One more win and another bunch of wild-card Cardinals get their chance to repeat.

Adam Wainwright threw seven innings of four-hit ball and St. Louis roughed up Tim Lincecum and the San Francisco Giants in an 8-3 rout Thursday night that gave the Cardinals a 3-1 lead in the NL championship series.

The defending World Series champions can wrap up their second straight pennant as a wild card with a victory at home Friday night in Game 5. Lance Lynn faces Giants lefty Barry Zito, and a Cardinals win would set up a 2006 World Series rematch with Detroit.

”We’ve got to close them out tomorrow,” Wainwright said.

Matt Holliday, Jon Jay and Yadier Molina had two RBIs apiece to lead a 12-hit outburst by a team that batted just .198 through the first three games against San Francisco.

”They had their backs against the wall against the Reds and won three in a row, so we’ve still got our work cut out for us and this series is by no means over,” Holliday said.

Lincecum was a bust in his first postseason start since the 2010 World Series clincher over Texas, giving up four runs in 4 2-3 innings.

The two-time Cy Young Award winner with the quirky delivery earned a shot based on nearly spotless relief work earlier in the postseason but reverted to regular-season form, when he was 10-15 with a 5.18 ERA, worst among qualifying starters in the National League.

Wainwright was a glorified cheerleader while rehabbing from reconstructive elbow surgery during the Cardinals’ improbable title drive last fall after earning the wild card on the final day of the season and then upsetting the favored Phillies, Brewers and Rangers to give manager Tony La Russa a chance to retire on top.

Under rookie manager Mike Matheny, the 88-win Cardinals were the final team to qualify this year, too. Once again, they’ve stepped up their game.

Wainwright bounced back from a poor outing in Game 5 of the NL division series against Washington, striking out five and walking none for his first postseason victory as a starter.

”It was a big motivator,” he said. ”I know that I’m good enough to pitch in the postseason, to carry this team deep into the game, give them a quality game, a quality outing. Last time I didn’t do it but I knew tonight if I just believed in myself and went out there and executed pitches I would be in good shape.”

The lone damage against Wainwright came on Hunter Pence’s first homer and RBI of the postseason, a second-inning clout estimated at 451 feet that soared over the visitor’s bullpen into the left-center bleachers to cut the Cardinals’ lead to 2-1.

Now, the 14-game winner is on the verge of his first World Series as an active player since striking out Brandon Inge as the stand-in closer for injured Jason Isringhausen in the 2006 clincher over the Tigers.

”This whole experience is so special as it is,” Wainwright said. ”But to get back to that World Series is always the way to go.”

Holliday wasn’t surprised by Wainwright’s strong performance.

”You expect Adam to pitch well and pitch like an ace, and he did,” Holliday said. ”His curveball was really good. He located his fastball. No surprise. We all expect Adam to pitch the way he pitched tonight, but sometimes things like the Washington game happen. But he’s tough as nails. We knew he’d pitch well.”

Just 12 pitches in, the Cardinals had two hits and the lead, and Lincecum got a visit from pitching coach Dave Righetti. Jay opened the first with a single, Matt Carpenter walked on four pitches and Holliday singled up the middle for the lead. Allen Craig tacked on a sacrifice fly.

”I’ve just been working on my swing and I felt more comfortable tonight,” Holliday said. ”I was able to get some pitches to hit and hit them hard and good results, that always helps the confidence.”

Lincecum escaped trouble in the second after issuing two more walks, one of them on five pitches to Wainwright. The Cardinals missed a chance to add on after Pete Kozma reached on third baseman Pablo Sandoval’s fielding error to open the inning when he was thrown out trying to steal.

Lincecum had retired eight in a row before running into trouble in the fifth.

Carpenter doubled off the top of the wall in right-center with one out. He held up until Holliday’s single fell in front of fast-charging center fielder Angel Pagan, but third base coach Jose Oquendo aggressively waved Carpenter home.

The relay from shortstop Brandon Crawford was in time, but it short-hopped catcher Hector Sanchez and Carpenter scored on a headfirst slide to make it 3-1. Molina’s two-out RBI single made it 4-1 and was the knockout blow for Lincecum.

”He gave us all he had out there,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said. ”That was his last inning and he was close to getting out of that inning. He made a great effort on that ball and good throw. We had him at home plate and it’s still 2-1. That’s a big play in the game.”

