Cardinals 8 Pirates 1- Round Tripper Kipper

Well, that's more along the lines of what I expected of this series (somehow, this internet going down bug is following me around, I drove home from Pittsburgh this afternoon and the internet was down here, it's like God is following me around, shutting down internet connections, making sure I don't post four times a day or something, I must be on to something). Kip was solid through four, but any time you give up a homer to So Taguchi, chances are you don't have your best stuff. Kind of like our offense, who got two hit by Jeff Suppan through eight innings tonight. Nothing against Jeff Suppan, he's your average middle of the rotation guy, nothing great, nothing awful. The fact he's been on the Cards the last two years has greatly helped his record. He shouldn't two hit anyone through eight innings. The lack of offense kind of leads me to wonder where Doumit is. We were promised we'd see more of him once we got back to the NL. He caught once against Washington and now is in pinch hit mode. A start in right over Lawton or behind the plate over anyone (especially Ross) would be nice, but it looks like Doumit should get ready for some Craig Wilson treatment.

Nothing else really special tonight, once Lanny and Wehner started hinting at the no-hitter Kip had going in the fourth inning I thought to myself, "Well, that seals the loss, the question is, how ugly." Well, it was pretty ugly. Kip started strong, but then he started hanging curveballs and put on the Scarlett Letter, "E" for elevating his pitches. We also chalked up zero extra base hits for the first time all year (I still don't understand how we made it this far, someone needs to recount April, I'm not sure we even had as many extra base hits as we had games in April). Not that it was really that note-worthy that the streak was snapped, the wire write-up doesn't even mention it (at least not at ESPN). Mike Johnston was rudely welcomed back to the Majors tonight, giving up second servings of long ball to both Jim Edmonds (understandable, well, on second thought, maybe not, he does have broken ribs) and So Taguchi. That's right, So Taguchi had two homers coming into tonight and hit two tonight (I will avoid the obvious pun, that our pitching tonight wasn't just bad, it was sooooo taguchi).

Anyways, now that we're mired in our second interleagueless weekend of the year (the more I think about it, the more this whole interleague thing just plain sucks, and not just because we got screwed... I think that's a whole post for tomorrow) and the Cardinals have been reminded that they're the Cardinals things are looking bleak, mostly because we're staring down the barrell at Chris Carpenter, the best pitcher on their staff, tomorrow. A win tonight would have put us in position to somehow steal out a series win, but the L tonight puts us in pretty sad shape.