Phillies going to Vegas ….
Posted: July 5, 2010 Filed under: Dailies | Tags: AL, All Star game, Big League Stew, Charlie Manuel, Chipper Jones, CIN, CWS, Fox Sports, Howard, Joe Girardi, Kevin Kaduk, Konnerko, Las Vegas, NL, phillies, Pirates, Pittsburgh, Stephen Strasburg, Treasure Island, voting, Votto, Yahoo Sports 7 CommentsThe popularity contest is over, NL and AL rosters are set, okay not entirely,
there is still the opportunity to vote the final spot on each roster, my choices
are Votto (CIN) in the NL and Konnerko
(CWS) in the AL, as for who
should be there and who shouldn’t it’s all about personal choice so now it’s set
the managers have to make the best of it.
The hype around Strasburg continued, you have Charlie Manuel on national television and the best first
question you can come up with is “did you consider Strasburg an option” or words to
that effect. If you have any ounce of intelligence and slight knowledge of baseball,
you know the kid has made 6 starts is not going to the All
Star Game when so many other pitchers have accomplished so much more this
season. To those who claim his 100 mph fast ball is worth him being there, bullsh-it,
after seeing him against the Braves and the Mets, I am convinced the Strasburg
Hyper Interest Tension Syndrome will dissipate
and die before the season ends, he will be ‘the kid that threw really hard’
for a season and a half maybe, who knows his agent may even be able to swing a
movie about him, cause he has obviously worn out his knee pads convincing the
media sheep to hype this kid up. Kevin Kaduk of the Yahoo Sports Blog “Big
League Stew” is one of those who plays the reporter hidden inside a
blog, is a prime example of over hyping Strasburg, telling us ‘MLB is
missing out’, this probably wouldn’t be so laughable if you weren’t actively
promoted by Yahoo as an authority on the MLB and sports.
The media sheep, they get one or two reporters to write it, the rest follow
and there go the bloggers
too. Of course you have the bias
media , yes that’s you Fox Sports, who will tell you that the AL won
the ASG voting because of who the fans selected, then there are those who have
chosen to publicly
mock Charlie for a couple of his picks.
Lets see, Ryan Howard, yes we all know Votto has better
numbers, but he has better numbers than Albert Pujols too, and aren’t the
managers selections there for his amusement, to appease players on his team, after all
Joe Girardi chose A-Rod. Then we have Omar Infante and yes
on first glance I had a dazed look on my face and said “WTF!” then I
saw Chipper Jones’ comment about utility players never get selected, so
good for Charlie for doing his homework, now when a manager has spent
most of the first half of the season relying on utility players to maintain
contention in the division, then this choice makes sense, if indeed this game
does go the extra innings, he now has a player he can use when and where he
wants.
Inside sources, who do not wish to be named, said, the Phillies
organization is close to a deal with a large hotel consortium to appear in Las
Vegas during the All Star Break, it seems they did such a good job
making the Pittsburgh Pirates look good over the weekend, the
Treasure Island Hotel Casino would like to use them to help increase awareness
of the Treasure Island pirates.
WTF Award for June goes to …..
Posted: July 1, 2010 Filed under: Dailies | Tags: Adidas, All Star game, Allen Krause, Award, Bud Selig, Detroit Tigers, final voting, Florida, imagicalated, Jim Joyce, July 2010, June 2010, Los Angeles, Mets, Miller Highlife, New York, No Hitter, phillies, Red State Blue State, RSBS, stolen, WTF 12 CommentsJune the month of ‘VOTE FOR ME‘ is finally over and July the month of
‘WE WANT HIM‘ begins, it’s also time for the June 2010 WTF Award.
I had already given my we wants back in May, to close out a post entitled ‘Weekend
from Hell’, all of my suggestions are still viable options.
