ST. LOUIS -- In San Francisco these days, you don't see many folks riding those cable cars asking their fellow riders whatever happened to Ryan Vogelsong. And at the Golden Gate Bridge toll booths, you don't hear many "Bring Back Armando Rios" chants, either.

But it was tough not to think about Ryan Vogelsong and Armando Rios, wherever they are, Thursday night -- because they're the answer to a suddenly very relevant trivia question:

Which two players did the San Francisco Giants have to trade to Pittsburgh to get Jason Schmidt?

	Jason Schmidt allowed just one run in 7 2/3 innings.

OK, to be technical, the Giants also got the since-departed John Vander Wal in that deal last season, too. But with every 98-mile-an-hour smokeball Schmidt throws, with every helpless swing of the bat some overmatched hitter takes at it, and, especially, with every momentous game Schmidt wins as a Giant, the better that trade looks.

So by Thursday night, it was looking more beautiful than Cameron Diaz -- because Schmidt had just finished inflicting 7 2/3 innings of overpowering, four-hit, eight-whiff damage on a Cardinals lineup that barely even hit a ball hard off him.

Add that damage to two Rich Aurilia home runs and a stunning ninth-inning squeeze play, and what did you have? You had a 4-1 win by the Giants in a city in which even the household pets dress in red. And what do you know -- the second-most-ballyhooed baseball team in the Bay Area was closing in on its first visit to the World Series since the 1989 earthquake stopped rattling Candlestick Point.

Look it up, friends. The Giants lead the National League Championship Series, two games to none. They're heading home. And in Game 3, they get to roll out the hottest starting pitcher in the postseason -- a man who has won every darned one of his last eight starts (Russ Ortiz).

So about the only way they could be in better shape right now is if Tony La Russa promised to throw fastballs down the middle to Barry Bonds every pitch for the rest of the series.

"We haven't won anything yet," Dusty Baker warned his team Thursday night. "We're only halfway there."

And mathematically, he's correct. But psychologically, it's a whole different equation. In case you hadn't noticed, it isn't the Cardinals who qualify as the National League's hottest team anymore.

These Giants have won 13 of their last 15 baseball games -- every one of which had a season's work riding on it. And Thursday, they finished off that blitz with their fourth win in five days. In three different time zones. In the postseason. Now that's hot.

But it takes more than heat waves to win the World Series. It takes pitching. And to keep this rolling, Baker said, the Giants need two more days worth of "the same kind of pitching that we got today."

So Ortiz had better learn to throw the ball 98 miles an hour in a hurry. Because that's the kind of pitching Schmidt threw at a Cardinals team that just finished pummeling the Arizona Johnson-and-Schilling-backs. But compared to Schmidt, the Big Unit looked like Joe Beimel to the Cardinals.

"Jason Schmidt was unbelievable," said Cardinals starter Woody Williams, who failed in his bid to become the first pitcher in the last 50 years to win a postseason game after going 20 days without pitching. "He threw 95-98 miles an hour all night. You've gotta be kidding me, man. Pitch after pitch after pitch. Then, when he needed to, he'd drop a slider on the black. He pitched his heart out."

	“	Jason Schmidt was unbelievable. He threw 95-98 miles an hour all night. You've gotta be kidding me, man. Pitch after pitch after pitch. Then, when he needed to, he'd drop a slider on the black. He pitched his heart out. ”
		— Woody Williams, Cardinals pitcher

But then, what else is new? That's about all Schmidt has done since he became a Giant. Their winning percentage in the 42 games he's pitched is a ridiculous .707 (29-12, with one tie). So he's beginning to look like a man discovering the secret to acehood.

"He pitched lights out in September for us last year, too," said Giants GM Brian Sabean. "He went 7-1 after we got him. I think it was just a matter of getting some confidence. He's with a winning team. He got into a pitcher's ballpark. And he got on a roll."

Back in July of 2001, you might recall, there was no hotter commodity on the trade-rumor mill before the deadline than Schmidt. New Pirates GM Dave Littlefield almost traded him to the Astros, seriously mulled an offer from the Marlins but then finally dealt Schmidt and Vander Wal to the Giants for Rios and Vogelsong.

