#2011 nlds

[deadpanatalltimes]

Eliminated in Philly

[justinssportscorner]

MILWAUKEE -- The Brewers' task was crystal-clear from the first day of Spring Training, when Zack Greinke and Shaun Marcum were getting comfortable with a team that finally had a contender-quality pitching staff:

Win the National League Central, but don't stop there.

"If we would have lost today," Ryan Braun said amid a shower of champagne on Friday night, "I think everything we accomplished all year would have been meaningless. We needed a win today to have our own legacy."

And now they do, though it took longer and forced a few more heart palpitations than any of the Brewers had hoped. A hysteria-inducing 3-2 win over the D-backs in Game 5 clinched the NL Division Series in front of 44,028 fans, sending the Brewers to a League Championship Series for the first time since 1982. They played the California Angels then, and Milwaukee was an American League town.

They faced the Cardinals in that World Series, fitting considering those teams will meet again in the NLCS. The Brewers won a win-or-go-home NLDS Game 5 on Friday that was decided in the bottom of the 10th inning on Nyjer Morgan's single after John Axford's first blown save since mid-April.

Cecil Cooper, meet Tony Clutch.

Morgan, a.k.a. Tony Plush and a plethora of other personalities, gave the Brewers their first postseason series win in 29 years, and gave the franchise an iconic hit to celebrate alongside Cooper's go-ahead single in the decisive Game 5 of the '82 AL Championship Series to send the Brewers to their only World Series.

General manager Doug Melvin, the man who acquired Morgan four days before 2011 Opening Day when the Nationals were looking to dump a player they viewed as a problem, grabbed both sides of Morgan's head amid the clubhouse chaos and screamed Morgan's signature sendoff: "Ahhhhhhhhh!"

"One man's trash is another's treasure!" Morgan bellowed. He danced around wearing the same S.W.A.T. Team helmet he donned when the club clinched the NL Central last month. "Of course, [his series] started slow, but Plush is always going to finish strong."

Game 1 of the NLCS is Sunday at 3 p.m. CT at Miller Park and on TBS, and when the Brewers punched their ticket carried a dose of import. Greinke was ready to enter Game 5 for the top of the 11th when the Brewers walked off winners. Instead, he will start Game 1 of the NLCS.

"This is just a lot of joy, man," said Prince Fielder, who bear-hugged the group of fans who stayed long after the confetti fell at Miller Park. "We've got to keep going, but this is awesome. I'm a little emotional."

A series that was more interesting than the Brewers had hoped -- they started with a 2-0 series lead, after all, and did not want to be the first NL team of 20 in the current postseason format to take that edge and squander it -- came down to a Game 5 that carried all the drama of the first four games combined.

The Brewers took a 2-1 lead into a ninth inning that Axford has owned all season, with 44 consecutive saves, including his 1-2-3 inning in Game 1. He had not allowed more than one hit in an outing since Aug. 6, a streak of 21 games. He had not allowed a run in 11 straight games.

But the D-backs struck quickly, starting with Gerardo Parra's first NLDS hit, a double to right-center field. Sean Burroughs showed bunt, but wound up blooping a single over shortstop, setting up Willie Bloomquist for a squeeze bunt that tied the game.

Fielder and Axford both charged, and Fielder might have had a play at the plate had he not stumbled and been unable to flip the baseball toward the plate. The squeeze tied the game at 2 and sent Milwaukee's season to the bottom of the ninth, then into extra innings.

[justinssportscorner]

PHILADELPHIA -- In one swing of the bat, the Phillies endured a pair of losses Friday night, as slugger Ryan Howard suffered an injury to his left Achilles tendon.

Howard entered the clubhouse in his uniform on crutches. He will undergo an MRI on Saturday to determine the severity of the injury, but Howard told reporters postgame that the training staff believed he had torn his Achilles.

"I was trying to run, and I felt a pop," Howard said. "It felt like the whole thing was on fire. It felt like I was on a flat tire. I tried to get up, but couldn't go."

Howard laced a grounder to second for the final out of the game, but he didn't make it very far out of the batter's box. Howard crumbled to the ground as he stumbled while heading toward first, grabbing the lower part of his left leg in pain.

Howard attempted to stand and continue to first base, but again went down. He was tended to by trainers and coaches as the Cardinals celebrated their 1-0 victory to clinch the National League Division Series. Howard was helped off the field, hobbling on just his right leg with the support of coaches.

[justinssportscorner]

PHILADELPHIA -- No longer are the Cardinals just on a late run. They're not playing with house money, not just happy to be here. St. Louis is playing for a pennant.

The Cardinals secured their first postseason series win since the 2006 World Series with a sensational 1-0 victory over the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park on Friday night. The win gave them a 3-2 National League Division Series triumph over the league's best regular-season team, and moved them into the NL Championship Series for a delicious matchup with their Central Division rivals, the Brewers.

Rafael Furcal and Skip Schumaker teamed up to get a single run for the Redbirds before the game's first out, and a magnificent Chris Carpenter, who tossed a three-hit shutout, made it stand up. Carpenter, with some help from an airtight defense, outdueled his old friend and former teammate Roy Halladay en route to his sixth postseason win in 11 career starts.

The win was the Cardinals' 26th in 37 games since late August, when they began a run from 10 1/2 games back to the NL Wild Card. They trailed in the series, 1-0 and 2-1, before winning the last two games against old nemesis Roy Oswalt and two-time Cy Young winner Halladay.

