PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia Phillies banked their season on baseball’s most timeless adage: good pitching stops good hitting. It led them to 102 victories, the most in the history of the franchise. It would, they hoped, carry them to their second championship in four seasons.
But now the Phillies are finished, because the St. Louis Cardinalsupended that guiding principle of the game. The Cardinals, who led the National League in runs scored, handled the Phillies’ vaunted aces. They won the fifth game of their division series at Citizens Bank Park on Friday because their own ace, Chris Carpenter, beat the Phillies at their game.
Carpenter fired a three-hit shutout to beat Roy Halladay and the Phillies, 1-0, and advance to the N.L. Championship Series for the first time in five years. The Cardinals, who trailed the Atlanta Braves by 10 ½ games in the wild-card race on Aug. 25, will continue their joy ride in Milwaukee on Sunday when they open the N.L.C.S. against the Brewers.
“All we can do is take our shot, and if somebody is good enough to beat you, you tip your cap,” said Cardinals Manager Tony La Russa, who will manage in a league championship series for the 12th time. “We’ve got a nice combination of talent, a lot of guts, a lot of heart.”
The Phillies struggled to find the patterns to Carpenter’s array of pitches, burying one after the other into the dirt for harmless groundouts. St. Louis pitching held the Phillies scoreless in 31 of the final 34 innings of the series.
Ryan Howard made the last out on Friday, grounding softly to second base and crumbling about halfway up the first base line, clutching his left ankle in what appeared to be a serious Achilles’ injury. Howard finished the series 2 for 19, his limping exit a painful metaphor for a team that has ended its season in progressively meeker fashion: a World Series loss in 2009, an N.L.C.S. loss last season, and now a defeat in the first round.
“Right now, I’ve got some anger,” Phillies Manager Charlie Manuel said. “I’ve got some I-don’t-know. I just feel very empty.”
This core of Phillies already has a championship, in 2008, but that was before the arrival of Halladay, Cliff Lee and Roy Oswalt, aces in search of their first World Series ring. Adding the pitchers raised the payroll, and the fans have bought every available ticket for the last two and a half seasons.
These Phillies do not hit like their predecessors, which forces their starters to dominate. They were up to it in the regular season, but not for parts of this series. Lee lost a 4-0 lead in Game 2, and Oswalt blew a 2-0 lead in Game 4.
In Halladay, though, the Phillies were starting their most reliable pitcher, perhaps the best in the game. In the division series opener last October, Halladay no-hit the Cincinnati Reds. Last Saturday, he finished his Game 1 victory by retiring his last 21 hitters.
But Halladay had struggled in the first inning of that game, allowing three runs, and this game started with similar tension. Rafael Furcal lashed a triple to deep right-center, and Halladay hung a curveball to Skip Schumaker, who rapped it into right field for a double.
“It was a terrible curveball, but it was a very good at-bat,” Halladay said. “I threw a lot of pitches and really had to work. They came out fighting early.”
The Cardinals led, 1-0, and while they did not score again in the first, they made Halladay wade through 32 pitches. Soon enough, Halladay’s cutter would slice and his curveball would bite, and the Cardinals, it seemed, would regret not adding to their lead.
But that presumed the Phillies would score off Carpenter, Halladay’s former teammate with the Toronto Blue Jays. When they were young, Carpenter said last week, they would get together over beers and talk about the mental side of pitching.
Both became Cy Young Award winners, masters of their craft, and Carpenter’s Game 5 performance — after allowing four runs in the first two innings of Game 2 — left his friend in wonder.