ST. LOUIS -- Lately, St. Louis Cardinals manager Mike Matheny has been professing great optimism about his team despite its middling results.

On Monday, he said the team was "even better than maybe a lot of us anticipated," and the next afternoon, he discussed the team's offensive firepower and resiliency. There are reasons to agree with Matheny, even if you accuse him of being a team apologist. For one thing, the Cardinals entered Tuesday night's game with the second-best run differential -- at plus-41 -- in the National League.

We'll leave aside for the moment that the No. 1 team's differential was more than twice as high and that the team is the rival Chicago Cubs. The number still tells us that the Cardinals were probably a little better than their 13-13 record indicated.

The Cardinals also entered Tuesday with the most prolific offense in baseball. The pitching has been disappointing, but Michael Wacha went out and gave them another tantalizing clue that the rotation could be about to kick into gear, as well, in a 1-0 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies.

Here's the thing, though: Unless the Cardinals start getting better results soon, nobody is going to care about the peripherals. The loss slipped them seven games behind those Cubs, a pretty frightening gulf considering Cinco de Mayo parties haven't even started.

The Cardinals probably aren't going to make it to the playoffs if they continue to lose every series against a competitive team. After Tuesday's loss to the surprising Phillies, the Cardinals are 2-9 against teams with winning records.

None of it was Wacha's fault, unless you dwell on the one really bad pitch he made, a grooved 89 mph cutter to Ryan Howard that got yanked into the right-field stands. Wacha breezed most of the night, allowing just that run and striking out eight Phillies in eight innings. Aaron Nola was just a little bit better, holding the Cardinals scoreless on two hits over seven.

Boil it all down and it moved their run differential to plus-40 and their record to 13-14.