Cards bats, not Wainwright, beat Cubs

Despite the loss of Chris Carpenter, the Cardinals continue to make one of the best starts in the majors. With a 7-4 win over the Cubs, St. Louis improves to 8-3 on the year.

They got it done with hitting on Thursday with Chris Duncan, Khalil Greene and Brian Barden all going deep. Then again, the Cardinals were facing Cubs fifth starter Sean Marshall while the Cubs dealt with St. Louis ace Adam Wainwright.

Fantay Impact: Wainwright actually didn't pitch very well, giving up four runs in six innings while still earning a win. He's giving up a lot of base runners but keeping them from scoring. He'll need to right that ship if he wants to maintain a 3.31 ERA.

Duncan is hitting .389, and Tony La Russa's faith in him against lefties like Marshall is paying off. He picked up three hits today in four at bats.

A tale of two pitching statlines

The oddest statline of the day might go to the strange duel between Roy Oswalt and Adam Wainwright. Oswalt needed 89 pitches to get through six innings, giving up six earned runs. Wainwright labored much more than his counterpart, requiring 102 pitches to get through the fifth. Wainwright, however, gave up no runs and just seven base runners to Oswalt's 11, winning the game comfortably, 11-2.

Fantasy Impact: Both pitchers struck out four batters, but Oswalt just left his stuff over the plate more than Wainwright did. The Cardinals ace fought off batter after batter, eventually earning outs instead of base runners. We expect these two to serve as good number two starters in fantasy play.