PHOENIX -- Luis Gonzalez admitted prior to Game 2 that he feels helpless. Whether he's sitting on his leather couch back at home or hanging out with his teammates on the end of the Arizona bench, he watches the Diamondbacks struggle and hurts knowing there's nothing he can do to help.

After Thursday's Game 2, a 2-1 Cardinals victory, Gonzalez couldn't have felt much better.

For as masterful as Curt Schilling was, doing anything and everything in his power to hold St. Louis to just one run on seven hits, the Arizona offense failed miserably to hold up its end of the bargain.

	“	Hitting is contagious whether it's good or bad. I wish I could tell you what we could do to correct the problem. I wish I had the answers. But I don't. All we can do is keep battling. ”
		— Damian Miller, Diamondbacks catcher

And no matter which Cy Young candidate takes the hill for your team, if you don't score runs you aren't going to beat anyone.

"It was on Curt's shoulders," Diamondbacks catcher Damian Miller said. "He did his job, we just didn't score any runs."

Part of the credit has to go to St. Louis starter Chuck Finley, who matched Schilling pitch for pitch, surrendering just four hits and two walks over 6 1/3 innings. But part of the blame has to go to Arizona.

Though nobody in the Diamondbacks' clubhouse will make any excuses, without Gonzalez, the team's main power source, without Craig Counsell, the club's pesky sparkplug, and without Danny Bautista, a blossoming offensive talent, the D-Backs are woefully benign on offense.

Last year, even with those three, as well as 30-homer man Reggie Sanders, who now plays for San Francisco, Arizona scored just 10 runs in the five-game Division Series against St. Louis. Five of those runs came in a one-game explosion.

On Thursday, the Diamondbacks struggled to score just one run. Six different times they had a runner in scoring position, but only once did someone come through with a clutch hit.

Second baseman Junior Spivey twice failed to come through with a clutch hit. So too did Mark Grace, who entered the game as a pinch-hitter to a rousing chorus of cheers, only to swing at the first pitch offered by St. Louis lefty Jeff Fassero and pop it up to right field, stranding Quinton McCracken at second base.

"I got a good pitch to hit, he left a splitter up," Grace said. "And I had the swing I wanted. I just got under it a smidge and popped it up."

Spivey didn't take disappointment quite so easily. The 27-year-old was visibly shaken up after the game, and seemed to answer every reporter's question -- no matter what the topic -- with the idea that he let his team down.

"We needed some two-out hits and I didn't come through," he said. "It's on my shoulders. I had two opportunities and I didn't deliver. All I had to do was hit it hard and get a base hit either of those two times and I didn't do it. I should have come through."

The blame was hardly only Spivey's. Nobody besides McCracken, who delivered a two-out double to score Greg Colbrunn for Arizona's only run in the eighth, was clutch. And even that run was somewhat a gift, with Colbrunn reached base on a fielding error by St. Louis third baseman Albert Pujols.

How run-challenged was the Arizona offense? Manager Bob Brenly lifted a cruising Curt Schilling for pinch-hitter Chad Moeller with two outs and nobody on in the bottom of the seventh inning, praying for a miracle.

"We had to score at that point," Brenly said. "Schill does a lot of things well, but hitting home runs is not one of them."

As it turned out, Moeller singled and advanced to second on a Tony Womack walk, but was stranded there by Spivey.

"Hitting is contagious whether it's good or bad," Miller said. "I wish I could tell you what we could do to correct the problem. I wish I had the answers. But I don't. All we can do is keep battling."

The problem is an obvious one -- Mark Little, McCracken and David Dellucci hardly fright opposing pitchers like Gonzalez, Bautista and Counsell do.

Without Gonzo, Arizona's top home run hitter is Steve Finley with 25. Its top RBI producer is also Finley, with 89. Beyond that, only two players hit more than 15 home runs. And only three had more than 50 RBI.

Third baseman Matt Williams, who missed half of the season with a dislocated ankle and a broken foot, put a charge into a long fly ball on Thursday, only to hit it to the deepest part of the park, where, 412 feet from home plate, a calm Jim Edmonds was waiting for the ball to land in his glove.

"It's a big park, but I kept hoping," Williams said. "It's one of those where you're running and hoping and running hoping, then hoping even harder, but it didn't work out."

And in this postseason, hope has gotten the defending World Champions nothing more than an 0-2 deficit in this best-of-five series.

After Thursday's game, Gonzalez was leaving out the backdoor of the somber Diamondbacks clubhouse, his arm propped in a cumbersome black sling, when Grace came by for a hug and a handshake. They exchanged pleasantries, wished each other good luck and went their separate ways.

As Gonzalez walked out the door and Grace turned around, there was a flock of reporters, bugging Grace as to why they can't score runs. Hey knew the answer. He had just shaken his hand. But he refused to use it in his defense.

"We can't use that as an excuse," Grace said. "I won't use it as an excuse. The guys we put out there are a quality big-league lineup. We just ran into a great pitcher and when guys are throwing like that, there's no offense that's going to score."

Wayne Drehs is a staff writer for ESPN.com.