The other shoe drops and flattens St. Louis Cardinals bullpen

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6:51 PM ET

WASHINGTON — All those ragged games the St. Louis Cardinals played in the last homestand proved more costly to their fortunes than it first appeared, and they weren’t particularly pretty the first time.

A mini-crisis in their starting pitching then led to a short-term crunch Sunday that may have cost them a 10-2 loss to the Washington Nationals.

In the team’s past four games in St. Louis, manager Mike Matheny was coerced into using his relievers for 18 2/3 of the necessary 36 innings. Any time your relievers pitch more than your starters over that many games, you’re asking for trouble, and trouble finally answered the call.

Matheny didn’t want to use two of his most effective, but hardest-worked, relievers during a seventh inning that quickly became a mess. Seung-Hwan Oh was not at Matheny’s disposal at all, he said. Ace setup man Kevin Siegrist, who led the majors in appearances last year and has already pitched 22 times this year, was available for only one batter.

Jonathan Broxton gave up three runs and managed to get just one out in a meltdown seventh inning. Rob Carr/Getty Images

That compounded the limits the Cardinals had already self-imposed. Matheny wanted to get two of his everyday players, Yadier Molina and Stephen Piscotty, off their …

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