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ST. LOUIS -- You fight through the monotony of fielding practice in spring training. The sore elbows, the back pain, the starts when you leave your fastball in the bullpen, and maybe a surgery or two at some point in your career.

Chris Carpenter missed an entire season with shoulder surgery. He missed another season after injuring his elbow on Opening Day and undergoing Tommy John surgery. When the St. Louis Cardinals reached the World Series in 2004, he couldn’t pitch due to nerve problem in his right biceps.

A couple days ago, Tony La Russa wasn’t sure if Carpenter would be able to pitch Game 7. For one thing, the Cardinals had to win Game 6. La Russa and pitching coach Dave Duncan didn’t officially decide to go with Carpenter until Friday, going with their staff ace on three days’ rest.

There was a time, of course, when that wouldn’t have been a big deal. Christy Mathewson once tossed three shutouts in the World Series over a six-day span. Sandy Koufax pitched a three-hit shutout in 1965 on two days’ rest. Jack Morris’ famous 10-inning shutout in 1991 came on three days’ rest.

But Carpenter had only done that once before in his career -- three weeks ago, in Game 2 of the Division Series against the Philadelphia Phillies. He lasted three innings. It wasn’t pretty. He said he’d learned a few things from that experience. La Russa made the call: Go with the big guy, the 6-foot-6, 36-year-old veteran from New Hampshire with a scruffy growth of beard, and on this day, in the biggest game of his career, a toolbox full of pitches.

The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Texas Rangers 6-2 in a Game 7 of the World Series that couldn’t match the impossible drama and excitement of Game 6. The Rangers played hard, but their pitching staff simply ran out of gas, exemplified by the Cardinals’ fifth inning, when they scored two runs without getting the ball out of the infield -- without even getting a hit. Rangers pitchers walked three batters and hit two more, turning a 3-2 game into a 5-2 deficit. Critics will put a lot of blame on manager Ron Washington for the Rangers’ defeat, and deservedly so, but in the end the Rangers simply couldn’t throw enough strikes and couldn’t get the final out they needed in Game 6.

On this night, however, the Cardinals made the big plays: David Freese with another clutch hit, a two-out stinging double into the gap in left-center to score two runs in the first (giving the World Series MVP a postseason record 21 RBIs); Allen Craig with a go-ahead home run in the third, fighting back from a 1-2 count to hit a 3-2 Matt Harrison fastball into the St. Louis bullpen in right-center; Craig later robbing Nelson Cruz of a home run.

But the key was Carpenter. "Dave had a real heart-to-heart with him to gauge just how ready he was to pitch just physically, not mentally, but physically," La Russa said before the game. He then added, "The last thing is ... what he means to our club. I think our guys feel better about him starting than anybody."

Carpenter pitched into the seventh and became the first pitcher to win two do-or-die games in one postseason, after also winning Game 5 of the division series. No, it won't quite go down alongside Mathewson and Koufax and Morris, but it was a terrific effort, especially since he almost didn’t get out of the first inning. The first four batters all reached base as Carpenter fell behind each hitter. But Ian Kinsler slipped while taking an aggressive secondary lead and Yadier Molina picked him off. The play proved enormously costly when Elvis Andrus walked and Josh Hamilton and Michael Young doubled to right field. Carpenter struck out Adrian Beltre and got Cruz to ground, maybe the two key at-bats of the game.

From there, the St. Louis' bullpen mowed down the Rangers, Busch Stadium getting louder and louder with each out, erupting when Arthur Rhodes retired Yorvit Torrealba and Octavio Dotel struck out Kinsler, raising the decibel level when Lance Lynn fanned Beltre to end the eighth, the anticipation building into a loud chant of "Let's Go Cards!" in the ninth and the crowd releasing into a deafening explosion of joy as Jason Motte recorded the final out on a fly ball to left field.

Maybe Game 7 was over as soon Freese hit his home run onto the grass in Game 6. Many people said it was. I didn't think that was the case; I thought the Rangers had a chance. You make your own breaks, but the Rangers sure didn't catch any: Craig steps in for the injured Matt Holliday and has a great game; that 3-2 pitch to Molina with the bases loaded in the fifth could have been called a strike and changed the momentum of the game.

But give credit to Chris Carpenter and the St. Louis Cardinals, a team that could have given up in early September. A team that made the playoffs on the final day of the regular season, that needed to beat Roy Halladay just to reach the National League Championship Series, that was down to its final strike twice in Game 6, and figured out how to win the World Series. A worthy champion and one to be remembered.