The group of Mr. Popularities
will all gather in Los Angeles in a few days and pretend like they give a sh-t
about each other, for some it’s more a time of networking, a time they can meet
those that may be able to mention their name to the right person that may give
them a shot at getting on a post season team, for others it’s another chance to
screw the fans out of more money.
Mr Selig, different twist for next years All Star Game, consider
this, the NL manager
selecting the AL starting lineup
and the AL manager selecting the NL starting lineup, with obvious restrictions
like the player has to have had so many starts in that position during the
season, this would truly make the managers work on selecting the players
they would want to face and then have to work with players that may not be the
very best of the best and may not be very popular either, they would have to
select 1 player from each team. The pitchers could be selected in a similar way,
not only would this, I think make things a little more interesting it would give
some of those less popular players a chance to be in the camera eye and have a
national stage.
I hope everyone has used up those 25 votes per email address and if you have
the time you can get more email addresses. I also wonder why we don’t have text voting yet, you know text such ‘n’
such number to this number if you want to vote for so ‘n’ so. They
could again restrict it to so many votes per mobile number per player.
This may seem like a post about prompting you to vote, but actually deep down I think the popularity contests should be reserved
for beauty pageants, dog shows, celebrity apprentice and American Idol, since
the voting is always fixed (according to my secret sources) it shouldn’t
matter to them how the voting goes.
Unlike the WTF Award, where the voting is fair, it’s uncomplicated, there is
no room for cheating, and everyone has an even chance of winning.
WTF Award for June 2010, nominations are:
Jim Joyce is nominated, not because he made umpires seem almost
human by showing tears in his eyes, not because he stood up like a man and said “I
got it wrong”, the nomination for Jim Joyce is based
purely and simply on the fact that he F-CKED UP.
New York Mets Front Office for those who are thinking, what the
hell did they do to make the list, well it could be that despite having all the
Miller Highlife removed for abusive pricing they still manage to have patrons consume
huge amounts of adult beverages, no that wasn’t it, it is of course the giving
up of Jerry Seinfeld’s personal box to Lady GaGa.
Adidas, if you’ve seen any of the news you’d know that
Adidas
re-invented the ball, as with every World Cup anything new everyone has
to have their say and the complaints of the ball not moving right or flying
through the air like it’s a drunk driver, truth is if your a professional a ball
is a ball is a ball, get over it, Adidas however, well done on
adding to the world a perfect round spherical object that people kick.
Detroit Tigers what other team could say that the last call of
2 different games in one month were totally wrong, yes the game against the
Indians should have
been a no hitter and the game against the Braves should have gone to extra
innings, but nothing in the world of baseball is really perfect, which is why
when this happens we say WTF.
Florida, the whole damn state, why, because only Florida as a
state could have it’s baseball teams in the media for being no hit 3 times, for
firing a manager, and site searching for new ball park locations, yet a tourist
map giving a sporting look at Florida doesn’t show anything remotely
related to baseball.
There were a few others that could have been on the list, but the final
winner of June 2010 WTF Award, goes to an individual who, during June took his
life to a new level, showed everyone he can be more than anyone ever thought
possible, in an instant this person stepped up and became a man in front of the
whole world, he’s by no means the first to show everyone what he’s capable when
it’s needed, this person could be a true great friend to those that need one,
this person went above and beyond their normal routine, this person made me
say WTF.…
….you guessed it, RSBS co-host
Allen Krause, who during the
month of June came out of the closet and showed everyone he does know how to use
the comment feature at MLBlogs. You can see how I originally reported the incident
here, or alternatively you can visit the actual WTF happening here
and scroll down to the 5th comment.
The image with Al accepting his award, was stolen from an RSBS
video and imagicalated by moi.
