ST. LOUIS - So much for the late-season struggles by St. Louis Cardinals pitchers.

Mark Mulder carried a shutout into the seventh inning Thursday and shook off a liner to his left biceps that left him doubled over in pain to put his team on the brink of a first-round playoff sweep.

The Cardinals again built an early lead in a 6-2 victory over the San Diego Padres that gave them a 2-0 advantage in the best-of-five NL division series.

"God knows I've been in this situation before and not won the series, but this team's different," Mulder said. "It's going to be fun."

Mulder, who gave up seven earned runs in 5

innings in his final two regular-season starts, was with the Oakland Athletics when they squandered a 2-0 lead against the Red Sox in 2003. Matt Morris will try to clinch it for St. Louis Saturday at San Diego against Woody Williams, who left the Cardinals as a free agent after last season.

The Cardinals, who led the majors with 100 wins, have advanced to the NL championship series four times in five chances under manager Tony La Russa. San Diego, which limped into the playoffs with an 82-80 record, trailed 8-0 in Game 1 and 4-0 in Game 2 before staging rallies that fell short.

"It's not over, you have to win three games, we're going home," Padres manager Bruce Bochy said. "We've got to stay optimistic here, that's the only way to approach it."

Mulder followed the lead of 21-game winner Chris Carpenter, who had a 9.14 ERA in four late-season starts before working six shutout innings in Game 1. Together, the two had put together a string of 12 straight scoreless innings before Xavier Nady's RBI single in the seventh.

La Russa figured he'd get maybe a few more outs or a few more innings out of his 16-game winner after he absorbed the liner from Joe Randa with one out in the second. Mulder kept the arm loose by retreating to the clubhouse between innings and applying a heat pack.

"It got a little tighter each inning warming up so my first, second and third warmup pitch I just tried to basically throw it as hard as I could," Mulder said. "Once the inning starts, there's so much adrenaline it really didn't bother me that much."

It was loose enough to induce four double plays, tying an NLDS record. The Padres were baffled by his sinker, hitting 13 groundball outs and only one flyball out.

"I think his sinker started working a lot better," said shortstop David Eckstein, who participated in all four double plays. "You don't want to have to make up seven innings, but you notice after that happened he wasn't muscling pitches.

"I know it was killing him, but he's a tough guy."

Mulder entered the start with two question marks: Besides his late-season ineffectiveness, all season he was a decidedly better pitcher at night (14-3, 2.26 ERA) than day (2-5, 6.86). He scoffed at both of those trends and controlled a lineup stacked with seven right-handed hitters.

The Cardinals' offense managed only six hits and was 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position, instead reverting to a small-ball approach the team relied on in the middle of the season when four starters were out of the lineup. The first four runs came on balls that didn't leave the infield - or in one case, even the catcher's glove.

Reggie Sanders, who drove in an NLDS-record six runs in Game 1, hit a two-run double off Rudy Seanez in the seventh that made it 6-1. Sanders has eight RBI in eight at-bats this series after totaling five RBI in five previous division series appearances covering 68 at-bats.