Cards 4 Pirates 0

Carpenter's good, I'll freely admit that. He's real, real good actually. In fact, there's not many pitchers I can think of that have been as dominant as he's been since the beginning of last year. Just because he's so good doesn't mean it's OK to toss a white flag up and let Mike Edwards hit in the most important at-bat of the game, especially with Jack Wilson on the bench (all indications from the radio team today were that Jack was not hurt and he just got the day off, presumably because he's struggled against Carp, I'll have to look his numbers up but it's not much of a stretch to presume Jack's numbers against Carpenter are not good). Since Duke's start last Friday we've now got four quality starts in our last five games (though I hesitate to call any start that includes giving up a homer to Eckstein "quality", though we should take what we can get from Santos) but only managed to win two of those games, mostly because our offense has gone bankrupt minus yesterday's explosion. I will say that if this team can ever put the offense and pitching together for any considerable amount of time I don't think anyone will be happy to see us rolling into town. The caveat is, of course, that I don't really know if that's ever going to happen.