St. Louis Cardinals' offense squares up for 11-5 win vs. Milwaukee Brewers

The Cardinals are now hitting .377, so the bigger story would be if they somehow hadn't won their first two games. Now, at least, in putting 11 runs on Yovani Gallardo and the Brewers they've beaten back the can't-get-hits-when-it-counts meme for a week or so.

This was kind of a caricature of the Cardinals' 2012 offensive arrangement—hits from everywhere in the lineup, power from the three veteran free agents, and, for good measure, some piling-on from the fruits of the team's impressive minor league depth. (Matt Carpenter probably needed that double—after his arid MLB stint last year he finally hit a ball into the air and got a hit out of it.)

Jaime Garcia wasn't especially sharp, and Kyle McClellan looked like a $2.5 million mop-up pitcher—probably because that's exactly what he is—but that's all there was to dislike this afternoon. The team won't always be this healthy and this locked-in, but with Allen Craig still on the way they have a little slack to pull on even now.