WASHINGTON — Chris Carpenter was every bit the postseason ace he’s been in the past for the St. Louis Cardinals. WASHINGTON — Chris Carpenter was every bit the postseason ace he’s been in the past for the St. Louis Cardinals.
WASHINGTON — Chris Carpenter was every bit the postseason ace he’s been in the past for the St. Louis Cardinals.
Taking the mound for only the fourth time in 2012, missing a rib after surgery to cure numbness on his right side, the 37-year-old Carpenter pitched scoreless ball into the sixth inning, rookie Pete Kozma delivered a three-run homer, and the defending champion Cardinals beat the Washington Nationals 8-0 Wednesday to take a 2-1 lead in their NL division series.
“If the baseball world doesn’t know what an amazing competitor he is by now, they haven’t been paying any attention,” Carpenter’s teammate Matt Holliday said. “Every guy on this team has watched him work his way back, watches him in between starts. He’s a stud. Just a guy that you want out there.”
All in all, it was quite a damper on the day for a Nationals Park-record 45,017 red-wearing, towel-twirling fans witnessing the first major league postseason game in the nation’s capital in 79 years.
Three relievers finished the shutout for the Cardinals, who can end the best-of-five series in Thursday’s Game 4 at Washington.
“We’re not out of this, by a long shot,” Nationals manager Davey Johnson said. “Shoot, I’ve had my back to worse walls than this.”
Kyle Lohse will start for St. Louis. Ross Detwiler pitches for Washington, which is sticking to its long-stated plan of keeping Stephen Strasburg on the sideline the rest of the way.
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