World Series: Texas 4 - 2 St. Louis (Texas leads 3-2)

So far, the story of this World Series is pretty simple. After Game 3, the Cardinals appeared to have a huge advantage. They were up two games to one. They had battered the Texas bullpen. They still had Carpenter ready to pitch Game 5. And they had Games 6 and 7 at home. Now all but the last of those advantages are gone, and for a very simple reason: the Cardinals were held scoreless in 17 of the 18 innings of Games 4 and 5. They only scored two runs in 18 innings. No team is going to win too many games with that kind of average.

Tonight, the Cardinals tried every small ball trick in the book, in a desperate attempt to score runs. The results were disastrous. Think about it like this. A baseball team is given 27 outs at the beginning of the game. You can use these outs however you want. Texas took the position that it would basically take 27 chances to hit for extra bases. A lot of its batters looked bad as a result. But enough guys made contact to put four runs on the board. St. Louis actually gave away five of its 27 outs -- the Cardinals laid down three sacrifice bunts and had two runners caught stealing. So Texas pitchers only had to record 22 outs to complete the game. In other words, instead of pitching 9 innings, they only had to pitch 7 1/3 innings. Plus, on three different occasions, they could intentionally walk Pujols and not pitch to him at all.

I'm not criticizing Tony LaRussa. The Cardinals grounded into a huge double play early on, and I think after that LaRussa was just trying to avoid more double plays. But when you have so many holes in your lineup, you are forced to take chances that put you in a difficult position.

The Cardinals are very fortunate at this point that they get a day off to rest their pitchers, and they are even more fortunate that they can get out of the little bandbox in Dallas and head home to St. Louis. Perhaps in a more normal ballpark, and without their DH, Texas's strategy of swinging for the fences will be less effective. But this was a very difficult loss for St. Louis, and my guess is that Cardinal fans will regret the outcome of this game for a long, long time.