Below The Beltway

The Los Angeles Dodgers became the first team to make it into the next round of the playoffs last night:

ST. LOUIS — On the whole, Cardinals fans are a forgiving bunch. They pardon crucial mistakes and brush aside crushing losses, choosing to focus on the positive with all their Missouri might. But it will be tough for them to find a shred of good news now. They, like much of baseball, are wondering how a team with two Cy Young Award candidates and two of the majors’ most dangerous hitters could fall so far, so fast.

This National League division series may be remembered less for the Los Angeles Dodgers’ three-game sweep, punctuated by a 5-1 victory Saturday night at Busch Stadium, than for the Cardinals’ stunning collapse. For the second straight year, the Dodgers vanquished an N.L. Central champion cast as the favorite. Last October, it was the Chicago Cubs. This time, the Cardinals. They closed their season by losing 11 of 13 games.

“We’re better than what we showed the last three games, and I think the Dodgers know that, but it doesn’t matter,” said Cardinals third baseman Mark DeRosa, a member of the 2008 Cubs.

The Cardinals’ offense withered, their defense eroded and their pitching, aside from Adam Wainwright, crumbled. They went 4 for 30 in the series with runners in scoring position, ran themselves into outs and lost games pitched by their aces, Chris Carpenter and Wainwright.

The Game 2 loss was hardly Wainwright’s fault; a two-out error in left field by Matt Holliday jump-started the Dodgers’ improbable ninth-inning comeback. But the Cardinals have learned a painful truth: October brings out the best in the Dodgers and the worst in their opponents.

“We came in as underdogs for the second year in a row and proved everybody wrong yet again,” Dodgers center fielder Matt Kemp said.

The Dodgers scored all their runs Saturday night with two outs, including a two-run homer by Andre Ethier in the third inning. Two run-scoring hits by Manny Ramirez bookended the barrage and backed a commanding performance by Vicente Padilla. Released by Texas in mid-August, Padilla silenced the Cardinals over seven shutout innings, retiring 17 of 18 batters over one stretch while striking out four and allowing four hits.

“You’ve seen this ballclub play a little ragged,” Manager Joe Torre said of his Dodgers. “And then all of a sudden, we’re playing a team that we’re going to see if we measure up, and we show up. And that’s basically what happened here.”

Now, the Dodgers await the outcome of the Philadelphia-Colorado series while, over in the American League, we could see both series wrapped up today as both the Yankees and the Angles have 2-0 leads going into Game 3.