7/11/13
The Phillies have been on a roll lately and have won three
games in a row. In the second game of this series, the Phillies had great
pitching by Cole Hamels, but like we saw in the first game of this series,
there was ninth inning drama in the second game. Cliff Lee took the mound for
the Phillies in the third game of this series. He’s having a great year which
is why he is an all-star for the National League. Gio Gonzalez started for the Nationals
and he’s not having quite the year he had last year. Gonzalez has also been
linked to the many players in this biogenesis clinic that’s being investigated
by Major League Baseball. Could steroids have played a part of how Gonzalez has
performed the past two years? The Phillies had no changes to their starting
lineup while the Nats used the lineup they used in game one of this series.
Denard Span was back in the leadoff position and played centerfield. Span
replaced Scott Hairston. Bryce Harper went back to playing left field and
Wilson Ramos is back behind the plate replacing Kurt Suzuki. Will Lee or
Gonzalez pitch the better game?
This will be easy to tell you how the scoring happened. The
Nationals hit four solo homeruns. The Nationals hit back-to-back homeruns in
the fifth inning by Anthony Rendon and Wilson Ramos. They also hit back-to-back
homeruns in the sixth inning by Ryan Zimmerman and Jayson Werth. Darin Ruf hit
a solo homerun for the Phillies only run in the seventh inning. Rendon scored the
Nationals’ fifth run of the game in the ninth when Jake Diekman made a throwing
error when he threw the ball to first base. That was your final score; a 5-1
Phillies loss.
I thought Lee pitched well. I know he allowed four runs, but
they were off solo homeruns and he really wasn’t knocked around. Nine hits is a
lot of hits allowed in a game, but if you take away four of those hits, the
Nationals didn’t do a lot of damage on the base paths. The problem with Lee was
that he threw too many strikes and the Nationals were prepared to attack early
in the count. He threw 76 pitches in seven innings, which is great, but I
thought he would pitch the full game. Luis Garcia made his major league debut
and boy did he come out of the gate throwing fireballs. Justin De Fratus and
Jake Diekman are examples of why this bullpen is a terrible bullpen. I like
Diekman’s stuff, but he allows inherited runners to score. De Fratus on the
other hand is simply not a good major league pitcher. He threw a meatball to
Rendon and committed an error that should have been an easy throw to first.
Gonzalez pitched a solid game. He threw a lot of strikes and
kept the ball down in the zone. There were innings the Phillies could have done
damage to Gonzalez, but I will get into that in my next paragraph. Tyler
Clippard and Rafael Soriano pitched scoreless eighth and ninth innings and
wrapped the game up easily.
Overall, the Phillies used bad management that cost them
this game. In the third inning when there were runners on first and second,
Charlie Manuel should have let Ben Revere bunt to move the runners over to
scoring position. There would have been one out in that inning instead of the
two that did happen when he grounded into a double play. Then in the fifth
inning, the same situation happened with one out and Charlie told Lee to lay
down a bunt to move the runners over. This I don’t understand because Lee has
more pop in his bat than Revere. Another example of bad management is what I
stated above about Lee. He threw 76 pitches yet got taken out after the seventh
inning. He could have easily pitched the whole game yet Charlie wanted to use
Kevin Frandsen as a pinch hitter because he has more pop in his bat. The weird
thing is that Frandsen did what Lee could have done as well; a bunt down the
third base line for Zimmerman to field. Zimmerman is an easy target because
he’s a terrible fielder and has an awkward throwing motion. I really hope the
Phillies bring their A game tonight and win this series.
Will the Phillies win
this series against the Nationals? Sound off and stay tuned until next time…
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