Mulder, Cardinals Take Command, 6-2

When Mark Mulder took a line drive off his arm in the second inning and doubled over in pain, the St. Louis Cardinals figured it would be a short outing for their 16-game winner.

Instead, Mulder shook off the hard shot to his left biceps from Joe Randa and put his team on the brink of a playoff sweep.

Mulder pitched shutout ball into the seventh inning and the Cardinals once again built an early lead, beating the San Diego Padres, 6-2, Thursday for a 2-0 edge in their best-of-five National League division series.

“Once the inning starts, there’s so much adrenaline it didn’t bother me much,” Mulder said. “If I couldn’t have made good pitches, I would have said ‘All right, I’ve had enough.’

“I didn’t want to come out of that game.”

Matt Morris will try to clinch it for St. Louis on Saturday at San Diego against Woody Williams. Mulder was with the Oakland Athletics when they squandered a 2-0 lead against the Red Sox in 2003.

“We held home-field advantage,” Cardinal shortstop David Eckstein said. “One thing we’ve got to do, we’ve got to stay aggressive. We can’t wait to get over there.”

The Cardinals, who led the majors with 100 wins this season, have advanced to the NL championship series four times in five chances under Manager Tony La Russa. San Diego, which limped into the playoffs with an 82-80 record, hasn’t shown any signs of stopping them.

“We’ve put pressure on that team, we just haven’t come up with the big hit yet,” Brian Giles said. “We’re playing for our lives now.”