St. Louis-Philadelphia: Resilient Cardinals Win, but Suffer Big Loss

After an ugly 20-2 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies on Friday night, the St. Louis Cardinals pulled out the next two games to win the series. The Cardinals have lost the first game in a series nine times this year, and have won the remaining two games eight of those times.

The adjective "resilient" has been perfect to describe the Cardinals this season. After a season that started out with an inexperienced outfield, the real issue has been injuries.

Today's game certainly didn't help that cause. Starting catcher Yadier Molina suffered a nasty neck injury in the late innings of Sunday's game, leaving Cardinals' faithful with worrisome feelings, despite the dramatic 7-6 win in extra innings.

Third baseman Troy Glaus said in a postgame interview that he was glad that they got the win, but the team's first matter of business would be to check how Molina was doing.

After outfielder Skip Schumaker and Glaus both hit home runs in the third inning off of Phillies starter Brett Myers, the Cardinals looked as though they were comfortably ahead 5-1.

However, after the Phillies tied things up in the top of the ninth, the Cardinals scored when reliever Tom Gordon made a huge mistake and allowed Rick Ankiel to come home for the win.

I am much more concerned about Molina's situation, though. As I said in the first edition of Cardinals Roundtable, Molina has been a huge part of the Redbirds' lineup and defensive squad this year. His backup, Jason LaRue, is hardly a quality player. LaRue is hitting .193 this year, worse than almost every Cardinal pitcher.

Not to mention that Molina is heads and shoulders about any other NL catcher behind the plate.

It will be very interesting to see how the Cardinals do with 12-straight AL contests on their schedule.

For now, we can simply hope that Molina will get back soon, and that Pujols and Co. return to the green grass of Busch Stadium within a matter of weeks.