OK, raise your hand if you saw this coming. You in the back, wearing the St. Louis Cardinals jacket, please sit down.
Not even the most optimistic St. Louis fan could have hoped for such a thorough whipping after the Cardinals’ 7-1 victory over the Atlanta Braves on Saturday at Turner Field completed an astonishing three-game sweep of their National League division series.
It wasn’t just that the Braves lost a division series for the first time and dropped their seventh straight postseason game. It was that they went down without putting up much of a fight.
St. Louis starter Garrett Stephenson left in the fourth inning when his elbow stiffened, but four St. Louis relievers held the Braves hitless in the final 51/3 innings.
“This is the Braves and I kept waiting for their run,” Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said. “Our relief pitching was so dynamite today they couldn’t get anything started. We knew who we were playing and we were properly respectful.”
The Braves had dominated their previous five division series, winning 15 of 17 games and going 8-0 on the road. When St. Louis secured home-field advantage on the final day of the regular season, it almost appeared to favor the Braves.
The Cardinals, however, dominated Atlanta at Busch Stadium, jumping to a 6-0 lead against Greg Maddux in Game 1.
In fact, St. Louis only trailed once the entire series, in the first inning of Game 2. That lead lasted about 10 minutes before Will Clark’s three-run homer off Tom Glavine in the bottom of the first put the Cardinals ahead for good.
Atlanta’s road defeats were magnified because they lost using their two best pitchers, perennial Cy Young Award candidates Maddux and Glavine.
They were scheduled to pitch Games 4 and 5 if it came to that.
But it didn’t after home runs by Fernando Vina and Jim Edmonds staked the Cardinals to a 4-1 lead against Kevin Millwood, who joined Maddux and Glavine in failing to survive the fifth inning.
“We did not make any of the games real close,” Atlanta manager Bobby Cox said. “We did not hit particularly well or pitch very well the entire series, and that is unlike what we have done in the past.”
Now the Braves, who have been called both a dynasty and a disappointment because of their failure to win more than one World Series in nine straight postseason appearances, will have to wonder if their best days are behind them.
“You play the season out to get yourself in the playoffs and have an opportunity to hopefully win the World Series, and when you don’t it’s disappointing,” Glavine said. “It’s no more or less disappointing than losing in the LCS or in the World Series.”
The Cardinals scored in the first inning for the third straight game when leadoff hitter Vina hit Millwood’s second pitch into the right-field seats.
Atlanta tied it in the bottom of the first, but Edmonds’ two-run homer in the third made it 3-1. They don’t select a most valuable player in the division series, but it surely was Edmonds, who went 8-for-14 with two homers, seven runs batted in and a record-setting six extra-base hits.
“This team knows how to play when it counts,” Edmonds said. “We’ve been doing it all year.”
By contrast, Rafael Furcal and Andruw Jones went 2-for-20 at the top of the Braves’ order.
In the first Jones popped up after Stephenson had walked Furcal on four straight pitches, and in the fifth he hit into an inning-ending double play.
As Stephenson began grimacing in the fourth, first baseman Will Clark immediately let him know this was not the time to take one for the team.
“I told him: `We don’t need any heroes right here. If you’re hurt, you’re coming out of the ballgame,'” Clark said.
Rookie Britt Reames, Matt Morris and Mike James, all of whom have had arm surgery within the last two seasons, shut down the Braves before closer Dave Veres finished them off in the ninth.
Reames, a late-season callup, was an 11th-hour addition to the playoff roster that features a dozen players who were with other teams last season. Among them are Edmonds, Clark and Game 2 winner Darryl Kile.
“I can’t remember a better time watching a club play,” La Russa said.