Pence, who called himself ”the goat” of Game 3 after stranding seven runners, hit the second-longest home run by an opposing player at 7-year-old Busch Stadium with a 451-foot drive that sailed over the visitor’s bullpen into the bleachers in left-center.

Holliday’s RBI single was the first by a Cardinals starter since Carlos Beltran’s two-run homer in the fourth inning of Game 1. Holliday entered 2 for 12 in the NLCS with no RBIs.

Sandoval hit a two-run homer in the ninth, but the NL West champs are on the brink of elimination.

”We have all the confidence in Barry,” Bochy said. ”We do need to get the bats going. They’ve been shutting us down.”

— Associated Press —

Matt Carpenter always tries to stay ready, keeping an assortment of gloves nearby. That’s his job.

The St. Louis Cardinals’ utilityman took on a new role in Game 3 of the NL championship series: game-changer.

Carpenter hit a two-run homer after subbing for Carlos Beltran and the Cardinals chased Matt Cain before a 3 1/2-hour rain delay in the seventh inning of a 3-1 victory over the San Francisco Giants on Wednesday night for a 2-1 series lead.

”It was definitely a surprise,” Carpenter said. ”I didn’t even realize Carlos had hurt himself, there was really no thought process.

”I was in the game before I had time to think about it,” he said.

Beltran strained his left knee running out a double-play ball in the first inning and the Cardinals said he was day to day. He’s had issues off and on with the knee throughout the season, but played in 151 games and had 619 at-bats, his most since 2008.

Kyle Lohse worked around a season-worst five walks in 5 2-3 innings. Mitchell Boggs struck out Hunter Pence and Brandon Belt with two on to end the seventh. Jason Motte earned the first two-inning save of his career to reward what remained of a sellout crowd of 45,850 that stuck around – perhaps a third – for a game that lasted 3 hours, 2 minutes, about a half-hour shorter than the delay.

”They said if we didn’t score I was going to go out there. I was in the clubhouse running around, I’ve never really had to sit around like that,” Motte said. ”It was probably the most nervous I’ve ever been.”

Giants second baseman Marco Scutaro had two hits and a clean game in the field, two days after Matt Holliday rammed him breaking up a double play. Manager Bruce Bochy had said there would be no retaliation, and Game 3 was collision-free.

”I’m sure he was gutting it out,” Bochy said of Scutaro. ”He was determined to play and made a pretty good recovery.”

Bochy said Scutaro made the right play going to first on a run-scoring groundout by Shane Robinson that made it 3-1 in the seventh.

”Well, I don’t think he had a play at home. It would have been close,” Bochy said. ”You can’t have a better or smarter second baseman than Marco.”

The big winners in a delay that featured about a half-hour without rain while officials awaited a second, smaller front: Beer vendors, by a single out. Alcohol sales are cut off after the seventh inning in all stadiums.

Cain lost for the second time this postseason, giving up three runs on five hits in 6 1-3 innings. The Giants, who entered the game batting just .217 in the postseason, were 0 for 7 with runners in scoring position.

Pence, the Giants’ fifth-place hitter, also grounded into a double play with runners on first and third in the third and grounded into a force play with a man on to end the fifth.

”I’m the goat tonight,” Pence said. ”I just didn’t the job done.”

The Cardinals snapped the Giants’ five-game road winning streak in the postseason, three of them this year. Game 4 is in St. Louis on Thursday night, with Adam Wainwright pitching for the Cardinals. Tim Lincecum will start for the Giants.

”He’s a guy we want out there. He’s been throwing the ball well,” Bochy said. ”We’ve got to bounce back.”

Bochy said lefty Barry Zito will pitch Game 5 against Lance Lynn, leaving lefty Madison Bumgarner out of the mix for now.

”I think we feel that it’s time to give Madison a little break,” Bochy said.

Carpenter followed Jon Jay’s two-out single with a homer off Cain in his first at-bat of the NLCS.

Beltran is batting .400 in the postseason with three homers and six RBIs, but Carpenter had big numbers against Cain. He was 4 for 4 for his career against Cain, four singles.

”Really, there’s no explanation,” Carpenter said. ”He’s one of the best in the game, obviously, I think we all know that.”

Cain was ahead 0-2 in the count and Carpenter worked it back to 2-2 before jumping on a hanging slider.

”I try to grind out those at-bats and fight,” Carpenter said. ”I was in my two-strike mode and I got the pitch. You don’t expect things like that to happen.”

This one was a much bigger deal, a drive that soared over the Cardinals bullpen in right field and was estimated at 421 feet.