King James and Tribe
Posted: June 22, 2010 Filed under: Dailies | Tags: All Star game, All Star Team Voting, American League, Arizona, Cavaliers, Cavs, Cleveland, D'Backs, Dodgers, Indians, Kansas City, King James, Lady Ga Ga, Lebron, Mets, National League, New York, Online vtoing, phillies, Pirates, Tribe, voting, Yankees 8 CommentsThe Cleveland Indians head to Philadelphia, this must be the best chance
Philadelphia is going to have to break out of the ‘anti’hot’ mode and actually
win a series that they should win, yes they won the series at Yankee stadium,
but the Yankees just got the hell knocked out of them by
Arizona.
The Indians are currently number 2 in the
American League‘s bargain basement,
if you don’t understand that expression then check out the standings, basically
it means for National League teams there are just 4
American League teams that
you should expect to either win the series against or even sweep, the prime
number 1 team everyone wants to play are the Orioles, then you have the
Indians,
then the Royals and finally the Mariners, any other
AL teams would on paper be a
tough opponent for any of the National League teams.
This
isn’t to say the American League is better than the
National League, because
during inter-league play I am sure there are just 4 NL teams that the AL would
like to play, they being, Pirates, Astros, D’Backs and the
Brewers. Sometimes
though the alignment of baseball planets and good and bad karma just don’t allow
what should be, to be. Take the Yankees, please take the
Yankees, or at least
prevent them making headlines because of Lady GaGa, for instance, they
should conceivably sweep the D’Backs, lets face most people thought it, most
Yankee fans expected it, but yesterday they got what could only be looked upon
as the playground bully being smacked around by the nerdy loser kid, doesn’t
happen often, but when it does, we all root for the loser nerdy kid, even now I
find myself thinking, wouldn’t it be good if they actually swept the Yankees.
I was kind of hoping when the schedule was released for 2010 that the
Phillies would actually play the Tribe at the
‘Jake’, yep I am told to call it
that up and coming insurance name is some kind of insult to true Clevelanders, I
am not sure why cause no one actually goes to the games anyway. Maybe if they
could encourage a celebrity to turn up in underwear and flip everyone the bird,
maybe it would draw more fans in Cleveland, probably not, what about if they had
‘King James’ make an appearance, again probably not since he’d show up as the
final pitch was being thrown and then only if there was a chance he’d be
supporting the winning team. Lets face it the great ‘LeBron Day’ that was supposed
to show support for him staying in Cleveland, that was held at the University of
Akron’s campus, was a wash out, some 4,000 people showed up to claim a free
t-shirt and then went double time so it appeared like 8,000 people were in
attendance. Yes, the chances are good once again New York will wield it’s mighty
check book in a different sport and land ‘King James’ although for this sport in
question it does seem as though Chicago’s check book could be bigger than the
Knicks, but it’s all speculation as is the content of the little chat between
James and Curry.
Off track a little, well it is a sporting event and it uses a ball and it has
ties to Cleveland, who are playing the Phillies, in
Philadelphia for 3 days,
whooopi, I get to watch it all happen on some Cleveland Indians
sports channel
that is about as lame as the Dodgers,
Kansas City and the Astros winning skills at the moment.
Notable occurrences, the Indians got swept by the
Mets, then lost 2 of 3 to
the Pirates and the answer to the Tribe fans prayers during the off season, the
Nationals manager, Manny Acta moving to Cleveland, and after being handed a 5-3
loss Sunday what words of wisdom do the Indians fans get from Acta “We
weren’t able to pick up the ball and throw it to first base. That’s why we
lost.” WOW, I see Manny has come a long way since playing the staring
manager’s role in Washington DC, although you’d think it was
DC Comics with
the way he managers the Tribe.
Lets just hope tonight the Indians are
nothing more than a comedy of errors and the Phillies
are able to use it to their advantage, with the return of J-Roll it
should be an interesting 3 days.
