mattmo clemens
14-10, 4.11 13-8, 1.87
i have little further to say except "go cards." well, that and one other meaningless but amusing bit of trivia: in recent memory, the cardinals have a damn good postseason record against pitchers with uber career win totals. going back to 1982 they have faced four 300-game winners in the postseason -- clemens, don sutton, greg maddux, and phil niekro -- for a combined eight starts. they're 6-2 in those games and have scored an average of 5.6 runs. drop the bar to 250 wins and we can add three more pitchers --bert blyleven, tom glavine, and randy johnson -- and seven more starts; the cards' record in those games is 5-2, with a per-game run avg of 5.2. the cardinals' winning pitchers in those games included john stuper, mike james, todd stottlemyre, woody williams, bruce sutter, darryl kile . . . . and matt morris.
i'd settle for four runs today. i said at the outset that the series boils down to this question: how many times can the cards push 3 or 4 runs across and make it stand up? so far they're 1 for 2. they face backe tomorrow and have carpenter throwing on monday; if they can steal a win today all of a sudden it lines up very nicely for them.