St. Louis advances to the NLCS for the first time since 2006 and the 10th time in franchise history. The Cardinals will be aiming for the 18th National League title in franchise history.

The Phils' ace of aces was brilliant and surely deserved better, but against Carpenter, he simply had no room for error.

"He's a great friend of mine," Carpenter said of Halladay. "Like I said, he did a great job tonight also. He battled and did a great job most the night, except the first inning when we snuck one in on him. But it was a lot of fun."

Furcal led off the game with a triple to center field. Halladay got ahead of Schumaker, the next batter, 0-2, but couldn't finish him off. Schumaker got the count full and ground out a 10-pitch at-bat that culminated with a go-ahead double to right field.

That was all Halladay would allow. It was enough.

That's because for this night, the Carpenter of 2011 looked like the man who pitched the Cardinals to the 2006 World Series title. He was efficient, aggressive and precise, overwhelming a very good lineup for all nine innings.

It was that kind of night for Carpenter, who retired Ryan Howard for the final out, and his defense, and it means there will be at least four more games in this memorable 2011 season.

[docs3c]

I hate baseball.

(For now.)

[fuckyeahadamwainwright-blog]

[docs3c]

Is the Busch Squirrel Greg Brady's Tiki Idol Reincarnated?

In the long wait in late-September for the playoffs to begin, I said to anyone who would listen (and many who were tired of listening) that if the Phillies just played like the Phillies, no one would beat them.

Great in theory, but unfortunately that's not what's happening. When was the last time you saw Chase Utley make an out on the basepaths, much less commit the cardinal sin of being the first out at third base? When was the last time you saw Shane Victorino fall down while throwing a baseball? In this series we've also seen Jimmy Rollins and Hunter Pence get thrown out at second.

The 102-win Phillies are now on the precipice of elimination. It's time to shake off whatever voodoo has befallen them and start playing like the Phillies again. I fully expect Roy Halladay to do something legendary on Friday night. Hopefully it inspires his teammates.

[justinssportscorner]

ST. LOUIS -- The Cardinals are once again playing for their lives. At least that's nothing new for them.

A 3-2 loss to the Phillies sent St. Louis to the brink of elimination on Tuesday night, as the Cards trail, 2-1, in the best-of-five National League Division Series. St. Louis had chance after chance against Cole Hamels and Philadelphia's relief corps, but simply could not convert baserunners into runs.

As a result, the odds are stacked strongly against the Redbirds. In the Wild Card era, teams that win two of the first three games in a Division Series have won the series 30 out of 36 times. St. Louis has its two best starting pitchers, Edwin Jackson and Chris Carpenter, set to go in Game 4 and a potential Game 5.

Ben Francisco's three-run pinch-hit homer in the seventh inning, off of the previously impregnable Jaime García, provided all of the Phillies' scoring. The visitors barely had any chances at all, but converting on one of them was enough.

By contrast, the Cardinals tallied runner after runner, chance after chance, and had almost nothing to show for it. St. Louis left a staggering 14 men on base and went 3-for-12 with runners in scoring position. Several Cards noted the difficult hitting conditions created by the late-afternoon start time, but those same conditions existed for both clubs.

The Cardinals made Hamels work extremely hard, chasing him after six innings and 117 pitches. Once he was out, they were able to make more headway against the Phil' bullpen, but the three-run deficit was too great.

"Cole did a great job getting out of jams," said Skip Schumaker. "You've got to give him credit. We had opportunities, and that's all you can really ask for with good hitters at the plate. Sometimes you get through it and sometimes you don't. We didn't push through today."

The game turned rapidly on a series of tactical decisions in the sixth and seventh. With two on and two outs in the bottom of the sixth, García stayed in to hit and struck out against a tiring Hamels, who was removed after the inning. García, who had already shown some signs of heading in the wrong direction, then got into trouble quickly in the top of the seventh -- though he also nearly got himself out of it.

García had been untouchable in the early going, but he had shown signs of slipping even before the fateful seventh. After throwing first-pitch strikes to the first 10 batters, he went 1-0 to 13 of the remaining 19 he faced. Still, as he entered the seventh, the Busch Stadium scoreboard was filled with zeroes, and it would have been difficult for manager Tony La Russa to lift the lefty for a pinch-hitter -- even one as dangerous as Matt Holliday.

Shane Victorino led off the seventh with a single and took second on a passed ball, a key free base that changed the inning drastically. John Mayberry Jr. flied out, and Plácido Polanco hit a routine grounder to third, a ball that could have been a double play with a runner on first. Instead, it simply brought up Carlos Ruiz and led to the second decision that changed the game.

Knowing Ruiz's reputation as a big-game player, La Russa elected to walk him intentionally. That brought up Francisco, who jumped a 1-0 fastball and deposited it in the visitors' bullpen.

"The first pitch was a slider in the dirt," García said. "Then the second pitch, [I] made a mistake and paid for it. It was a fastball that stayed up in the zone, right over the plate, and he put a good swing on it."

The Cardinals had Octavio Dotel ready, though Dotel surely would have faced a left-hander instead of Francisco. Instead, it was García against the right-hander Francisco, who had been 1-for-9 against him -- a number La Russa cited postgame.

Allen Craig hit sharply into a double play with one out and the bases loaded in the eighth, ending an extremely promising inning. In the ninth, Albert Pujols doubled and Yadier Molina singled him in with two outs, but closer Ryan Madson finished it off when Ryan Theriot grounded out.