Just a minor gliche in the online voting system, they seem to have Pat
Burrell listed as a DH for the Tampa Bay Rays, when he’s actually in San
Francisco, and his numbers are already better in San Fran than they were in
Tampa, so here’s the dilemma, has anyone got voted onto the AL roster and actually
being playing for an NL team at the time of the All Star game, or visa versa…
The Phillies are an All Star Team……
Posted: July 10, 2009 Filed under: Dailies | Tags: All Star game, all star votes, blogs, Charlie Manuel, Halladay, outfield, phillies, Todd Zolecki, Victorino, Werth 3 CommentsWell 5 of them anyway, so Jayson Werth was selected to go by Charlie and the league agreed, I’m with Todd Zolecki on this one, Todd wrote: “Wow.”
I am very surprised, Yes i know i said earlier that I thought Kemp should be the pick, still do truth be known, but when you have your favorite team being represented by 5 players at the All Star game, that’s special.
So now it is posible for the NL All Star Team to have the Phillies outfield on the field all at the same time, will that happen, we’ll have to wait and see if Charlie can pull that one off.
Now all the claims of having an All Star Outfield are fact not fiction or pipe dreams, another day the Phillies have something to be proud of….
With what seemed to be an unfair quantity of blogs about how Victorino should NOT have won the final vote, I am sure this news will resenate through and cause more unrest towards the Philadelphia Phillies, maybe this is the year, maybe we will get Halladay too.
Phillies take series from Reds, set new club record
Posted: July 10, 2009 Filed under: Dailies | Tags: All Star game, All Star Team, Beltran, Brad Lidge, Chan Ho Park, Ibanez, Jamie Moyer, Jayson Werth, Kemp, Lidge, Moyer, Park, Philadelphia, phillies, Pirates, Pittsburgh, Raul Ibanez, RBI, Record, Reds, Shane Victorino, Utley, Victorino, Werth 2 CommentsJayson Werth went deep to record his 20th home run of the season making him the 4th player to be on 20 home runs or more before the All Star Break, a first for the Phillies franchise and only the second MLB team to accomplish this feat. Werth has put up impressive numbers in the first half of this season and has more than proved that he can be an everyday player, I personally thought he would struggle as an everday outfielder, so well done Jayson, you are on a season setting personal best. Jayson’s name has been thrown in the mix for the All Star Game, since Beltran is injured, is Werth worthy of an All Star pick, well he has certainly put up the numbers, however I believe there are others who are a little more deserving, if it’s an outfielder they need then I would have to go with Kemp, he has better numbers this year, if it’s just any position player then there are a number to choose from and everyone will have there own personal favorite.
Chase Utley, in a ball park that is suposed to allow almost anyone to go deep, showed everyone last night that you dont need to hit the ball over the fence to get a home run, his second inside the park home run against the reds. This one came in the 3rd inning and it was Utley’s 20th homer of the year, although there wasn’t a play at the plate this time, he needed some recovery time to catch his breath, who wouldn’t.
Jamie Moyer pitched through 5 innings giving up 6 runs on 8 hits, since the offence took the lead in the bottom of the 5th Jamie was the pitcher of record giving him, his 254th career win. Jamie gave up two home runs, not unusual for Jamie, all in all a good outing for him.
Chan Ho Park gave another stellar performance from the bullpen, 3 scoreless innings, giving up 1 walk, with 4 strike outs.
Brad Lidge continues to make everyone nervous in the 9th inning, after getting the 1st two batters he gave up a walk, but came back nicely to close out the game with a scoreless inning.
Even though the Phillies have taken six of seven in this home stand, they still have a below .500 record at home this season, a sweep of the Pirates would put them still 1 game shy of the .500 mark. We all know that sweeping the Pirates is a huge task, they have played well against NL East teams this year, I for one am glad we have Blanton, Hamels and Happ to face them this weekend.
Victorino won the vote for the final spot on the All Star team, he is more than deserving of his place, he again last night picked up a couple of walks, a hit and a couple of RBI’s and continues to play gold glove quality defense in the outfield. Well Done Shane!!
To the Pirates, welcome to Philadelphia, the in state rivalry isn’t quite as intense as some would think, but still it will make for a good weekend, especially if the Phillies keep up this excellent home stand performance.
