Ron Washington gave away two outs in this game with a runner on base and the middle of his lineup coming up. In the first inning, Ian Kinsler lead off with a single off the glove of David Freese. With Elvis Andrus up, Washington put on the hit and run. Andrus didn't make contact, and Yadier Molina threw out Kinsler at second base. I have no idea why Washington thought it was necessary to put this sign on. Playing for one run like that hurts your chances of winning in the first inning. With two teams with offenses like the Rangers and Cardinals have, playing for one run is the wrong move, unless it's the ninth inning, and the baserunner represents the winning run. Ian Kinsler led off the sixth inning, and again reached on a single. Washington then had Andrus bunt Kinsler to second. The game was tied at 2-2 at this point, but it's still not a situation where playing for one run helps your chances of winning the game. Kinsler was successfully moved into scoring position, but never made it home.
The Cardinals are guilty of the same thing. In the bottom of the fifth, Rafael Furcal walked to start the inning. John Jay then sacrificed to move him over to second. This took the bat out of Albert Pujols hands, as he was intentionally walked. Matt Holliday then grounded into a double play to end the inning. When you have the middle of your order coming up, and your leadoff man is on first base, He's already in scoring position. Either Furcal of Kinsler have a good chance to score on a double, and the power in both of these lineups could easily hit one over the fence. In baseball, a team only gets 27 outs, there's no clock. Those 27 outs determine how long your teams gets to score. Giving them away is counterproductive to scoring, plain and simple.
The starting pitching in this game was wasn't as good as it looked on paper. C.J. Wilson only went 5.2 innings, and walked six batters. His control was off, and he was missing the zone in all directions. Throughout his outing, he constantly had as many balls as strikes making up his pitch count. He got a few double plays and well timed strikeouts or the game could have gotten out of hand in favor of the Cardinals.
Chris Carpenter on the other hand wasn't much better. He allowed three base runners in the first two innings, but managed to get out of it. He wasn't as sharp as he's accustomed to, but settled in by the fourth inning. When he was lifted for a pinch hitter in the bottom of the sixth, he had only thrown 87 pitches, and that could leave the door open for him returning in game four.
In that sixth inning, Ron Washington elected to pitch around the offensive juggernaut known as Nick Punto to get to the pitchers spot in the lineup with two men on base. La Russa sent up Allen Craig to the plate, who hit a sharp single to right to drive in what would prove to be the winning run. In that situation, with Punto at the plato, it was clear that if he reached, that Carpenter would be lifted for a pinch hitter, and it was clear that Craig would be the first option for La Russa, especially with a lefty on the mound. I don't know it Washington thought La Russa was going to let Carpenter hit in this situation or what, but working around a 33 year old player with a career .652 OPS is never the right move.
The Rangers lineup construction is starting to aggravate me. Mike Napoli, who accounted for the only Rangers runs tonight was bumped down to seventh in the order, to move Nelson Cruz up to sixth. Moving Cruz up is great, fresh off an NLCS where he was crushing the ball, but Napoli might be this teams best hitter right now. Elvis Andrus should be batting eighth or ninth on this team, and I would be fine with moving Josh Hamilton down in the order too. Andrus just isn't as good an option as his teammates, and Hamilton appears to be hurt. He's swinging with only his upper body, and hasn't done anything at the plate since the playoffs started. Tony La Russa has two lefties in his bullpen, Arthur Rhodes, and Mark Rzepczynski. I was a little surprised when Scrabble came in to pitch to David Murphy, thinking that they might need him to pitch to Hamilton. It was at this point that I realized, Hamilton doesn't really scare me right now. When he came up in the eighth, Arthur Rhodes came in to pitch. Rhodes fell behind, but came back to get Hamilton to hit a rather weak fly to center. The two outs that Rzepczynski got to end the seventh inning turned out to be the biggest outs of the game. With runners on first and second and only one out, Rzepczynski faced two right handed pinch hitters in Chris Gentry and Esteban German. Rzepczynski was just too much for the duo, striking both of them out to end the threat from the Rangers, who never got another base runner after that inning.
This game was won by the Cardinals and went just like they would have scripted. They got a solid six innings from their starter. The 3-4-5 hitters in their order all got on base in the fourth to score them some runs, and then they took the lead in the middle innings, and turned it over to their bullpen. The bullpen continued it's success from the NLCS, and closed out the game to put them ahead 1-0 in the series.
The FOX broadcast for this game was almost unmatchable for me. The cool new infrared camera is just annoying, and was being used at some points while the game was going on. Not to mention I'm pretty sure that Joe Buck doesn't know how infrared really works. Tim McCarver sounds like he's suffering from Alzheimer's. He referred to David Murphy as Daniel Murphy twice, a lot of his analysis was completely off base, the worst was when he told the audience that C.J. Wilson was pitching around Yadier Molina. He got ahead of Molina 0-2 in the count, and then threw good two strike pitches until Molina finally struck out. The next batter was Nick Punto, who he actually pitched around and walked on four pitches, but if wasn't mentioned in this at bat.
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