”It was bad pitch. I was trying to go slider in and I didn’t get it in there like I should have,” Cain said. ”I made a bad pitch and it cost us.”

Cain was aware Carpenter had hit him well.

”It might affect what you’re trying to do because you don’t know his weaknesses,” Cain said. ”But you’ve still got to make good pitches and that’s what I failed to do.”

Carpenter entered the game 1 for 5 in the postseason, all five pinch-hit appearances. He had an RBI single in the wild-card playoff against Atlanta. He got 14 of his 46 RBIs in April as the primary sub at first base for injured Lance Berkman.

On Tuesday, Carpenter was among a group of seldom-used hitters trying to stay sharp by facing Jake Westbrook in a simulated game. The rest of the team had the day off.

Umpires called for the tarpaulin right after the Cardinals made it 3-1 on a run-scoring single by Shane Robinson and Cain was lifted.

It was the third game delayed by rain this postseason and a fourth, Game 4 of the Yankees-Tigers ALCS, was postponed later Wednesday night. Two games between the Yankees and Orioles in Baltimore began late because of inclement weather.

The rain intensified less than 10 minutes after the field was covered, chasing most fans who had remained in their seats to that point. Spotters for the National Weather Service reported 60 mph winds in nearby St. Charles County.

A highlight of the delay was a Pac-Man style chase. Ushers pursued and finally apprehended a fan who jumped out of the stands to get a baseball near the warning track in left field, and then jutted in and out of aisles to elude several ushers who had been closing in.

The storm had been widely anticipated. Some forecasts called for a 70 percent chance of rain. Both managers fielded questions Tuesday and Wednesday about whether the probability of precipitation would affect their selection of the starting pitcher.

Both said they couldn’t worry about the weather, and the starters combined for 208 pitches.

”I’ve been caught before where you try to predict what’s going to happen with the rain and started,” Bochy said. ”Just a couple years ago I started a pitcher thinking the same thing and it didn’t rain for four or five innings. Then I put my starter in and then it started raining, and so it came back to bite me.”

Lohse is 2-1 with a 1.96 ERA this postseason despite uncustomary control woes. He was among the majors’ best control pitchers this season, averaging 1.62 walks per nine innings.

The Giants entered 70-22 when scoring first, including the postseason, and took the lead in the third on Pablo Sandoval’s run-scoring groundout after leadoff hits by Angel Pagan and Scutaro, whose legs looked just fine on an opposite-field double flared just over first baseman Allen Craig’s glove.

Beltran leads all players with eight extra-base hits in the 2012 playoffs and is a career .375 hitter in the postseason, highest ever among players with a minimum of 100 at-bats.

— Associated Press —

Marco Scutaro answered Matt Holliday’s hard takeout with a big hit of his own to help the San Francisco Giants end their home slide.

Scutaro hit a two-run single in San Francisco’s four-run fourth inning before leaving with a hip injury and the Giants got their first home win this postseason, 7-1 over the St. Louis Cardinals on Monday night that tied the NL Championship Series at one game apiece.

More Cardinals-Giants Coverage

Marco Scutaro and Ryan Vogelsong made the NLCS a series with their Game 2 performances against the Cardinals, writes David Schoenfield. Blog

“It shows you how tough he is,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said. “It’s a shame somebody got hurt. It was more of a roll block. We’re hoping he comes out of this OK. He got hit pretty good.”

Scutaro left after the fifth because of his damaged left hip. X-rays were negative, and he’ll likely get an MRI on Tuesday. There was no word on his future status.

“You’re trying to get to the second baseman and obviously try to knock him down so he can’t turn a double play,” Holliday said. “As long as you’re in the baseline, it’s within the rules.”

The series now shifts to St. Louis for three games, starting with Game 3 on Wednesday when San Francisco ace Matt Cain takes on Kyle Lohse of the Cardinals.

Things got off to a testy start when Holliday barreled into Scutaro at second base to break up a potential double play in the first inning. The play riled up a crowd that had seen three straight losses by the Giants so far this postseason.

There was plenty to cheer all night for the Giants. Ryan Vogelsong pitched seven strong innings, Angel Pagan hit a leadoff homer to give San Francisco its first home lead this postseason, and Scutaro broke the game open with his single off Chris Carpenter.

Making Scutaro’s hit even sweeter for the Giants was the fact that Holliday misplayed the ball in left field, allowing a third run to score on the error.

