Joe Kelly pitched another solid game and deserved to win. The bullpen threw three shutdown innings, but the damage had already been done. The offense mounted an attack and could’ve taken it in the ninth. But none of these efforts mattered as the Cardinals (42-39) dropped a close one 3-2 to the Colorado Rockies.

STARVING ROOKIE: Joe Kelly has been prtty amazing since his debut a few weeks ago. He’s pitched 27 innings, and has a nice ERA of 3.29. He’s kept the team in every ballgame so far. Yet he only has a record of 1-1 in five starts; that’s a testament to the stop/start offense we’ve seen from the Cardinals recently. GET THIS KID SOME RUNS.

FIERY: There isn’t anyone in major league baseball hotter than Matt Holliday right now. Yeah, the cranks are right – Holliday sucks and needs to be traded. He’s hitting .400 in the last seven games with two home runs and seven RBI. He has an OPS of (gulp) 1.150 during that span. The only thing he hasn’t done is kill a fan with one of his lethal home runs. He hit another one tonight as part of another 2-4 performance. We’ve been waiting a while for Holliday to really light up, and it’s nice to see.

UPSIDE-DOWN: I knew that red moon this morning would spell discombobulation for the Cardinals. How else can you explain why Yadier Molina (who has the average footspeed of a rusty dryer rolling uphill) would have a stolen base while Daniel Descalso gets thrown out?

UPRISING: Sometimes this team shows an inspirational amount of life. Trailing 3-2 in the bottom of the ninth, the Cardinals mounted a comeback. A single by David Freese and a walk by Descalso ended up with runners on the corners and two outs for Jon Jay. It seriously looked like the Cards were going to snatch this game from the awful Rockies. However, Jay took a called third strike (ugh … ever heard of guarding the plate??) to end the threat. While it didn’t end as a winner, they certainly pushed themselves to the final pitch.

PLAYER OF THE GAME: Holliday, the only one really hitting tonight.

CONCLUSION: Games like this bother me simply because a pitcher like Rockies starter Jeff Francis is one of those left-handed softballers we should pulverize while sleepwalking, yet we don’t. It’s hard to watch the Cards flail helplessly against junk.