RAUL IBANEZ will he return today or will they wait till tomorrow, I think he will probably be here today, but my gut tells me they should probably wait till tomorrow.
Victorino gives, NOW give back to Victorino
Posted: July 9, 2009 Filed under: Dailies | Tags: AL, All Star Ballot, All Star game, All Star Team, All Star Voting, Chan Ho Park, Detroit, Lopez, Madson, MLB Network, NL, Philadelphia, phillies, RBI, Reds, Romero, Sandoval, The Pen, Tigers, Umpires, Victorino, vote, Walk off, Werth 4 CommentsThe headlines around MLB say it all, the race for the #33 All Star pick is a tight one, since Victorino and Sandoval are playing cat and mouse in the NL ballot, the campaigning is reaching new heights never before seen in an All Star ballot.
Victorino added to his case last night with a walk off RBI to give the Phillies a 3-2 win over the Reds, this was definately the highlight of the game.
Lopez, had another good start, although he only went 5 innings, due to a sore shoulder (last reports), his pitch count was low and he held the Reds to just 2 runs on 5 hits. Rest up Lopez your fast becoming an asset in the starting rotation.
BullPen was again outstanding last night, Madson’s speed was up, location was good, both Durbin and Romero also had good outings. Although for me the best activity from the bullpen was without a doubt Chan Ho Park, the sandwich boards campaigning for Victorino votes, was terrific, I wonder if he lost a bet or won a draw to do that, hopefully we’ll find out on The Pen on MLB Network, whenever that returns.
The Phillies have teamed up with the Detroit Tigers to try and double the voting capacity for each of our respective players, wow, politics in baseball, colaborations between parties, who’d have thought it would come to this, who knows next year they may have to call in the people from American Idol to get telephone voting too.
The only soar note on last nights game was the strike zone, seemed to be a little too flexible when the chance of a called third strike loomed, maybe the home plate umpire was auditioning for an upcoming movie, or maybe a chance to grab a headline and get himself noticed.
All that really matters is that Victorino gave to us last night with the walk off RBI, now it’s our turn to give back and vote him in the All Star game. Voting ends at 4pm EST today, hopefully we will be celebrating during tonights game and Detroit will be celebrating too, which will just go to show the NL and AL can work together for the good of the fans.
Phillies give it up in the Ninth
Posted: July 8, 2009 Filed under: Dailies | Tags: All Star game, Chris Welsh, Fox, FS Ohio, FSN, FSN Ohio, FSOH, George Grande, Happ, HK, Howard, Jeff Piecord, Jetter, Lidge, Madson, Marty Foster, Mets, Muts, New York, Philadelphia, phillies, Phillips, Reds, Umpires, Utley, Victorino, Yankees Leave a commentIt was the inevitable anti-climax, a roller coaster coming off it’s tracks at the high point, and then there’s the ‘what if’s’, like they had got the Mayberry call right.
So I watched the game last night with the Reds TV or FSN Ohio or FSOH, something like thatit’s one of those low budget Fox Sports things, here’s hoping noone gets offended, cause lets face it, the Reds don’t have the market other teams do, and that’s why it’s a lower budget station. I am going to be brutally honest here, it was somewhat dificult to follow and I don’t remember the commentators names, so I cheated and looked them up, George Grande and Chris Welsh and I can tell you the pre game show was done by Jeff Piecord. I am not going into the blow by blow of how they did it, and these events may not be in order.
As a general rule they were very complimentary of the Philly players and staff, and the pre game show did part of an historical tour of Philadelphia and a spot remembering HK. They were amused that we refer to the Mets as the Muts even in the press.
1st Inning, Taveras on first, they comment on Taveras being so fast he can leave with the pitch and never get caught, – what happened thrown out, I simpathise since the consistant replay showed him safe, they did make comment about the umpire and connected him to the umpires in the Yankees game and reference Foster telling Jeter, you don’t have to be tagged if the ball beats you to the bag, or something like that –
Top 1st, Utley gets caught stealing, no replay, no analyse to see if he was safe or not straight to commercial.
