Mikolas solid, but Cards` bats sputter vs. Bucs
(MLB.com St. Louis Cardinals)

Through one lense, the Cardinals don`t qualify as baseball`s most all-or-nothing offense. Not even close. St. Louis scored 40 percent of its runs via the home run over the season`s first two months, putting them in the middle of the pack in the sport`s homer-happy landscape. But through another, they`ve devolved into one of the Majors` most power-reliant teams. When they homer in a game, the Cardinals are the National League`s second most successful club. But when they don`t, they morph into one of the NL`s worst, at the mercy of an erratic offense that tends to either score in bunches or not very much at all. The latest example came Friday, when the Cardinals were blanked, 4-0, by the Pirates in front of a sellout crowd of 47,135 at Busch Stadium.