The way this series ended is kind of typical of how the Phillies’ season has gone. While the Phillies got the job done over the weekend, one of the guys who’s supposed to be one of our better pitchers had a flat out collapse. In the meantime, the team is being sold from underneath us in one of the biggest salary dumps in a while.
On Friday, Bret Myers had yet another good start, and he was even pulled at the right time. Unfortunately, the bullpen didn’t give us much help and gave up three runs while the offense never really got started. Ryan Howard homered in the bottom of the ninth, but outside of that, the Phillies were held to two hits the rest of the game.
On Saturday, the Phillies got rolling. A seven run third pretty much put this game away. Pat Burrell, Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Aaron Rowand all hit homeruns. Utley drove in three runs and Burrell scored twice. Cole Hamels was very good in his start. He improved to 3-5 and gave up three runs on five hits and two walks with seven strikeouts.
The Phillies kept up the offense in game one yesterday. The Phillies scored five in the fourth and four in the fifth to put the game away. Mike Lieberthal drove in five runs while Aaron Rowand drove in three. Ryan Howard walked five times and scored twice and Randy Wolf made his first start in a long, long time. He gave up three runs on three hits and five walks in 4 1/3 innings. Aaron Fultz gave up two runs, but he did it when the Phillies started scoring runs so he picked up the win.
The Phillies made it three straight with a 9-2 win in the second game of the doubleheader. Ryan Howard had three hits including homerun number 35 and Ryan Madson won his ninth. He gave up two runs on eight hits with six strikeouts in six innings.
Today was pretty brutal. Jon Lieber gave up nine runs in 4 2/3 innings and this one was over pretty early. Chase Utley did get a hit and he now has a 32 game hitting streak. Chris Coste homered for the third time this year in the beatdown loss.
Next up is a three game set against the NL Central leading Cardinals. The Cardinals are coming off of four straight losses to the lowly Cubs, so hopefully we’ll be catching them while down. There’s still some games to be played tonight, but right now (8:20 EDT) the Phillies are 5 1/2 games back of the Reds for the Wild Card.
August 2nd, 2006 at 3:42 am
Hard to believe the Phils are only 4.5 out of the wild card. I don’t think they stand a chance, but hey, it’s still possible. I’d love to see them sweep the Cards.
Congrats to Mathieson on 1st big league win!
*we should link each other’s blogs.