Carpenter returns to form for Cards
Ace leads St. Louis to an 8- 0 win and a 2- 1 NL divisional series lead over Washington
WASHINGTON — Chris Carpenter was every bit the post- season ace he’s been in the past for the St. Louis Cardinals.
Taking the mound for only the fourth time in 2012, missing a rib after surgery to cure numbness on his right side, the 37- year- old Carpenter pitched scoreless ball into the sixth inning, rookie Pete Kozma delivered a three- run homer, and the defending champion Cardinals beat the Washington Nationals 8- 0 Wednesday to take a 2- 1 lead in their NL division series.
“If the baseball world doesn’t know what an amazing competitor he is by now, they haven’t been paying any attention,” Carpenter’s teammate Matt Holliday said. “Every guy on this team has watched him work his way back, watches him in between starts. He’s a stud. Just a guy that you want out there.”
All in all, it was quite a damper on the day for a Nationals Park- record 45,017 red- wearing, toweltwirling fans witnessing the first major league post- season game in the nation’s capital in 79 years.
Three relievers finished the shutout for the Cardinals, who can end the bestoffive series in today’s Game 4 at Washington.
“We’re not out of this, by a long shot,” Nationals manager Davey Johnson said. “Shoot, I’ve had my back to worse walls than this.”
Kyle Lohse will start
for St. Louis. Ross Detwiler pitches for Washington, which is sticking to its longstated plan of keeping Stephen Strasburg on the sideline the rest of the way.
The Cardinals won 10 fewer games than the majors- best Nationals this season and finished second in the NL Central, nine games behind Cincinnati, sneaking into the post- season as the league’s second wild- card under this year’s new format. But the Cardinals become a different bunch in the high- pressure playoffs — no matter that slugger Albert Pujols and manager Tony La Russa are no longer around.
Carpenter still is, even though even he didn’t expect to be pitching this year when he encountered problems during spring training and needed an operation in July to correct a nerve problem. The top rib on his right side was removed, along with connecting muscles.
He returned Sept. 21, going 0- 2 in three starts totalling 17 innings, so it wasn’t clear how he’d fare Wednesday. Yeah, right. “I’m not going to go out there and compete,” Carpenter said, “if I’m not good enough to compete.”
Carpenter allowed seven hits and walked two across his 5 2- 3 innings to improve to 10- 2 over his career in the post- season.
That includes a 4- 0 mark while helping another group of wild- card Cardinals take the title in the 2011 World Series, when he won Game 7 against Texas.