ST. LOUIS -- What a difference a day makes. On Friday, the St. Louis Cardinals were soaring following a convincing 4-0 win over the Chicago Cubs in Game 1 of their National League Division Series. Fewer than 24 hours later, following a disappointing and sloppy 6-3 loss, they've squandered their home-field advantage and are staring down the barrel of a Game 3 matchup with the best pitcher on the planet.

Early on, Saturday looked a whole like Friday. For the second day in a row, the Cards jumped out to a quick lead in the bottom of the first, courtesy of a Matt Carpenter solo homer to left field, his fifth long ball in his past 11 postseason games.

But the wheels fell off the cart in a hurry. Along with the axles. And the seats. And the passengers. In an ugly top of the second that swung the game and potentially the series, second baseman Kolten Wong started the comedy of errors by flubbing the relay throw on a possible 6-4-3 double play that would have erased a leadoff single by Starlin Castro. Instead, Austin Jackson advanced all the way to second when Wong's throw rolled out of play, then stole third. After a walk to Miguel Montero, Cubs pitcher Kyle Hendricks laid down a safety squeeze. Cards hurler Jaime Garcia scooped it up but couldn't decide whether to throw to home or first. Instead, he threw in the general vicinity of right field, allowing the Cubs to tie the game at 1. By the time the inning was over, the Cubs had scored four more on another safety squeeze by Addison Russell, an infield hit by Dexter Fowler and a two-run bomb by Jorge Soler.

When the dust finally settled, the Cardinals had allowed five runs -- all of them unearned -- in a forgetful frame that brought new meaning to the phrase "sloppy seconds."

"To me, they're all earned," said Garcia, who was yanked after two innings. It was the fifth time in seven career postseason starts that the 29-year-old lefty has failed to last five innings. "That should never happen. It was a mental mistake on my part. In that situation, you gotta go home and try to get the out. That should be me looking at that runner and then going to first."

It was such an ugly inning that Cardinals manager Mike Matheny could hardly bear to look. "It is hard to watch a club that's played so well defensively, see a couple things happen that are kind of uncharacteristic for us, but they do happen," the St. Louis skipper said. "We gotta figure out ways to get around 'em."

Matheny's club showed some fight, getting back-to-back homers from Wong and pinch hitter Randal Grichuk in the fifth inning, plus seven innings of two-hit relief from a quintet of hurlers, but it wasn't enough to overcome the early ugliness. As a result, they're now in the unenviable position of having to hit the road with the series tied 1-1. Not that it matters much to a team that's as playoff-tested as the Cardinals.

In each of the past four seasons, St. Louis lost one home game during the NLDS but still managed to advance to the NLCS each time. No wonder there was music blaring in the home clubhouse -- Eminem's "Without Me" followed by Nelly's "Hot in Herre" -- as if the Cards had come out on the winning end.

"We've been through this playoff thing enough to know that you cannot let one loss get you down," said Adam Wainwright, who on Saturday punctuated his miraculous return from an April Achilles injury by pitching a perfect inning and two-thirds in his first postseason relief appearance since 2006. "Of course we'd rather be 2-0 right now, but 1-1 is not the end of the world."

Then again, being tied 1-1 is one thing; it's quite another to be tied 1-1 and locked into a Game 3 date with a certain bearded right-hander who over the past couple months has been more unhittable than Tom Brady at the Pro Bowl.

"Everybody in the world has already considered us losing Game 3 with Jake Arrieta pitching," Wainwright said. "But we got a pretty good pitcher going out there ourselves [17-game-winner Michael Wacha]. We're confident. We'd like to go win that game."

And if St. Louis isn't able to beat Arrieta? Then they'll be in exactly the same position they were in 2013, when they fell at home to the wild-card winning Pirates in Game 2 of the NLDS, then lost to Francisco Liriano in Pittsburgh to go down 2-1 in the series before coming back to win the final two games and advance. Perhaps this playoff run could be a repeat of two years ago?

Said Wainwright: "That's putting the cart before the horse a little bit."

Maybe, but at least the wheels are already back on the cart.