ST. LOUIS – Before Game 5 of the National League Championship Series, a reporter asked Tony La Russa about his methods of bullpen management.

La Russa is notorious for frequent pitching changes, numerous visits to the mound and, in the eyes of many sports writers, the cause of way too many deadline-blowing three-hour games.

But there is a simple method to La Russa's perceived madness. He credits Charlie Lau, a former hitting coach and La Russa's teammate on the 1963 Kansas City Athletics. The two also served on the same coaching staffs in the early '80s.

La Russa called him the "greatest hitting coach in our time" and says Lau "revolutionized the game."

"He would tell me, the thing that would worry him most about a hitting coach is when manager on the other side made it as tough as he could to score the inning you were playing. That's the philosophy I was taught.

"The No. 1 thing I try to do, as I've been taught and I believe it after all these years, is make it as hard for the other club to score the inning you're playing to the extent that you can."

La Russa put that philosophy into practice Friday night when pulled his starter, left-hander Jamie Garcia, in the with two out in the fifth inning and his team holding a 4-1 run lead. He gave the ball to Octavio Dotel, against whom Braun was 2-for-9 with seven strikeouts.

The move raised plenty of eyebrows but it paid off as Dotel struck Braun out, ending the threat and the inning.

"(I'm) just lucky against him," Dotel said. "I try to make my pitches every time I see him, and every time I face him, I just want to make my pitches."

With so much of the focus in the NLCS on the Brewers' lackluster starting pitching and struggling offense, the Cardinals bullpen has quietly excelled, despite a somewhat heavy workload.

Coming into Game 5, the St. Louis relief corps had pitched 17.1 innings and allowed just four runs on 10 hits. The bullpen allowed two hits Friday but didn't give up a run, dropping the relievers' ERA to 1.66.

""We're not here without the bullpen," St. Louis outfielder Lance Berkman said. "They've been the MVP, in my opinion, of the playoffs so far.

"They've given us so many good innings."

He's just being Yuni: Ryan Braun is a candidate for the National League Most Valuable Player award and has made a good case for the NLCS MVP by going .333 with a home run and five RBIs.

But that kind of production is expected from Braun. Yuniesky Betancourt, however, is another story entirely.

Betancourt entered play Friday with a .438 average, .438 on-base percentage, a .688 slugging percentage and a 1.125 OPS in the NLCS. Sure, the sample size is much smaller, but consider that Betancourt hit just .252 during the regular season and you can't help but be impressed.

Roenicke certainly is, though he has seen that kind of production before from his shortstop. And when Betancourt is hot, Roenicke says good things happen to his team.

"Yuni, when he's got it going like he did for that period during the season for a month and a half, two month, we really scored a lot of runs," Roenicke said. "It allows your lineup to go deeper. For awhile, we were scoring because of Braun and Prince. And when Yuni started hitting, Lucroy started hitting and all of a sudden, we started producing a lot more runs and a lot more runs in different innings than we were before.

A notorious free-swinger, Betancourt has shown more patience at the plate during the postseason and admits its been a point of emphasis.

"I'm looking for something in the middle of the plate or middle out; trying to hit it that way and not trying to do too much with it," Betancourt said through an interpreter. "It's a pride thing for me. My goal is to continue contributing to the team as long as we're alive in the postseason."

It's going to be Marcum: With the Brewers on the verge of elimination, some have wondered if Ron Roeicke would pull Shaum Marcum from his Game 6 assignment.

His postseason starts have fallen into the "forgettable" category. In two appearances, losses in Game 3 of the NLDS and Game 2 of the NLCS, Marcum has given up 12 runs on 14 hits in 8.2 innings, striking out and walking four.

Roenicke is confident that Marcum can turn things around, much like Randy Wolf did in Game 4 of the NLCS, when he went seven innings and allowed just two runs in the Brewers' 4-2 victory.

"Right now we are set on Game 6," Roenicke said. "I don't know what would come up to change my mind on that, but we talked about it quite a bit and we feel great with Marcum going, just like we felt great with (Randy) Wolf going yesterday. We expect a real good game from Shaun."

A popular theory is Roenicke could bring Yovani Gallardo back on short rest – a notion Roenicke entertained, but quickly dismissed, in his pregame session with reporters Friday.

"If Yo came to me and said, 'You know something, I feel great, I'd love to come back on three days,' it makes you think a little bit," Roenicke said. "But until that happens, I don't want to go to a player and ask him to do something that he hasn't done all year, hasn't done in his career. I just wouldn't feel right doing that."

After the game, Roenicke was firm on the subject and said again that he would hand the ball to Marcum with the season on the line.

"I'm not going to bring Yovani back," Roenicke said.