Game Recap:
Thanks to five walks in the ninth inning from Carlos Marmol, the Phillies managed a win against the Cubs in Chicago this afternoon.
What went right?
Placido Polanco went 1-5, but it was a big one, as he drove in Brian Schneider with the first run of the ninth inning.
Jayson Werth went 2-4 with an RBI on a bases loaded walk.
Raul Ibanez was 2-4 with an RBI.
Cole Hamels looked solid again, pitching seven innings and allowing just one run on eight hits. He walked two and struck out six.
Brad Lidge worked around a walk to Kosuke Fukudome in the bottom of the ninth for his seventh save of the season.
What went wrong?
Jimmy Rollins was 0-4 with a walk, though he did score a run in the ninth inning.
Carlos Ruiz was 0-2 before being lifted from the game.
Game Analysis:
We can all thank Carlos Marmol for today's win. After the Phils decided to phone it in for eight innings against the Cubs for the third straight game, Marmol came in to close things out and instead had one of the worst games of the year. After recording two outs and pitching around two walks, Marmol allowed a single to Placido Polanco that tied the game, then walked three straight batters, including one intentionally. After the dust had settled, the Phillies had scored four times, Marmol was booed off the mound, and Brad Lidge had closed the door for the first win for the Phils after the All Star Break.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves after today's win, though. It was far from pretty. For most of the day, it looked like it would be another hard luck loss for Cole Hamels, and after the seventh inning, it almost was. Ryan Theriot put down a perfect safety squeeze that allowed Starlin Castro to score and gave the Cubs a 1-0 lead. Considering how the Phillies have been playing so far in this series, a 1-0 lead seemed like it could have been too much to handle. That's the biggest problem with the way this team is still playing. The offense just can't get it together right now. Ryan Howard has three home runs in three games, but other than him, no one is producing when they need to. Jimmy Rollins is hitting .233, Shane Victorino isn't much better, and neither is Raul Ibanez. Only Placido Polanco is hitting over .300, and did the Phillies need him in the ninth inning today. Without Polacno in there, this probably would have gone down as another loss that Cole Hamels didn't deserve.
There's no more thinking about how well Cole Hamels is pitching this year. Other than 2007 and 2008, Hamels hasn't looked this good throughout an entire season up to this point. Despite his 7-7 record, Hamels has a 3.63 ERA and 113 strikeouts in 119 innings of work. If he could get some run support, then his record would be much, much better than it is at the moment. He's still giving up a lot of home runs, but the fact of the matter is that he seems to never get run support when he's out on the mound this year. The Phillies need to score some runs when he's pitching, because they're wasting what could have been the best season so far of his career. It's not his fault that the offense isn't scoring runs. His job is to go out there and stop the other team from putting up big innings, and he's done that for the most part this year. If he can keep it up, hopefully the offense can eventually come around and get things together, but at this point, no one knows how the rest of this season is going to go.
I can't cut corners today. In this game, the Phillies got damn lucky. Carlos Marmol has control issues, but before today's game, he had only walked three batters in the entire month of July, and had started to look like the closer the Cubs had been hoping for. In one inning, the Phillies may have reset that image, and they stole a win from Chicago at the same time. It sure as hell wasn't pretty today, and it's not one to write home about, but it's a win. Right now, that's what this team needs, so I'll gladly take it.
Tomorrow night, the Phillies close out their four game series with the Cubs. Roy Halladay (10-7, 2.19 ERA) will make his first start of the second half against Tom Gorzelanny (4-5, 3.16 ERA).
No comments:
Post a Comment