The Giants also benefited from a missed call by an umpire in the eighth inning after St. Louis center fielder Jon Jay made a spectacular, diving catch to rob Brandon Crawford of a hit.

Jay threw toward first and the Cardinals should have gotten a double play, but first base umpire Bill Miller did not see Allen Craig tag Gregor Blanco’s jersey as he raced back to first on the play.

St. Louis manager Mike Matheny argued the call and the umpires huddled to discuss it, but they kept the safe call even though replays showed Craig made the tag. The Giants capitalized when Ryan Theriot hit a two-run single to make it 7-1.

Back at Busch Stadium, Holliday will be cheered after being the target of boos all night following his aggressive play on the basepaths.

With runners on first and second and one out, Craig hit a bouncer to Crawford, and the shortstop quickly flipped to Scutaro for the forceout.

Holliday, a former high school football star in Oklahoma, came tumbling in and slid late into Scutaro, crushing his left leg to prevent up the double play. Scutaro lay on the ground twisting in pain while trainer Dave Groeschner and Bochy ran out of the dugout to attend to the second baseman.

“As I watched it live it looked like it was a hard slide,” Matheny said. “It didn’t go out of the baseline to get him. Once again, I haven’t looked at it again, but we teach our guys to go hard. Play the game clean, play it hard, not try and hurt anybody.”

“I hated to see that it ended up that way. That’s not how we play the game. But we do go hard, but within the rules,” he said.

Vogelsong got out of the jam by retiring Yadier Molina on a groundout and Scutaro stayed in the game with a limp until being replaced in the sixth by Theriot.

By then, he had done his damage with the bat in the big fourth inning.

The rally started innocently enough with a bloop, opposite field double by Brandon Belt and a chopper over third baseman David Freese by Blanco. Crawford then hit a bouncer between the mound and first base that Carpenter fielded and threw away toward first base. It appeared Crawford may have impeded Carpenter by running inside the baseline but the Cardinals did not argue the play.

With the bases loaded and two outs, Scutaro lined his single to left-center that Holliday misplayed to the delight of Giants fans, putting Carpenter and the Cardinals into a 5-1 hole.

Vogelsong made the lead hold up by becoming the first Giants starter to make it through six innings this postseason. He allowed four hits and one run for his first career postseason win.

“It was unbelievable. It was fun to watch,” Pagan said. “It was very tough tonight. All his pitches were right in the zone, you know, hitting the corners and getting the hitters off balance. That was the key for him tonight.”

These teams have a history of contentious meetings in the NLCS from Jeffrey Leonard’s one-flap down home run trot in 1987 that riled up the Cardinals to a benches-clearing dustup 10 years ago when St. Louis reliever Mike Crudale buzzed Kenny Lofton after he showboated on a home run.

San Francisco answered with the bats this time as Pagan led off the bottom of the first with a homer — matching his feat from Game 4 of the division series against Cincinnati. The Giants had been outscored 20-6 and never led in two home losses to the Reds and the Game 1 defeat to the Cardinals.

The Cardinals tied it in the second inning when Pete Kozma drew a two-out walk and scored on Carpenter’s RBI double, his third hit already this postseason.

But Carpenter, making his fifth appearance in 2012 after complicated surgery to remove a rib and two neck muscles, wasn’t nearly as sharp on the mound or in the field. He allowed five runs — two earned — and six hits in four innings, failing to add to his 10 career postseason wins.

“He’s been real sharp lately,” Matheny said. “Today they just got a few things going. We couldn’t get it stopped until there were too many runs on the board. We have faith in him in these situations and know he’ll come out next opportunity and make good pitches for us.”

— Associated Press —

Carlos Beltran and David Freese each hit two-run homers and the St. Louis Cardinals held on to beat the San Francisco Giants 6-4 Sunday night in Game 1 of the NL championship series.

The wild-card Cardinals took an early 6-0 lead and made it stand up. Two days earlier, St. Louis overcame a 6-0 deficit to beat Washington in the deciding Game 5 of the division series.

After starter Lance Lynn struggled, the St. Louis bullpen delivered with 5 1-3 scoreless innings.

The Giants dropped to 0-3 at home so far during this postseason, outscored 20-6 at AT&T Park.

Game 2 in the best-of-seven series is Monday night. Chris Carpenter pitches for the Cardinals against Ryan Vogelsong.