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Of course, this World Series will also be remembered for the many questionable decisions by Washington, moves that led to the Rangers suffering one of the most painful defeats in World Series history. Before we get to that, keep this in mind: Rangers pitchers walked 41 batters, a World Series record worst. They walked six more in Game 7. Too many walks, too many walks.

• Washington didn't help matters by issuing another ill-timed intentional walk. I said it all series long: the intentional walks were going to come back to haunt the Rangers. A free pass to Lance Berkman hurt the Rangers in Game 6. In Game 7, Washington walked Freese with runners on second and third, which was followed by Scott Feldman's walk to Molina and then C.J. Wilson hitting Rafael Furcal to force in another run.
• I didn't necessarily have a problem with using Feldman to start the fifth. The best option might have been Mike Adams, but Washington hasn't shown a lot of confidence in Adams' ability to go more than three outs. He was hoping Feldman could get him a couple innings. (Needless to say, using Alexi Ogando would have been a likely disaster).
• Washington's decision to have Andrus bunt in the top of the fifth after Kinsler's leadoff single was odd. Down by one on the road, top of the order, giving up an out? Play for one, get none. Carpenter got Hamilton to pop out to third on a 3-1 fastball -- Freese made a nice catch as he leaned over the dugout railing and stumbled to the ground -- and struck out Young on a 1-2 cut fastball.
• In the bottom of the fourth, St. Louis up 3-2, Molina and Furcal singled with one out, bringing up Skip Schumaker and Carpenter. Washington had Feldman warming up, but it made sense to leave in Harrison at that point since Schumaker is a career .210 hitter against left-handers. Schumaker grounded out to first to move up the runners, leaving La Russa with a choice: Hit for Carpenter? There were calls on Twitter to do so. At that point he’d thrown 63 pitches, 34 for strikes, but had retired 11 of the previous 14 Rangers hitters. I thought it was too early remove Carpenter, who had settled down, and especially considering La Russa's own bullpen didn't have a lot of pitches left in it.
• In the seventh inning, Albert Pujols came up for maybe the final at-bat of his Cardinals career. Oddly, there was no chant, no standing ovation, just a bunch of flashes going off as he struck out. The crowd did stand and applaud as he walked back to the dugout after striking out.

What's the deal with blown saves? Erstwhile St. Louis Cardinals closer Ryan Franklin recently blew up on the mound for the fourth time this season, then blew up at fans for booing him. In response, people flamed him on the radio and internet. All this over a few blown saves.

Don't get me wrong, I don't particularly like blown saves, either. But blown saves are, if you will, overblown. Don't believe me? The Cardinals, whose relievers shut out the Braves for four innings in their 5-3 win Friday night, lead the National League Central with a 15-11 record. They also lead the league in blown saves.

The reality is that blown saves don't really negatively correlate with winning percentage. That doesn't mean they're good, but it probably means that they're not an indication that the Mayan apocalypse is upon us. This makes the certain freak out over every last one of them a little tiring. The preoccupation also tends to crowd out other aspects of the game that matter as much or more.

Happily, St. Louis fans will be spared any headlines Saturday about which closer du jour coughed up the lead Friday night. But partisans in Atlanta (Craig Kimbrel), Minnesota (Alex Burnett) and Boston (Bobby Jenks) will be stark-raving mad about their relievers' blown saves after Friday night. And that doesn't even include Detroit's Joaquin Benoit, because in a non-save situation -- so he couldn't get a blown save -- he surrendered a walk-off grand slam to Carlos Santana.

All of this is part of the problem. Like its ugly brother, the save, the blown save is a blunt object wielded to bash relievers into easily identified goats.

Consider these weird facts:

• A pitcher who enters a tie game and gives up the lead can’t get a blown save.
• A pitcher who enters with a four-run lead and gives up the lead can’t get a blown save.
• A pitcher can get a blown save if the go-ahead run scores on fielding errors.
• A pitcher who blows a save can also get the win.
• A pitcher can be charged with a blown save even though a run may not even be charged to him.

A blown save is merely a half-inning sample of a ballgame. That means that a team has at least 17 other half-innings in which to win any particular game. What do you call it when the starting pitcher allows a run in the fourth inning with a 7-4 lead? Or a sixth-inning reliever who comes into the game down 3-2 but allows a run to increase his team’s deficit? We don’t call it anything, of course.

