ST. LOUIS -- When Yadier Molina hit a three-run double, pushing the Cardinals' lead to 5-0 in the third inning Sunday, the Braves reached the nadir of a nightmarish trip. It altered the outlook on what seemed a certain playoff berth.
The Braves are still in control, but after being swept by the Phillies to start the 2-6 trip and swept by the Cardinals to finish it, their position is more precarious than imagined a week ago.
Their wild-card lead over St. Louis shrunk from 8-1/2 games on Sept. 5 to 4-1/2 on Sunday, when the surging Cardinals scored five in the third inning against Tim Hudson and cruised to a 6-3 win at Busch Stadium.
“We’re not playing bad baseball,” manager Fredi Gonzalez insisted. “One inning here and one inning there throughout the course of these last six games, not counting the doubleheader in New York. ... You don’t want to lose. You don’t want to get swept. But let’s just go home and starting winning series.”
Braves veteran Chipper Jones, who had two of the Braves’ six hits Sunday including an eighth-inning home run, had a different assessment of the team’s performance. Jones was asked if they’d be able to forget the trip and regroup.
“Man, we better forget it, because it was brutal,” he said. “We did nothing right. We didn’t pitch, we didn’t hit. … I guess we played OK defense. But when this team’s playing well, we throw strikes, we get outs, we get runners in from third with less than two outs. And when we don’t, it’s pretty ugly.”
It was never uglier than the third inning, when Hudson (14-10) had his control abandon him during a sequence that surprised both teams and a crowd of 39,710.
“I was struggling, obviously, with my command,” said Hudson, who gave up five runs in the inning on two walks, two hit batters and two hits – an Albert Pujols’ RBI single and Molina’s bases-loaded double – with all the runs coming with two outs.
“Actually the best pitches I made were the ones that scored the runs. I made a pretty good pitch on Albert and he looped it in there. Then threw a sinker in on Molina and he inside-outed it to right field. I just didn’t make good pitches and they had good at-bats, and made me pay."
The Cardinals have won 12 of 16 games since Aug. 25, when they were third in the wild-card race -- 10-1/2 games behind the Braves.
“We just entered the realm of possibility,” said Cardinals veteran Lance Berkman, who drew a two-out, bases-loaded walk off Hudson. "We know what we've got to do. We've got to keep winning games.”
The Cardinals only wish they had more against Atlanta. They are 11-3 against the Braves in the past two seasons, including 6-0 at Busch.
“We’ve gotten wild all of a sudden,” Jones said. “We’re walking guys, we’re hitting guys. That’s a recipe for disaster when the offense is struggling to score three or four runs a game."
Hudson was charged with six runs and eight hits in six innings, falling to 1-3 with a 5.55 ERA in his past four starts. He’s allowed four or more runs in three of those, after allowing more than three earned runs once once in his previous 11 starts.
The Cardinals had a runner on third with two out in the third inning of a scoreless game before Hudson hit Jon Jay with a pitch that began this sequence: HBP, single, walk, walk, double.
“I made my bed,” Hudson said. “I set ‘em up. If Albert hits that ball a little better, it’s a zero in that inning and you never know what could have happened. But he looped it in. The bases-loaded walk really hurt, and obviously the bases-loaded, bases-clearing double was the back-breaker."
Hudson said the Braves need to keep in mind they still lead the wild-card race by 4-1/2 games with 15 to play. Their magic number is 12; any combination of Braves wins or Cardinals losses totaling 12 would clinch the wild card for Atlanta.
“Obviously we’re still in a good spot even though we haven’t played very well this past week,” Hudson said. “We just need to get home, get our feet under us a little bit, take a deep breath and understand they’re chasing us, we’re not chasing them."
Braves left fielder Eric Hinske made a leaping catch to rob Matt Holliday of a second-inning homer, the first such catch of Hinske's career. But it was soon overshadowed by Hudson’s temporary meltdown.
“Tough trip,” Hinske said. “We’re still 4-1/2 games up. We’ve just got to find a way to get over this hump. Just keep grinding. We’ve got a bunch of veteran guys in here, we’ll be ready to play tomorrow.”
