Generally speaking, players not named Carlos Beltran don’t turn into different players come playoff time. That wouldn’t make any sense — it’s still regular baseball, and the things that apply in September still apply in October. Players might become slightly less effective in the playoffs, due to the increased quality of competition, but a strike-thrower will probably stay a strike-thrower and a power hitter will probably stay a power hitter. So maybe it doesn’t need to be written that Marco Scutaro has been doing an incredible job of making contact in this year’s postseason. But, aw, what the heck, we’re all here. What follows is an incomplete list of players who have one strikeout in the 2012 MLB playoffs:

• Mitch Moreland
• Jason Motte
• Sergio Romo
• Endy Chavez
• Marco Scutaro

What a carefully-selected list of players who have barely batted, and Marco Scutaro! Indeed, Scutaro’s up to 48 postseason plate appearances, tying him for seventh-most in baseball. He’s got just the one strikeout to his name, against Edward Mujica in Game 1 of the NLCS. As a Giant in the regular season, Scutaro was an extreme contact hitter. As a Giant in the playoffs, Scutaro has been an extreme contact hitter.

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The way people talked about him, Chris Carpenter was supposed to be unbeatable in the playoffs, and Ryan Vogelsong was supposed to be a little more beatable. Yet the NLCS between the Cardinals and the Giants has advanced to a Monday Game 7 in large part because, on two occasions now, Vogelsong and San Francisco have bested Carpenter and St. Louis. In Game 2, Vogelsong allowed one run in seven innings, while Carpenter went four innings and allowed five runs, two of which were earned. In Sunday’s Game 6, Vogelsong allowed one run in seven innings, while Carpenter went four innings and allowed five runs, two of which were earned. Ryan Vogelsong isn’t the only reason the Giants are still alive, but he might be the biggest one, and he’s earned this post.

Vogelsong was outstanding on Sunday, and he didn’t allow his first hit until there were two out in the fifth. He came out amped up, throwing his fastball harder than usual in the early innings, and he struck out six of the first nine batters he faced. He wound up with a career-high nine strikeouts, and while he acknowledged later that he got away with some mistakes, all good pitching performances require that a pitcher get away with some mistakes. Vogelsong made mistakes, but he didn’t make many of them.

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Tonight, the Giants and Cardinals play one game for the National League pennant. The Giants have Matt Cain rested and ready to go, and he’ll likely be called upon to carry a significant workload to get through the right-handed heavy Cardinals line-up. On the opposing side, the Cardinals will start Kyle Lohse, who simply isn’t as good as Matt Cain. However, for this year at least, he did a pretty amazing impression of the Giants ace.

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The Cardinals have a pretty commanding 3-1 series lead on the Cardinals, but it is far from a done deal yet. Even if they do win the series in the next three games, the Tigers and their pitching staff, which just dominated the Yankees, are waiting. St. Louis potentially have 10 games left this season. While even over 10 games, one starting position player being out does not usually make much of a difference, it does make a difference. Given the stakes, teams obviously need to have all hands on deck. Matt Carpenter has done a nice job filling in for Carlos Beltran since the latter tweaked his knee earlier in the series. Beltran is hoping to start, but if he can’t tonight or in the near future, how much is it likely to hurt their offense?

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After a 3 1/2 hour rain delay, the Cardinals and Giants resumed play last night with St. Louis holding a 3-1 lead after seven innings. Mike Matheny had already used Trevor Rosenthal, Edward Mujica, and Mitchell Boggs in relief, so he needed to get six outs to secure the victory and only had his closer available from the group that is generally entrusted to hold leads. Joe Kelly, Fernando Salas, and Marc Rzepczynski were available if he wanted to play the match-ups, but instead, Matheny just told Motte that he was going to get six outs instead of three.

For Motte, this is actually becoming the norm in October, and he’s proving to be pretty good at it.

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Chris Carpenter did not have a good game on Monday. He only struck out one batter in four innings, and though he only allowed two earned runs in his four innings, he did surrender eight baserunners and five runs in the loss that evened the National League Championship Series. By the time it was done, the announcers had his fastball diving three-plus miles per hour off its normal pace, and the twittersphere was contemplating which delicious young prospect should come out of the St. Louis pen to start over Carpenter the next time he was due on the hill.