— Associated Press —

Carlos Beltran and the never-give-up St. Louis Cardinals began their latest comeback celebration quietly, plucking cans of beer from a blue bin that was hurriedly wheeled from the home to the visiting clubhouse in the middle of the ninth inning.

”How did that happen?!” Beltran asked, speaking to no one in particular.

Then in walked Pete Kozma, and the party really started. Teammates sprayed champagne bottles directly at the rookie shortstop who drove in the go-ahead runs against the Washington Nationals in Game 5 of their NL division series. Doesn’t matter how bad things look for these Cardinals. Trailing by a bunch, down to their last strike, they simply stay calm and do what it takes to win.

Erasing an early six-run hole slowly but surely, the defending World Series champs got a tying two-out, two-run single from Daniel Descalso and a go-ahead two-run single from Kozma in the top of the ninth inning, coming all the way back to beat the Nationals 9-7 Friday night and reach the NL championship series.

”We never quit,” catcher Yadier Molina said. ”That’s our rule.”

Behind 3-0 before recording an out, behind 6-0 in the third inning, behind 7-5 with two outs and one on in the ninth, the Cardinals somehow, some way constructed the largest comeback ever in a winner-take-all postseason game, according to STATS LLC. No other club in this sort of ultimate pressure situation had come back from more than four down.

”We knew we had a lot of game left after they scored six. Nobody went up there trying to hit a six-run homer,” said Descalso, whose solo shot in the eighth made it 6-5. ”We needed to scratch and claw and get ourselves back in the game.”

They did, barely: Descalso, who only hit .227 in the regular season, came up with a game-saving single that ticked off the glove of diving shortstop Ian Desmond to make it 7-all.

Then it was Kozma’s turn. He hit .236 in nearly 2,500 at-bats over six seasons in the minors – the unheralded guy was mistakenly called ”Cosmos” by Nationals manager Davey Johnson before Game 4 – and was in the Cardinals’ lineup only because of an injury to Rafael Furcal. But he sent another pitch from Nationals closer Drew Storen into right field.

”I was looking for a good fastball to hit. He gave it to me,” Kozma said. ”You can’t write this stuff up. It just happens.”

First-year manager Mike Matheny and the wild-card Cardinals, the last team to clinch a playoff spot this year, will open the NLCS at San Francisco on Sunday. Lance Lynn, who was used in relief against Washington, will go back to the rotation and start Game 1.

The Nationals, meanwhile, led the majors with 98 wins in 2012 but their run ended without All-Star ace Stephen Strasburg. The team said he’d thrown enough this year and didn’t put him on the playoff roster.

”I stand by my decision, and we’ll take the criticism as it comes,” general manager Mike Rizzo said, ”but we have to do what’s best for the Washington Nationals, and we think we did.”

Even without him, Washington had its chances to knock off the Cardinals. Oh, were there chances. For a total of five pitches, Storen was one strike away from ending the game. But on all five, the batters – Yadier Molina and David Freese – took a ball. Both walked, setting the stage for Descalso and Kozma.

”We had it right there, and the most disappointing thing I’ll say is that I just let these guys down,” Storen said. ”There’s a bad taste in my mouth and that’s going to stay there for a couple of months. It’s probably never going to leave.”

Cardinals closer Jason Motte, who got the win with two innings of one-run relief, said: ”Maybe we’re just stubborn. These guys, they don’t give away at-bats, that’s the thing.”

When Motte got Ryan Zimmerman to pop out to second base a half-hour past midnight, the Cardinals streamed from the visiting dugout for hugs and high-fives. This, though, was nothing new to them.

Over the past two years, St. Louis is 6-0 when facing elimination, including victories in Games 6 and 7 of the 2011 World Series against Texas.

”It’s just the kind of people they are. They believe in themselves. They believe in each other,” Matheny said. ”It’s been this style of team all season long. They just don’t quit, and I think that just says a lot about their character.”

Down to their last strike in the Fall Classic a year ago, trailing by the exact same 7-5 score in the ninth inning, the Cardinals rallied in Game 6 and then took the championship in what turned out to be the final year with the club for slugging first baseman Albert Pujols and then-manager Tony La Russa. Now Matheny, who got the Cardinals into the playoffs as the second NL wild-card team on the next-to-last day of the regular season, has them four wins away from another World Series appearance.

And to think: Washington, which won the NL East, got off to as good a start as possible Friday.

Seven pitches, three runs. Just like that, Jayson Werth’s double, Bryce Harper’s triple and Zimmerman’s homer got the hosts jump-started in their first Game 5.

