The defending world champion St. Louis. Cardinals lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates Tuesday, with a score of 6-1. Tom Gorzelanny stole the show pitching 8.1 innings, giving up just four hits, striking out two, giving up one run and walking three. Pirates relief pitcher Matt Capps threw the last 2/3 of an inning to finish the game, he struck out both batters he faced.

“They’re the big dogs in our division, and it’s good to get out there and shut them down,” pitcher Tom Gorzelanny said. “If we can keep doing that, you’re going to be seeing a lot of good things out of us.”

Not much offense went around for the Cardinals today. They had just four hits on the day and walked only three times. They left two runners in scoring position and So Taguchi hit into a double play. Albert Pujols went 0-7 this series vs. the Pirates. Pujols’ opposing struggling first baseman today, Adam Laroche, hit a three run homerun. Of the homerun Laroche said “I don’t know how it stayed fair, the way things are going, but it did, as soon as I hit I thought, ‘Oh, that’s foul.’ I’ve had some pretty good-hit balls right at people, so that was nice.”

This series shouldn’t be a sign of things to come from the Cardinals, they are off to a bad start to the season and can’t be expected to succeed without their premiere player Albert Pujols performing. This series will build morale for the 6-6 Pirates, but it should also be a wakeup call to the Cardinals to catch up with the rest of the division before they fall too far behind in the NL Central division. Teams like the Pirates and the Reds should not be ahead of the Cardinals even at this point in the season. Having a scrappy come from behind team is fine, but a world champion team needs to show their dominance over the Pirates.