St. Louis Cardinals vs Los Angeles Dodgers

The Los Angeles Dodgers spent the first half of the season dominating the National League and getting off to the best home start in the history of baseball.

The St. Louis Cardinals shook off a lackluster start and when their starting pitching jelled after the All-Star game, they literally took flight and were the hottest team in the National League, turning a competitive division into one of the most lopsided races in baseball.

The Dodgers stumbled their way through the last half of the regular season, but righted the ship when they needed to avoid losing any more ground to the hard-charging Colorado Rockies, who ended up with the wild-card.

St. Louis has got to feel good about their chances in this series, despite losing seven of nine down the stretch, especially considering that hitting almost always takes a backseat to hitting in the postseason, particularly in the short divisional series.

The Cardinals plan to rely heavily on their 1-2 punch of Chris Carpenter (17-4, 2.24) and Adam Wainwright (19-8, 2.63) in the first round, and why not? The teammates are 36-12 between themselves, including an overwhelming 19-4 in the second half as St. Louis ran away and hid from the favored Chicago Cubs and Milwaukee Brewers in the NL Central. Carpenter and Wainwright are also the rare teammate duo that are both on the short list of NL Cy Young candidates.

They will be facing a Los Angeles Dodgers lineup that has struggled to push runs across the plate in the second half and are stumbling into the postseason, having scored just seven runs over their final four games of the regular season.

No one has been the poster boy of sluggish Los Angeles bats than slugger Manny Ramirez, who hit .355 in a suspension-shortened first-half and tallied only .260 in the second half.

The Dodgers will have to chose from their current five starters for three games. It is unclear whether Randy Wolf or Clayton Kershaw will get the nod in Game 1 and who, if any, will follow them among the remaining three: Vicente Padilla, Jon Garland, Chad Billingsley.

This will be the Cardinals’ first postseason since winning it all in 2006 and the Dodgers are heading to their second straight playoff berth, after losing to the Philadelphia Phillies in the NLCS last year.

The Cardinals and Dodgers have met twice in postseason history, most recently in the 2004 NLDS and St. Louis has won both times.

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