"Look up his last eight or 10 games with Pittsburgh," Sabean said. "He was lights out in all of them. And we were at most of those games. I don't know that we were any smarter than anyone else. We just identified what we were looking for. We continued to follow him. And we had what Pittsburgh wanted to make the deal."

Boy, talk about deals that go your way. Rios shredded his ACL in his second game as a Pirate. Vogelsong's elbow blew in his second start as a Pirate. And all Schmidt has done since he showed up at Pac Bell Park is turn into one of the most dominating right-handed starters in the league.

He's 20-9 as a Giant (not counting the postseason). And the only right-handers in the National League with more wins since then are Curt Schilling, Matt Morris, Roy Oswalt and Kevin Millwood. Heard of any of those guys?

"And you're seeing a guy who is still really strong now," Sabean said. "He missed most of spring training (with a groin pull). He missed most of April. So you're seeing his September now."

And it showed. Over the first seven innings Thursday night, Schmidt allowed three of the piddliest hits in postseason history. Two were infield singles -- one of which wouldn't even have been a hit if Schmidt had covered first base. The other was a late-hack groundball single through the right side by Mike Matheny, who had been 0-for-his-whole-life (0 for 9) against Schmidt before that.

"I'll tell you what," said catcher Benito Santiago. "I haven't seen this guy better than that. He overpowered those hitters. He was throwing 98, and that ball was moving. He was unhittable tonight."

Eventually, Schmidt gave up a pinch-hit home run to Eduardo Perez in the eighth inning, on his 118th and final pitch of the evening. (It was the first postseason homer by a member of the Perez family, incidentally, since his father, Tony, pounded a famous Game 7 bomb off of a Bill Lee eephus pitch in the 1975 World Series.)

But that was about as close as the Cardinals ever came to making a game of it, thanks to Schmidt -- and Aurilia. The National League's best-kept shortstop secret squashed Williams' fourth pitch of the night into the seats in left-center for a solo homer in the first inning. Then he mashed a hanging slider into the same section for a two-run shot four innings later.

That made Aurilia the third shortstop in history to hit two home runs in a postseason game. (Rico Petrocelli, in Game 6 of the 1967 World Series, and Alan Trammell, in Game 4 of the '84 Series, were the others.) But Aurilia could give two slices of sourdough about that. He's got other goals in mind about now.

"I finally feel healthy (after months of battling a sore elbow), and if there's any time you want to get hot, this is it," Aurilia said. "But I've said before that individual stuff in the postseason doesn't mean too much. This is a great bunch of guys in here. And all I want to do is help this team win."

Little did he know his final act to help them would be leaving this game. With two outs in the eighth, Baker hooked him in a double-switch while bringing Robb Nen into the game. So naturally, Aurilia's replacement, Ramon Martinez, made two tough plays at short in two innings -- and also laid down what Baker estimated was the Giants' first successful squeeze bunt "in maybe five years" in the ninth.

"I don't ever remember seeing one in all the years I've been here," Aurilia said afterward. "So to be honest, I wasn't looking for it at that point, and I'm sure they weren't, either. But Ramon got it down. And I think what was even more impressive was, he knew the sign."

The best sign for the Giants, though, was the sight of the man on the mound maturing into a dominating October starter before their eyes.

The turning point, Schmidt said, was a conversation he had with Santiago in May, in which the veteran catcher convinced Schmidt he had a fastball he could use to overmatch virtually every hitter on earth.

"I give a lot of credit to Benito," he said. "I used to try and go out there and be more of a finesse guy at times. Then there were other times I'd try and throw it through a wall, and I couldn't do that, either. Now I just listen to him and throw what he tells me."

"When a guy throws his fastball that hard," Santiago said, "he's got to use it. Before, he didn't use it enough. He tried to spot the ball on the corners. Since we had our conversation, I just sit in the middle of the plate and let him throw the ball by the hitters."

Santiago once caught Schilling, so he knows domination when he sees it. But he says that as great as Schilling is, "he can't just stay in the middle of the plate with his fastball like Schmidt can."

So maybe a star was born Thursday night. This is how it happens, you know. The October spotlight shines. Some men respond. And the rest is history.

"This," said Sabean, "can change his whole career. He can go to that next level."

And as they headed for the airplane home Thursday night, that team Jason Schmidt pitches for was looking as if it might be headed for that next level itself.

Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com.