The upside-down world of the blown save was on display during the Cardinals’ mid-week series in Houston. The team’s most dominant reliever, Eduardo Sanchez, pitched notably worse than Mitchell Boggs, the pitcher expected to replace Franklin in the closer’s gig. Yet Boggs was saddled with the scarlet letters “BS,” while Sanchez wore an “S” like he was Superman. To top it off, Fernando Salas "earned" a save Thursday night by throwing a wild pitch (on which the inning ended with a runner tagged out trying to score), then pitching one inning with a four-run lead. "Hey, nice work, Fernando Salas," quipped broadcaster Dan McLaughlin, we hope mockingly.

It’s no surprise that Franklin, though successful in the past, has had a hard time closing games. It’s because he has had a hard time getting hitters out, relying as heavily as he does on defense and the vagaries of “luck” (with career rates of 4.9 K/9 and 2.7 BB/9, he has one of the highest rates of balls put into play). Regardless of the situation: He has allowed at least one baserunner in every game in which he has pitched this year.

Rather than focus on the non-qualitative blown save, let’s instead take a smarter look at relief pitchers. Until someone determines that saves are a special, repeatable skill -- rather than simply a function of opportunities and how good a reliever is in any context -- let’s just check out strikeout and walk rates, for starters.

For example, Sanchez entered Friday’s game with 14 strikeouts and one walk in eight innings, and in six minor-league seasons, the 22-year-old posted 9.9 K/9. With dominance like that, he’s going to succeed in relief, whether he enters with a four-run lead, in a tie game or down one run. Sure, he’ll blow a save every now and then, but so does Mariano Rivera

It’s a fact that the top two career leaders in blown saves are in the Hall of Fame. If you don't believe me, take a trip to Cooperstown, and you'll see that both Goose Gossage (112 blown saves) and Rollie Fingers (109) got elected. Almost always, more variables explain a team’s lost than a single hapless pitcher’s inability to obtain three outs on a particular night, so try not to attach too much significance to the Blown Save in isolation.

PHOTO OF THE DAY
Matt Philip covers the Cardinals for the SweetSpot Network at Fungoes. You can follow him on Twitter.

Eric Karabell gets Rob Neyer's opinions on Milton Bradley, Ernie Harwell, the AL East and Dave Duncan, who Neyer believes belongs in the Hall of Fame.

Nice piece in the Times this weekend about Dave Duncan:

Tony La Russa had an unusual experience last week. For the first time in his memory, he managed a game without the reassuring presence of Dave Duncan.

Duncan, who has been La Russa's pitching coach since they were in Chicago together in 1983, took Tuesday off for personal reasons. The division-leading Cardinals soldiered on without him, with Duncan's protégé Adam Wainwright throwing eight shutout innings in a 1-0 victory against Houston.

"It was very strange,” La Russa said. "I don't know if he's ever missed a game before. If he has, I can't remember it.”

La Russa is considered one of the top managers in baseball, a winner of two World Series titles who is called an innovator, a motivator, a tactician and even, by some, a genius. But he readily acknowledges that without Duncan ministering to the pitching staff, the story all these years would probably be different.

"It's amazing what that guy does,” La Russa said. "He's so freaking good, it's unbelievable.”

Duncan's suddenly a hot topic because his contract expires after this season, and he's been sounding less than enthusiastic about returning to the Cardinals next season. Why? Here's St. Louis columnist Joe Strauss:

He is angry - publicly so at a St. Louis media he believes stoked last month's trade of his outfielder son Chris to the Boston Red Sox and, until now, privately at a franchise that has created a minor-league pitching philosophy independent of his and bullpen coach Marty Mason's input.

A number inside and outside the Cardinals organization view Duncan's smoldering dissatisfaction as a precursor to him leaving after this season. That belief only gained steam last week when Duncan asked general manager John Mozeliak for a one-day leave of absence upon the team's return from a 5-2 West Coast trip to address "personal business."

Dave Duncan is a hot commodity, and for good reason. He's not thrilled with his bossess, and for reasons that any father could probably understand (he was apparently angry at not just the local media, but also with the front office over how his son's situation was handled).

My guess is that Duncan will be back, but only after he believes that he's been treated with the appropriate respect, perhaps in the form of a hefty raise. I'd love to see Duncan someday considered for the Hall of Fame, and I suspect the Coop is poking around in the back of his mind, too. But while his magic might work just about anywhere, it's also possible that Tony La Russa has been a key to Duncan's success. And it won't help his Hall of Fame case if he goes somewhere else and -- as happened to Leo Mazzone -- his new charges struggle.

Cardinals pitching coach Dave Duncan tells Baseball Today's Eric Karabell and Peter Pascarelli what he does to help struggling pitchers turn things around.