That opening outburst, plus a big third inning highlighted by the 19-year-old Harper’s homer, made it 6-0.

St. Louis was not about to go gently into the night.

”Would have been easy for us to go down 6-0 and sort of roll over and let the crowd take us out of it,” Descalso said, ”and just let them have the game.”

The Cardinals chipped away, chipped away. One run off 21-game winner Gio Gonzalez in the fourth, a pair in the fifth, another in the seventh off Edwin Jackson – the Game 3 starter and loser, and an all-around surprising choice for midgame relief.

Suddenly, it was 6-4. Then came Descalso’s homer off Tyler Clippard in the eighth. After Kurt Suzuki drove in a run for Washington to get the lead back up to 7-5, a four-run ninth against Storen – who had elbow surgery in April, returned to the team in July and reclaimed his closer role in September – completed the reversal.

”We’ve had a great year overcoming a lot of hardship,” Nationals manager Davey Johnson said, ”and to not go after them at the end was not fun to watch.”

Beltran began the ninth with a double. Two quick outs later, the Cardinals were a strike away from going home. But Storen couldn’t get the last one past Molina. Same thing with Freese. Then came Descalso’s shot, sneaking past Desmond. The Nationals were inches, perhaps, from advancing. The Cardinals that near to their season finished.

Instead, they carry on, like they always seem to at this time of year. St. Louis is in the NLCS for the seventh time since the start of the 2000 season.

In Game 6 of last year’s World Series, the Cardinals twice were one strike from losing, before Freese’s two-run triple in the ninth, then Lance Berkman’s tying RBI single in the 10th. Freese’s homer won it in the 11th, the Rangers never got to pop their champagne corks, and St. Louis went on to a 6-2 victory in Game 7.

Here they were, doing it again. The alcoholic beverages waiting on ice for the Nationals wound up getting moved down the hallway to the Cardinals.

All while a Nationals Park-record crowd of 45,966 witnessed the first postseason series in the nation’s capital in 79 years. So seemingly close to a significant triumph, the Nationals – and their fans – left disappointed. Not long after the final out, a few dozen Cardinals fans gathered in the rows right behind the visiting dugout to chant, ”Let’s go, Cards! Let’s go, Cards!”

Hours earlier, the red-dressed D.C. spectators began the night with chants of ”Let’s go, Nats!” right after the national anthem, then filled the raw October air with roars as run after run scored for the home team. But over the final innings, those Washington baseball fans wound up looking on with hearts in throats.

At the outset, highlights of leadoff hitter Werth’s epic, 13-pitch at-bat from about 25 1/2 hours before were shown on the video board as he began the bottom of the first. On Thursday night, he ended Game 4 with a homer in the bottom of the ninth that gave Washington a 2-1 victory.

Picking up right where he left off, Werth doubled to the left-field corner off Adam Wainwright, and Harper followed with an RBI triple off the wall in left-center. Harper won’t turn 20 until Tuesday; no other teen had a postseason three-bagger, according to STATS.

Harper was 1 for 18 for a .056 batting average – yes, .056 – with six strikeouts and zero RBIs in the NLDS until that moment. Zimmerman completed the crescendo by driving an 86 mph cutter into the first row beyond the wall in right-center.

In 11 previous postseason appearances – mainly as a reliever – Wainwright never had allowed more than one run in any entire outing, much less three in a single inning.

Got worse in the third. Harper led off with a homer, to the same area of right-center as Zimmerman’s but a few rows deeper. Zimmerman doubled, and Michael Morse turned on the next pitch for a two-run homer to left that made it 6-0.

That was it for Wainwright, whose evening was over after 53 pitches across 2 1-3 innings.

His season, however, will continue. He plays for the can’t-quit Cardinals, after all.

”We just gave ourselves a chance to come back and be within striking distance,” Descalso said. ”And the ninth inning was pretty remarkable.”

Actually, this is what the Cardinals do.

They turn losses into wins, and then they steal the other guys’ bubbly.

— Associated Press —

Lance Lynn needed only a few words to describe a 13-pitch at-bat.

“Three-two heater. He beat me.”

There were more questions for the St. Louis Cardinals reliever, of course, but the answers were more or less the same. He went mano-a-mano with Jayson Werth in the bottom of the ninth inning of a playoff game, losing the battle when the Washington leadoff hitter put the baker’s dozen offering off the back wall of the visitors dugout beyond left field.

