ST. LOUIS _ If Adam Wainwright won the game single-handedly, why did the Dodgers feel like they got double-teamed?
Wainwright hit a two-run home run and pitched six scoreless innings as the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Dodgers, 2-0, Thursday afternoon, holding them to one run over back-to-back losses in the final two games of the four-game series at Busch Stadium.
"Wainwright pitched well," Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. "It was Little League _ pitch well and hit a homer. You have to give him credit today."
If credit went to Wainwright, the Dodgers also put blame on home plate umpire Marty Foster. Adrian Gonzalez and Yasmani Grandal were both ejected by Foster after arguing strike calls in the ninth inning, the end product of game-long frustration.
"There were pitches we felt were off the plate," Roberts said. "To feel like you get the bat taken out of your hand, obviously Adrian and Yasmani were very upset by it. You're out there competing and when you feel like you're getting strikes taken away, the bat taken out of your hand, it gets frustrating.
"Our guys know the strike zone pretty well."
Gonzalez led off the ninth inning and took a full-count pitch from Cardinals closer Seung-Hwan Oh that was clearly off the plate. Foster called it strike three.
Gonzalez protested before leaving the scene and continued voicing his opinion from the top step of the Dodgers dugout as Chase Utley singled, bringing the tying run to the plate. Foster had enough and ejected Gonzalez as Grandal came up to pinch-hit.
"Funniest thing is he told Dave afterwards that he'd been calling balls off the plate all game and he wasn't going to change," Gonzalez said. "So apparently he agreed that they were balls and since he'd been calling them it was OK to keep calling them.
"That was my whole frustration more than anything. It's a two-run game. Leadoff guy gets on, being myself, home run ties it up so it's a big at-bat, a big pitch. ... At that point, you want him to kind of realize he did get it wrong so maybe he'd call better pitches going forward. But obviously he didn't because he called two bad ones on Grandal."
Grandal struck out, swinging at strike three. But the first two called strikes were indeed questionable and Grandal was ejected when he got into it with Foster after the at-bat.
Grandal declined to speak with reporters after the game. Gonzalez did not.
"The strike zone is in the rule book," Gonzalez said. "Are we supposed to chase pitches out of the zone and then if I swing at that one people say, 'Why'd you swing at that? It was a ball.' That's not justification.
"The rule book states the strike zone and you try to stay with it. Obviously sometimes pitchers are deceptive and they make you chase pitches out of the zone. But in a big situation like that, you're locking in and making sure you're seeing strikes because it's a big at-bat. You try to swing at strikes and don't swing at balls. I felt I did my job there and had it taken away from me."
The Dodgers had other chances to get the job done against Wainwright. But they went 0 for 6 with runners in scoring position in his six innings, then bounced into double plays after drawing leadoff walks against Cardinals relievers in the seventh and eighth.
The Cardinals' offense wasn't much more productive _ except for Wainwright. He jumped on a hanging curveball from Dodgers starter Brandon McCarthy for a two-out, two-run home run in the second inning. It was Wainwright's 10th career home run, third among active pitchers behind Madison Bumgarner and Yovani Gallardo.
"I know he can hit a little bit," McCarthy said. "It's a curveball that you're not really expecting someone to jump on like that. I guess that's credit to him. ... He won the game for them."
McCarthy was done after only four innings, having developed a blister on the index finger of his pitching hand.
"Early in warmup, I unfortunately had a callous that built up," McCarthy said. "It kind of flaked off and there was just skin there ... I thought I could get through it but we didn't want it to get worse and have it explode."
