Rasmus causes Cardinals to lose to Pirates, Braves lose to Marlins

Cards LOSE

That was a short 24+ hours of hope, only 4 games back in the wild card that the Cardinals would continue to rise while the Braves continued to fall. In the eighth inning, Octavio Dotel and Marc Rzepczynski failed to do their jobs. Joel Hanrahan almost failed to do his agains the Cardinals in the 9th, but he was successful in striking out the big slugger Corey Patterson, who is hitting below the Mendoza line since joining the team. You could almost blame the loss on Colby Rasmus, he was traded for all three of the aforementioned players. This was a bullpen failure that really wasn’t necessary but seemed unavoidable as it happened. The Cardinals are still 4.5 back of the Braves and now 6.5 back of Milwaukee who didn’t play yesterday. Good news on the Albert Pujols front though – a HR and 3 RBIs gives him 92 on the season and brings his average up to .298. He was standing on deck when Corey Patterson struck out with the bases loaded to end the game.