Philly sports columnist- Fifty million dollars of pitching didn't buy happiness for Phils

Philadelphia Daily News sportswriter Sam Donnellon offered this post-mortem on the St. Louis Cardinals' 1-0 game five win over the Phillies:

The Phillies threw almost $50 million of pitching at the St. Louis Cardinals in this series, a number that equals just about half the money the wild-card team that beat it paid its entire 25-man squad. They gave them a big dose of Roy Halladay and a smaller dose of Cliff Lee, but as the Yankees learned the other day and the Red Sox learned in September, money doesn’t always buy you happiness.

Combined, the Yankees, Red Sox and Phillies spent a half-billion dollars to try and win a world championship that will now be decided by four teams whose combined payrolls lay well short of that. You have to go 10 teams down to find the highest remaining payroll in these playoffs, the Detroit Tigers. And right behind them, you will find the St. Louis Cardinals.

The Cardinals advanced not just because they hit, but because their overlooked staff matched the Phillies famous staff, made the Phillies lineup so dormant that the two loudest innings of the game began with a hit batsmen and a dropped third strike.