They were surprised at how good Happ pitched, and they were saying Harang was the Reds ace and he needed to do this and this with the ball, then Phillies went back to back and they analysed, did freeze frames of the ball hitting the bat that is, just to show that Harang didn’t hit his spot with the pitches.
I did notice what seemed to be an air of resentment that Chase Utley had been selected to go to the All Star Game, the inference was that since he played infront of 40,000 fans every night it was easier than for say, Phillips who only gets and audience of say 20,000, it’s a popularity contest. They also complained that he didn’t make the top 4 player voting to go, you just have to look at what he has done is about what they said, then there seemed to be a sequence of events where Utley made some gold glove plays, then Utley hit a ball hard straight at Phillips and it hit off his glove, did he chase it down, no he let it trickle into the outfield, consequence, Utley’s on second, I thought that’s why Utley’s an All Star and Phillips isn’t.
Like I said I found it pretty hard to follow with these guys, and I think that is nothing more than familiarity, they had inside jokes and such like, if I watched them everyday I would understand and be able to follow along better.
Then we had the Mayberry out at home, they were so joyous they showed the replays to see how the great a defensive play it was and then you saw it the catchers tag was kind of late, Mayberry’s hand was in and on the plate, Mayberry was safe, silence fell on the commentators and then commercial break, after the break the only that was said I think the Reds got away with one then.
So thats about it really, yes I know they were over joyed that they scored a run off Lidge and won. The almost refused to mention the 22-1 the night before.
You’ll never guess what the Aflac Trivia Question was: okay here goes:
What is the largest margin of victory the Reds have had in the franchise history?
Well I didn’t see that coming.
————————————————–
The game, was without adoubt a game of missed chances, too many missed opportunities with runners in scoring position and less than 2 outs, we cant blame the loss on the umpires for a couple of bad calls just because we couldn’t deliver.
Yes we got a couple of homers and we got at least one run home from third, but it doesn’t excuse the 1 for 12 with RISP
Happ had another outstanding start, Madson delivered in the 8th and somehow Lidge had a location problem in the 9th.
I almost forgot in all the excitment, Howard broke his homerless streak, way to go Ryan.
So today is another day.
VOTE VICTORINO
Phillies make Reds History
Posted: July 7, 2009 Filed under: Dailies | Tags: 22-1, All Star Ballot, All Star game, All Star Team, All Star Voting, bullpen, Cincinnati, Citizens Bank Park, Cole Hamels, double, Home Run Derby, Jayson Werth, Jimmy Rollins, phillies, Raul Ibanez, Reds, Ryan Howard, The Pen, The Reds 5 CommentsYou must have been on another planet or at best somewhere remote outside of the baseball world if you haven’t already heard of the 22-1 win the Phillies posted against The Reds last night. History in the making, the Phillies gave The Reds the largest deficit loss in their club history, it wasn’t just that they sent their ace starter to the dug out in two thirds of an inning, nor was it the fact that the Phillies were well on their way to batting around twice in the first, it is the things that in a different game would have been the headlines.
Cole Hamels went seven innings giving up 3 hits and 1 run throwing just 92 pitches with 61 of them for strikes. He must of been feeling good, at the plate he had a double, a single, 2 RBI’s and scored 2 runs, a week ago Jimmy Rollins would have killed for those in game stats. – Well Done Cole.
The Reds pitching staff threw more pitches in the first 3 inning than Hamels threw for seven, in total The Reds pitching staff threw over 200 pitches combined, with only about 60% of them for strikes. You know a pitching staff is having a tough night when they throw **** into pitch the 8th inning.
Jayson Werth hit a grand slam, okay so it was off the SS pitching, but even so it’s still a stat and would have been a headline in any other game.
