4/23/13
It may be early in the season, but the battle of
Pennsylvania has begun. The Pirates have been looking good so far, but that’s
just a small sample of the season. Their team is similar to the Phillies. Both
teams rely on pitching for success since both offenses are inefficient. The
Pirates offense hinges on the success of Andrew McCutchen, Starling Marte, and
Neil Walker. Those three players are young and will be the core for the
Pirates. Their starting pitching staff is led by A.J. Burnett and Wandy
Rodriguez. Their bullpen is more of a strength than their starting rotation.
The game plan for the Phillies should be to score runs early on the Pirates
starters because they don’t want to see any of those good pitchers in the
Pirates bullpen. The focus on this game will be the debut for Phillies starter
Jonathan Pettibone. He is a rookie that was called up from Double-A Reading. He
got the call up to the Phillies because John Lannan was placed on the 15-day
disabled list with knee soreness. Lannan will be out for six-eight weeks.
Pettibone has a pitching repertoire the same as Cole Hamels, but Pettibone is a
groundball pitcher. Burnett gets the start for the Pirates. He has been solid
in the early part of the season. Will Pettibone succeed or fail in his debut?
If you wanted to see an offensive game, you watched the
wrong game. The Pirates scored their two runs on two solo homeruns in the
second and fifth innings. Pedro Alvarez’s homerun in the second barely cleared
the right field fence while Russell Martin’s homerun was a no-doubt-about-it
homerun.
The Phillies answered in the third inning scoring on a wild
pitch and took the lead at the time in the fourth when Jimmy Rollins got hit by
a Burnett fastball in the shin.
Pettibone had a solid debut. He pitched 5 1/3 innings,
allowed six hits, two runs, and struck out six batters. The six strikeouts were
the most in a debut start for any Phillies pitcher since Cole Hamels did that
in 2006.
The boxscore may show that Burnett had a solid start. In
reality, he was all over the place and didn’t look good. He had high pitch
counts after the first inning and the Phillies kept swinging at bad pitches to
get themselves out. Burnett pitched five innings, allowed five hits, two runs,
three walks, and struck out seven batters.
Jimmy Rollins got the big hit in the sixth inning. When Erik
Kratz walked and pinch hitter Ezequiel Carrera hit an infield single to second
base, Rollins hit a line drive into right field that scored the hustling Kratz
from second to make it a 3-2 game. Rollins was almost caught in a rundown, but
both Rollins and Carrera escaped the rundown and slid safely into second and
third base.
After that run the Phillies scored off Pirates reliever
Jared Hughes, Vin Mazzaro shut down the Phillies for the final two innings. Mazzaro
allowed one hit and struck out a batter.
The Phillies bullpen shut down the Pirates for the last 3
2/3 innings. Raul Valdes, Antonio Bastardo, Mike Adams, and Jonathan Papelbon
combined to allow two hits, and struck out five batters.
Overall, a win is a win. It wasn’t a pretty win, but still a
win for the Phillies. Pettibone deserves another start with the Phillies even
though it was against a terrible hitting club like the Pirates. The fourth
inning was a pivotal inning for the Phillies. They had the bases loaded with no
outs and they only scored one run in the inning. A good offensive team would
have blown this game wide open, but then I realized, this is the Phillies we’re
talking about. They don’t hit well with runners in scoring position in any
situation. Regardless, they got the big hit when it mattered most.
Is Jimmy Rollins’
clutch gene back? Sound off and stay tuned tonight as the Phillies play the
second game of this series against the Pirates. Cole Hamels will start for the
Phillies and Jeff Locke will start for the Pirates.
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