"Probably the ugliest start to a road trip you can have and then a nice finish," said Matt Carpenter, who hit his 20th homer of the year in Sunday's win. "You look at the overall record and think, 'Wow, we would have taken that going into it.'"
The Padres pounded the Cardinals last weekend, outscoring St. Louis 17-3 in consecutive wins. The Cardinals stop the slippage with a win last Sunday that jump-started a stretch in which they would outscore their opponents 49-21. The club followed that win in San Diego with its first four-game sweep in Arizona and then a series win in San Francisco, where two of the Cardinals' last three seasons ended.