“Everyone in the stadium knew what I was throwing there,” Lynn said. “Tip your cap to him. The guy can play, and he beat me.”

The Nationals’ 2-1 win Thursday in Game 4 kept the Cardinals from clinching the NL Division Series, and now there will be a decisive Game 5 in Washington on Friday. It’ll be hard to top this one — with Werth going strike, strike, ball, ball, foul, foul, foul, foul, foul, foul, ball and foul before launching the hit that had him circling the bases, tossing his helmet high and leaping into a pile of teammates at home plate.

“He battled that whole at-bat, and I was making good pitches, making my pitches, and you know, he won,” Lynn said. “It was just a matter of time. I was challenging him, and he was up for it.”

It’s the kind of playoff moment all at Nationals Park will remember for a long time. The tension was building with each of the 13 pitches, the sellout crowd ready to explode.

“I guess for the pitcher and the hitter, the pressure on them have to be unbelievable,” Cardinals star Carlos Beltran said. “Because Werth is battling, and our pitcher’s trying to get him out. He ended up winning that battle right there, but we have one more day.”

The Cardinals wasted a stellar effort by Kyle Lohse, who allowed just two hits over seven innings with five strikeouts and a walk, his only miscue coming on Adam LaRoche’s dead-center homer in the second.

Mitchell Boggs handled the eighth, and rookie manager Mike Matheny opted to go with Lynn — a starter relegated to the bullpen for this series — rather than closer Jason Motte with the score tied in the ninth.

“If we were at home, it would have been a very easy decision to bring in Motte,” Matheny said. “We are looking at a team that had every save of our season by Jason Motte, and we take a lead there at any point (in extra innings), you’re asking one of our guys, especially one of our young guys, who have never been in that situation to come in and close out a game, and that’s a lot to ask.

“Had a lot of confidence in Lance. He came in throwing the ball well. Werth just put together a very good at-bat.”

The Cardinals had scored a combined 20 runs in Games 2 and 3, but they managed only one unearned tally against Nationals starter Ross Detwiler. Pete Kozma circled the bases in the second inning by way of a walk, a sacrifice bunt, a booted grounder by shortstop Ian Desmond and a sacrifice fly.

Detwiler allowed three hits over six innings — the type of performance Washington needed after Gio Gonzalez, Jordan Zimmermann and Edwin Jackson were far from their best in Games 1-3, respectively.

It got worse for the Cardinals against the Nationals’ relievers. Zimmerman, the Game 2 loser, struck out the side in the seventh in his first career relief appearance, and Tyler Clippard also notched three Ks in the eighth. Drew Storen got two more strikeouts in the ninth before Desmond ended the inning with a nice, stumble-to-the-ground catch of a deep popup by pinch hitter Matt Carpenter.

Although St. Louis is a wild-card team facing the club with the best record in baseball in the regular season, the intangibles should belong to the visitors Friday. While nearly to a man — Werth being an exception — the young Nationals are new to this sort of thing, the Cardinals have quite the postseason pedigree: In the past two years, St. Louis is 5-0 in games where it faces elimination, including must-have victories in Games 6 and 7 of the 2011 World Series against the Texas Rangers.

“We’ve got a lot of veterans in this clubhouse that have been in big spots before and have lost games and know how to bounce back,” second baseman Daniel Descalso said. “We’ve done a good job of that lately, and we’re going to try to do it again tomorrow.”

On the mound will be Adam Wainwright, a 14-game winner who was a spectator during last year’s title run while recovering from elbow reconstruction surgery.

“Of course I wish we would have won tonight, but you know what? This is every pitcher’s dream, I would say,” said Wainwright, who pitched well in Game 1 of this series but didn’t get the decision. “Every competitor’s dream is to go in huge moments like that, so I look forward to the challenge.”

— Associated Press —

Set aside the high-pressure task of postseason pitching that Chris Carpenter routinely masters for the St. Louis Cardinals and think about this:

Even the take-it-for-granted act of breathing feels odd on occasion now that he’s missing a rib and two neck muscles.

Taking the mound for only the fourth time in 2012 after complicated surgery to cure numbness on his right side, the 37-year-old Carpenter spoiled the return of postseason baseball to Washington by throwing scoreless ball into the sixth inning, and the defending champion Cardinals beat the Nationals 8-0 Wednesday to take a 2-1 lead in their NL division series.