Jimmy Rollins went 3 for 4 with 2 walks, with Jimmy’s first half slump, I think worthy of a headline.
Ryan Howard homerless again, it’s nice that he is in the Home Run Derby, but I would much prefer him to hit homers in games that count, maybe the possible return of Raul Ibanez this week will inspire Ryan to go long.
Phillies BullPen threw 2 scorless innings to close out the game, again with their performance over recent weeks this would have been a headline in a diferent game.
With all this in the first of 4 games against The Reds you have wonder if they can keep it up, I am sure The Reds are wondering what they can do tonight, they face the 5-0 Happ with a 2.96 ERA, I am not sure there is light at the end of the tunnel for The Reds at CBP.
For a diferent point of view I have decided to watch tonights game with The Reds commentary, just to see how they feel about a Phillies team that really showed no mercy last night. Lets hope the Phillies didn’t blow a weeks worth of offense in one night.
Almost Finally, in case you hadn’t noticed I added the word Phillies to my Blog name just so those who haven’t read it know it’s about the Phillies.
And Finally VOTE VICTORINO
Vote for VICTORINO to the All Star Game
Posted: July 5, 2009 Filed under: Dailies | Tags: All Star Ballot, All Star game, All Star Team, All Star Voting, phillies, Victorino 3 CommentsOkay so I am wearing out my keyboard and mouse voting for Victorino, added a widget to Facebook, tried to add one to Windows Live, get an error, trying to figure that out, I am confused why you can customize a button specifically for Victorino and display the vote button on any number fo friend networking sites, yet they failed to let you do it for MLBlogs, DOH!!!, I am sure they think people will do it from the MLB main page, their favorite team website or the MLBlogs main page. Just something I noticed is all…… VOTE VOTE VOTE
BLANTASTIC, Phillies SWEEP Mets
Posted: July 5, 2009 Filed under: Dailies | Tags: All Star Ballot, All Star game, All Star Team, All Star Voting, Blanton, bullpen, Chan Ho Park, Cora, Fans, Feliz, Hit by Pitch, Howard, Ibanez, Mets, phillies, Reds, Rollins, Romero, Shut Out, sweep, Utley, Victorino, vote, Wright 2 CommentsBlanton surpassed all the hopes and expectations of the Philly fans just dreaming of a sweep, he pitched a good seven and a third shut-out innings, having good command of his fast ball and change-up, he kept the Mets of balance and guessing wrong, he gave up just 4 hits and walked 3 and set the phillies bullpen up nicely to clinch the win and the sweep.
The bullpen was again outstanding, not body likes to see a player get hurt and nobody wants to see an extra guy on base, but admit it, when Romero hit Cora I am sure there were a few fans thinking, ‘wish I could have done that’, so that set up Park to come in and get a double play, which just left the ninth. The commenators seemed confused as to if Lidge would pitch or not, then it was confirmed he was stretching in the pen, just 14 pitches today to go 1, 2, 3 in the ninth, was definately scenes from Lidge of ’08.
Rollins has surely quietened down the sceptics just a little, a lead off homer gave the Phillies an early lead, having another multi hit game Rollins is either back or just really likes to stick it to the Mets.
Utley, Mr. Second-Base God, hits another long ball to give Phillies a two zip lead and that’s all they would need, the defense was outstanding, turning double-plays when they were needed, Howard showed his fielding skills and that all the extra pre-season in-field training has paid-off.
With a home stand start like this I find myself looking forward to the next game, in anticipation of what extraordinary feats the team will show off next, bring on the Reds.
Congratulations go to Utley and Ibanez for making the All Star starting line-up and congrats to Howard for making the All Star team.
I realise it is fan based voting, but why wasn’t it a closer race between Feliz and Wright, Feliz is a better defensive third-baseman than Wright and has been above average with offence this year, just a thought.
Don’t forget send Victorino to the All Star Game as the 33rd man voting is open so get to it he deserves to be there: VOTE NOW