Okay, first thing’s first: Unless broadcaster Jon Miller was sick, there was no excuse for his lifeless performance behind the mic today. Now, I love listening to Jon Miller and Joe Morgan on Sunday Night Baseball, but he totally phoned this game in, sounding bored that St. Louis was losing and denying him the opportunity to talk about Albert Pujols for three hours.
In fairness to Miller, the game wasn’t terribly exciting. Chris Young took the Cardinals hitters to school, striking out nine in 6 2/3 innings. The vaunted foursome of Pujols, Jim Edmonds, Scott Rolen and Juan Encarnacion went 0-15 with seven strikeouts, including two from the impossible-to-whiff Pujols. Their only run came from a blast in the eighth by So Taguchi (!). I have never heard a St. Louis crowd as quiet as this one.
San Diego scored all their runs in one inning as well. Russell Branyan doubled to right, scoring Adrian Gonzalez and Mike Cameron. Branyan took third on Ronnie Belliard’s fielding error, then scored on Geoff Blum’s sacrifice fly. That brings the total number of runs scored by the Padres in three playoff games to…four. When they actually get hitters on base, they either choke at the plate– they hit four doubles today, but only one of them resulted in any runs – or they space out on the base paths. Witness Mike Piazza getting picked off at first by catcher Yadier Molina.
San Diego now has to face Chris Carpenter for a second time in Game 4. Uh oh. If the Padres have been saving their hits for a rainy day, this better be it.
