it’s well after 10 on a school night and their Brewers are getting blown out -- one more happy Game 2 memory. However irrelevant.

pause until laughter subsides

Five straight singles after Pujols’s double brought the score to 11-2, and barring a miracle comeback that will come up in every playoff series for the next 94 years, it looks like the Cardinals will head to St. Louis with the series tied 1-1.

Except:

You can’t really tell there, but Weeks was - very barely - safe at first, as his foot beat the ball to the bag. Sam Holbrook didn’t think so, costing the Brewers at least one run. That one run would’ve only changed this from a 7-2 game to a 7-3 game, but the Brewers have sufficiently explosive an offense that that call could be a pretty big call.

Except the Cardinals have this guy who puts a bad hurt on the baseball every time he comes up. Tonight, anyway.

In the fifth inning, Jon Jay doubled and Albert Pujols doubled.