Padres fall behind St. Louis in series 2-0

ST. LOUIS -- When Mark Mulder took a line drive off his arm in the second inning and doubled over in pain, the St. Louis Cardinals figured it would be a short outing for their 16-game winner.\nInstead, Mulder shook off the hard shot to his left bicep from Joe Randa -- the same way he tossed aside a pair of poor tuneup starts -- and put his team on the brink of a playoff sweep.\nMulder pitched shutout ball into the seventh inning and the Cardinals once again built an early lead, beating the San Diego Padres 6-2 Thursday for a 2-0 edge in their best-of-five National League series.\n"Once the inning starts there's so much adrenaline it didn't bother me much," Mulder said. "If I couldn't have made good pitches I would have said 'All right, I've had enough.'\n"I didn't want to come out of that game."\nMatt Morris will try to clinch it for St. Louis on Saturday at San Diego against Woody Williams. Mulder was with the Oakland Athletics when they squandered a 2-0 lead against the Red Sox in 2003.\n"We held home field advantage," David Eckstein said. "One thing we've got to do, we've got to stay aggressive. We can't wait to get over there."\nThe Cardinals, who led the majors with 100 wins this season, have advanced to the NL championship series four times in five chances under manager Tony La Russa. San Diego, which limped into the playoffs with an 82-80 record, hasn't shown any signs of stopping them.\n"We've put pressure on that team, we just haven't come up with the big hit yet," Brian Giles said. "We're playing for our lives now."\nThe 2003 Red Sox were the last of the seven teams that have rallied from a 2-0 deficit in division series play.\nMulder was 16-8 in his first season since being acquired from Oakland, but gave up seven earned runs over 5 2/3 innings in two starts after the Cardinals clinched the NL Central. Plus, the lefty was a decidedly better pitcher at night (14-3, 2.26 ERA) than day (2-5, 6.86).\nMulder scoffed at both of those trends the day before Game 2, blanking a lineup stacked with seven right-handed hitters until the late innings and backed by four double plays, tying the NL Division Series record. Mulder induced 13 groundball outs and only one fly out.\n"I like using my defense; that's why when you give up a hit I'm not going to be that mad," Mulder said. "The next pitch you can get a double play. That's part of my game in a way."\nThe Cardinals' first four runs came on balls that didn't leave the infield -- or in one case, even the catcher's glove. Eckstein had a run-scoring groundout and a squeeze bunt, Yadier Molina had an RBI grounder and Albert Pujols drew a bases-loaded walk to finish Pedro Astacio after four innings.\nSt. Louis became adept at maximizing every opportunity in the middle of the season when the lineup was missing Sanders, Molina, Scott Rolen and Larry Walker. La Russa learned to love the squeeze bunt, going 13-for-16 with that aggressive tactic and getting a pair of game-winners from Eckstein, and in Game 2 the Cardinals' offense thrived despite going 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position.\nAfter retiring the side in order with the help of a double play in the first two innings, Astacio, who had a 2.20 ERA in his last seven regular-season starts, encountered nothing but trouble his last two innings.\nThe Cardinals scored twice without a hit in the third while taking advantage of Astacio's wildness and a San Diego fielding error, and twice more in the fourth with the help of a misplayed flyball that became a ground-rule double, alert baserunning and a perfectly executed squeeze by Eckstein.\n"I know that at some point in time it's going to be on," Eckstein said. "I love it. It's one of my favorite plays."\nAbraham Nunez started the third with a walk, Molina reached on Khalil Greene's fielding error at short and Mulder, who had only one sacrifice during the season, successfully bunted them over with two strikes.\nNady, the first baseman, went to his right to snare Eckstein's grounder but Xavier Nunez barely beat the throw home for the game's first run. Astacio then threw eight balls in a nine-pitch span that included Pujols' bases-loaded walk before recovering to strike out Walker and Sanders with the bases loaded to end the inning.