“To go from not being able to compete, and not only compete but help your team, to be able to be in this situation,” Carpenter said, “it’s pretty cool.”

Rookie Pete Kozma delivered a three-run homer, and a trio of relievers finished the shutout for the Cardinals, who can end the best-of-five series in Thursday’s Game 4 at Washington. 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.

“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.”

With the exception of Ian Desmond — 3 for 4 on Wednesday, 7 for 12 in the series — the Nationals’ hitters are struggling mightily. They’ve scored a total of seven runs in the playoffs and went 0 for 8 with runners in scoring position and left 11 men on base in Game 3.

Rookie phenom Bryce Harper’s woes, in particular, stand out: He went 0 for 5, dropping to 1 for 15. He went to the plate with an ash bat and no gloves in the first inning, tried wearing anti-glare tinted contact lenses on a sun-splashed afternoon — nothing helped.

“Nothing I can do,” the 19-year-old Harper said. “I just missed a couple.”

All in all, 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. They didn’t have much to enjoy, in part because of the problems created by Nationals starter Edwin Jackson, who was on the Cardinals’ championship team a year ago.

“I didn’t feel like I was out of rhythm. I didn’t feel like I couldn’t throw strikes. I just missed across the plate with a couple of balls and it cost me,” Jackson said.

He gave up four consecutive hits in the second, the biggest being Kozma’s first-pitch homer into the first row in left off a 94 mph fastball to make it 4-0. Kozma took over as the Cardinals’ everyday shortstop in September, replacing injured All-Star Rafael Furcal, and only had 72 at-bats during the regular season.

But he’s only the latest in a series of “Who’s that?” stars of this postseason.

With the Capitol Dome rising beyond left field, the crowd of today was ready to root, root, root for the home team, breaking into chants of “Let’s go, Nats!” after player introductions and again after a four-jet flyover. And, boy, did they boo — when Cardinals outfielder Jon Jay was announced as the game’s first batter, when first-base umpire Jim Joyce missed a call, when catcher Yadier Molina trotted to chat with Carpenter, even when Carpenter paused between pitches to tie his red-and-gray right shoe.

“Carp’s been a dominant pitcher his whole career. Big-game pitcher. He showed up,” Washington’s Jayson Werth said. “He pitched well today. We had him in some spots. We had him on the ropes a couple of times. We were just one bloop away from a totally different ballgame.”

The Cardinals won 10 fewer games than the majors-best Nationals this season and finished second in the NL Central, nine games behind Cincinnati, sneaking into the postseason as the league’s second wild-card under this year’s new format. But the Cardinals become a different bunch in the high-pressure playoffs — no matter that slugger Albert Pujols and manager Tony La Russa are no longer around.

Carpenter still is, even though even he didn’t expect to be pitching this year when he encountered problems during spring training and needed what Cardinals manager Mike Matheny termed a “radical” operation in July to correct a nerve problem.

“Everyone had written him off, kind of,” Jay said. “It could have been a season-ending injury, where he could have just gone home and said, `See you later.”

The top rib on Carpenter’s right side was removed, along with muscles that were constricting blood flow up there. After Wednesday’s game, he squeezed his big right hand with his left, explaining, “Basically, my nerves were getting squished down by all the scar tissue and all the muscles and everything. There wasn’t enough space.”

Still adjusting to the way breathing feels different, he returned Sept. 21, going 0-2 in three starts totaling 17 innings, so it wasn’t clear how he’d fare Wednesday.

Yeah, right.

Carpenter allowed seven hits and walked two across his 5 2/3 innings to improve to 10-2 over his career in the postseason. That includes a 4-0 mark while helping another group of wild-card Cardinals take the title in the 2011 World Series, when he won Game 7 against Texas.

The 10 victories tie Carpenter for seventh-most, behind Andy Pettitte’s record 19.

“If the baseball world doesn’t know what an amazing competitor he is by now, they haven’t been paying any attention,” Cardinals left fielder Matt Holliday said.

Carpenter collected a pair of hits, including a double off the wall in the fifth that was about a foot or two away from being a homer. When he reached second base, he raised his right fist.

Earlier, Carpenter stepped to the plate for his first at-bat and chatted with umpire Joe West.

“I say hello to him. And he said hello back, and he talked about what a beautiful day it was to play a baseball game. And I was like, `You ain’t kidding,” Carpenter recounted. “Beautiful weather. The crowd is going crazy. … There’s no question you take time to reflect on that.”

— Associated Press —