Too many mistakes sinking Cardinals

— -- SAN FRANCISCO -- You can debate the validity, and even the existence, of the Cardinal Way, but there's no avoiding what took place Wednesday night in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series: Whatever way -- or Way -- it is, it got lost somewhere around the sixth inning. If anyone's interested in hunting it down, there's a good chance most of it can be found in the general vicinity of first base.

The box score will tell you the Cardinals played an errorless game in their 6-4 loss at AT&T Park, and the box score will lie in a way that would shame even the most pathological. The Cardinals' performance defied reason, general aesthetics and statistical analysis, making it perhaps the most poorly played errorless game in the history of errorless games -- a bold claim made possible by its inherent inability to be proven.

This much is beyond debate: The Cardinals are down three games to one in the series because they have consistently failed to make the types of plays they usually make in October. Manager Mike Matheny termed them "non-plays," a euphemism that served to: (1) accurately but diplomatically describe the tire fire he'd just witnessed, and (2) save whatever fragile egos exist in his team's clubhouse as it gets ready to face Madison Bumgarner in Game 5 -- against a less-than-optimal Adam Wainwright -- with the season hanging by a frayed thread.

Most of the action -- or non-action, in Mathenyspeak -- took place in the vaudevillian bottom of the sixth, when the Giants put the Cardinals on the brink of the offseason with a sadistic three-run rally that erased the Cards' 4-3 lead. And most of the action centered on Cardinals first baseman Matt Adams.

With Juan Perez on third, Brandon Crawford on second and one out, Gregor Blanco topped a weak grounder toward first. Adams was off-balance as he fielded it -- he looked a little like a five-gallon pail toppling out of the bed of a pickup -- and then ran with it for a few steps to secure his grip. His throw home was soft, low and late.

The next batter, Joe Panik, hit a chopper that Adams fielded nicely before stepping on first base and turning his back to throw to second without attending to Crawford at third. As soon as Adams threw to second in a futile attempt to get Blanco, Crawford ran home with the go-ahead run.

Moments before, as Crawford stood on third and Panik approached the plate, third-base coach Tim Flannery told Crawford, "If there's a grounder to first, wait till he throws to second or home."

In fact, Adams seemed to grasp the same idea a click too late. His throw to second seemed to lose conviction just before he released it, as if you could pinpoint the exact microsecond he realized it was a bad idea.

Afterward, Adams stood at his locker and, in a voice that was barely audible, repeated the same sentence -- "I should have just touched first and checked the runner" -- so many times and with such little inflection it threatened to become hypnotic.

Asked what he saw from his vantage point, Cardinals third baseman Matt Carpenter said, "I'm not sure. I'm not sure." He paused, shook his head and said, "I don't want to answer that."

There were other non-plays, not including the six walks by Cardinals pitchers, that forced the Cardinals into a position (down 3-1) only 12 of 78 previous teams have been able to overcome. In the bottom of the first, after the Cardinals had taken a 1-0 lead, Gregor Blanco led off by hitting a long fly to center that Jon Jay -- after a long run -- couldn't squeeze. It was generously ruled a double, and Blanco scored two batters later.

With one out and St. Louis leading 2-1 in the second, Shelby Miller bunted to first and A.J. Pierzynski -- on first after an RBI single -- was thrown out at second when he slid aggressively at Crawford instead of going right to the bag. Had he gone directly to the bag, the Cardinals would have had runners at first and second with one out for Carpenter.

(Pierzynski, by the way, seems to be revving up for something big here, as if he senses it might be his last time under the bright lights and he doesn't want it to get away from him. In the second, on a pitch in the dirt that Travis Ishikawa missed for strike three, Pierzynski was hit on the back of the head by Ishikawa's backswing. With Hunter Pence heading to second base, Pierzynski thought about it for a moment before falling on his butt like he was Tasered. Plate umpire Mark Carlson ruled interference and sent Pence back to second. And when Pierzynski walked with two out and nobody on in the sixth, he winged his bat all the way to the dugout fence, like a guy flinging a bee out of a moving car. In a way, it was disappointing that he was removed as part of a double switch in the bottom of the sixth; he was just getting going.)

The image the Cardinals will try to purge from their memories when they arrive for Thursday's Game 5 is either Adams turning his back to Crawford or Giants reliever Yusmeiro Petit walking off the field clapping into his glove after another scoreless inning of work.

Nine postseason innings, no runs, two hits, 11 strikeouts and two wins. What is it about this guy? "Honestly, it's just that he knows how to pitch," said Cardinals third baseman Matt Carpenter. "He doesn't throw hard. He's not deceptive. He just keeps the ball out of the middle of the plate."

Heavy-lidded and three-quarter bearded, Petit appears to be persistently underwhelmed by the whole spectacle. He works exclusively out of the stretch, and his motion is an erg or two more forceful than a dad playing catch with his third-grader. The main message of the entire operation seems to be this: I'm going to toss it up there and you're going to strain every muscle in your body getting yourself out. He possesses the rare gift of making the difficult look easy, and at this point, it seems as if everybody on both sides knows how it's going to go down before any of it actually does.

It's inevitable that the Giants' offensive performance will be grouped with the two that came before it: quirky and mostly devoid of the clinical definition of The Big Hit. And that will lead -- inevitably, again -- to accusations of luck.

"Everybody talks about how we score runs in unconventional ways," Crawford said, "but that's because we put pressure on the defense."

"Causing havoc," Giants starter Ryan Vogelsong said. "That's how they teach us to play here."

So maybe it's time to put the luck theory to rest, on the simple hypothesis that anything that happens this consistently has to be rooted in something stronger than fate. Whatever you want to call the Giants' offensive style -- Flannery prefers the term "Ground Game" -- it seems perfectly suited to bring out the non-est of the non-plays in a team that prides itself on being the paragon of fundamental baseball.

After all, not beating yourself is a big part of not losing -- regardless of whose Way that might be.