Well the Cardinals have managed to steal one in Philly against 1 of the Phillies 2 best pitchers after the close one last night.  This has quickly become a series now and with a loss in game 3 the Phils would be facing elimination (already?!).  I'm a WAR guy so I'll use the 2011 regular season WARs as a point of comparison.  I'll even give Oswalt the benefit of doubt and show his last year's WAR in addition to his injury-plagued 2011.  A quick google search gives me about a 7% dropoff in production for pitchers on short rest so I'll go with that.

Game 4 -  Oswalt (2011 extended to 32 starts / 2010): 3.5 WAR / 4.7 WAR

Game 5 - Halladay: 8.2 WAR

Total: 11.7 WAR / 12.9 WAR

Game 4 - Halladay (Short Rest): 7.6 WAR

Game 5 - Lee: 6.7 WAR

Total: 14.3 WAR

If we assume Oswalt is completely recovered from injury and back to mid season form, it's close but still Halladay has the edge.  If we can't make that assumption, the argument for Halladay becomes even stronger.

Personally, I would feel much more comfortable knowing that the Cardinals MUST go through Halladay again to win the series.  I know Charlie likes to think of them as the 4 Aces and that any one of them is interchangeable, but I'd rather go down with the ball in the hand of the guy who got me there then the guy who really hasn't.

What do you think?