Nationals pay for Pujols passes

~ St. Louis won 9-2 despite four walks to the Cardinals first baseman.

ST. LOUIS -- Hitting behind Albert Pujols, Jim Edmonds knows he's in a good spot.

The Washington Nationals walked Pujols four times, and Edmonds made them pay by driving in three runs in a 9-2 victory Sunday that completed the St. Louis Cardinals' record-setting April.

Edmonds, hitting .213 after going 2-for-5, expects to get more chances as teams pitch around Pujols.

"Eventually you have to come through," he said. "If they want to walk Albert all year long, I'll be happy to hit behind him."

St. Louis manager Tony La Russa doesn't fault the strategy of walking Pujols.

"They're going to make someone else beat them and today, they did," he said.

Although Edmonds has not been hitting for average, he has made the most of his RBI chances -- he drove in 19 runs in the first month of the season.

"I haven't done anything different today than I did the other day," he said. "Some times you get hits, and some times you don't."

St. Louis finished April 17-8, topping the previous franchise mark for April wins, set with a 15-7 record last year.

The Cardinals, who went 8-2 on their homestand, are tied with the Reds for the NL Central lead heading into a two-game series that starts tonight in Cincinnati.

"We've really played good baseball," La Russa said. "But I've never got the feeling we were a really hot baseball club. We've just competed really well and swung some games our way."

Jeff Suppan (2-2) held Washington to two runs in six innings. Suppan gave up five hits, struck out three and walked two. Adam Wainwright and Brad Thompson completed a six-hitter.

"With how our offense was running, I was just going out there trying to put up as many zeros as I could and minimize the damage," Suppan said.

So Taguchi, who came off the bench, also drove in three runs.

Pujols went 0-for-1 with the four walks, one of them intentional. He set a major league record with 14 homers in April and tied the Cardinals' record for April RBIs, set by Mark McGwire with 32 in 1998.

Zach Day (1-3), acquired off waivers from Colorado last week, lost in his Washington debut, allowing four runs and six hits in five innings. The Nationals have lost eight of nine overall and dropped to 2-9 against the NL Central.

"We're having a tough time," Alfonso Soriano said. "Tomorrow, we start with May, so I hope we played our one bad month and tomorrow we'll have good news."

Washington manager Frank Robinson was fairly pleased by Day's performance.

"I liked what I saw today," he said. "It was encouraging."

Juan Encarnacion homered for the Cardinals. Taguchi matched his RBIs high, set last Aug. 16 against Arizona.

Ryan Zimmerman hit a second-inning homer for Washington and scored on Brian Schneider's fourth-inning single.

Encarnacion's homer tied the score 1-1 in the second, and John Rodriguez's RBI single for St. Louis made it 2-2 in the fifth. Following an intentional walk to Pujols that loaded the bases, Edmonds singled up the middle on the next pitch to drive in two runs and put the Cardinals ahead 4-2.

Taguchi pinch hit in the sixth and hit a two-run single off Joey Eischen. Taguchi added a sacrifice fly in the eighth against Felix Rodriguez, who also gave up an RBI single to Edmonds and a run-scoring double to Scott Spiezio.

Notes: The Expos/Nationals have not won a series in St. Louis since taking two of three from Aug. 6-8, 2002. ... St. Louis 3B Scott Rolen missed his sixth straight game due to an upper respiratory illness. He will not travel with the team to Cincinnati but may travel to Houston on Wednesday... Yadier Molina, who went 3-for-29 on the homestand and hitless in his last 12 at-bats, was given the day off. ... Sunday's attendance was 39,383, giving the Cardinals 16 straight sellouts to start the season.