Maybe the eulogies came a little early?

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Chris Carpenter is going to take the hill for St. Louis tonight in Game Two of the NLCS. During the game, you’re going to hear about Carpenter’s postseason track record — it’s very good — and about how he’s come back for the playoffs after missing most of the season. Carpenter is both often excellent and often injured, so those are the two things he is understandably most famous for.

But, perhaps there’s one other thing that Chris Carpenter should be well known for, because he’s probably better at this than he is at just about anything else – shutting down the running game.

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I did not know five minutes ago — but probably should have, owing to how I’ve watched Law and Order at least once in my life — that, per U.S. law, all deaths are classified as one of five sorts. These sorts, in fact:

• Natural
• Accidental
• Homicide
• Suicide
• Undetermined

Another thing I didn’t know five minutes ago, but have realized is likely not the worst idea, is that a way to discuss the Nationals’ (now deceased) 2012 season — and, in particular, their playoff-series defeat at the hands of the St. Louis Cardinals — is via the language of forensic science, a very basic understanding of which I’ve just acquired from Wikipedia, and which I will now dispense haphazardly throughout what follows.

“What was the cause of the death of the Nationals’ 2012 season?” we ask.

Here are cases for all five of the legally recognized types:

Type of Death: Natural

Real Definition: Death by illness or malfunction of the body.

Baseball Definition: All humans die. All baseball teams but one (i.e. the World Series winners) are eliminated. Most human deaths are natural. Most baseball teams, just by virtue of the season/playoff format, are unlikely to win a championship in a given season.

Relevance to Nats: The Nationals were a good baseball team this year, posting the best Pythagorean record in the National League. That said, the Cardinals were also a good baseball team, one which posted the second-best Pythagorean record in the National League. Over the course of 162 games, the Nationals would probably have beaten the Cardinals, like, 82 times. Logic dictates then that, over the course of a playoff series — a short, five-game series, especially — each team probably had about a 50% chance of winning.

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The St. Louis Cardinals won Game Three of their NLD Series against the Washington Nationals on Wednesday, taking a 2-1 lead in said series in the process. Besides Chris Carpenter, who pitched 5.2 scoreless (if not always dominant) innings, the player most directly responsible for the Cardinal victory — by Win Probability Added, I mean — was shortstop Pete Kozma, whose second-inning three-run homer (at .128 WPA) was the game’s single most decisive play and whose 0.11 WPA for the game was tops among Cardinal hitters.

Here’s how you, the reader — provided you’re not a Nationals fan, at least — feel about Pete Kozma, probably: you like him. Here’s why you like him, maybe: because he’s just a little guy. Or here’s why else, maybe: because he was in the minors until the end of August and is now the starting shortstop for a playoff team. Or here’s a third reason, perhaps: because he’s produced better offensively over the last month-plus in the majors than he did at any time, basically, during his previous five months in the very offensive Triple-A Pacific Coast League.

One other possible reason you like Pete Kozma is because you’re his mother — in which case, that’s really great how curious you are about advanced baseball analysis, Mrs. Kozma. Welcome.

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Allow me to state an obvious thing about the Nats-Cards NLDS, which is that it (i.e. the Series) is now tied at 1-1 after St. Louis’s 12-4 victory on Monday (box).

Allow me to state another (mostly) obvious thing, which is that the following predictions about the remainder of the Nats-Cards NLDS — while almost reasonable — are also almost certain to be wrong.

In any case, here they are — three almost reasonable predictions regarding the Nats and Cards:

Trevor Rosenthal Will Post the Cards’ Second-Highest gmLI Henceforth
Leverage Index (LI) is a measurement for how “critical” any given moment of a game is, where 1.00 is average and above 1.00 is “more critical.” So, for example, the most critical moment in Game Two on Monday — which featured a 2.08 LI (just over twice as important as a regular at-bat) — was when Jordan Zimmermann was batting in the second inning with Washington up 1-0 the game tied 0-0, runners on first and second, and one out. This represented the moment by which the game’s fate would be most significantly decided. By contrast, the game’s lowest LIs (zero, basically) occurred in the eighth and ninth innings, with St. Louis having established a considerable lead.

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