Results tagged “marlins”

If the Phillies manage to hold on to this half game lead in the wild card race until the season runs out (pleasepleaseplease), the third inning of yesterday’s 10-7 win over the Florida Marlins will encompass the long strange trip this has been.

How did they do it? Go from holding a blow out Fire Sale to being tied for the wild card? A lot of good pitching, a home run champion and a good dose of luck.

After last night's loss to Houston, we no longer care what Will Bunch (Ryan Howard doesn't pitch) or ESPN's Alan Schwarz (and his interestingly anonymous Phillies fan reader) say. We're ready to say that the Phillies are out of the Wild Card race, and we're so sure of it that we're writing this post before San Diego inevitably beats Colorado and takes a three-game lead over the Phillies.

Rainy Sundays aren't usually good for much. The malls and movie theaters are jammed, the parks in Center City are, shall we say, outdoors, and you can't play baseball.

A three-game winning streak? Could it be? We think so. The Phils took one out of three from the terrible Pittsburg Pirates and then won both in a set with the Florida Marlins.

Who knows what these Phils are up to these days? The only good news from Friday's game was that the man they pegged ace, John Lieber, didn't completely stuck it up...well, at least not until the fifth inning, and the Phils lost 4-3 to a Marlins squad that's made up of a lot of fresh, young things.

Jimmy Rollins extended his league-leading hit streak last night against the Atlanta Braves, but that was about the only thing that went right for the Phillies. The Fightin's lost 4 - 1 against the Braves last night in Atlanta, leaving them two games behind the Houston Astros, who beat up on the Pittsburgh Pirates. Both teams have 11 games left this season. The Marlins, sitting in third place in the Wild Card race, lost to the New York Mets in 12 innings and now find themselves three games back of the Astros.

The Houston Astros lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates last night, 7 - 0 at PNC Park. No no, this isn't suddenly Pittsburghist. We're interested in this game because the Astros were sitting a game and a half ahead of the Phillies heading into last night's action. After the loss, the Astros find themselves only one game ahead of the Phillies, sure to make the eventual Phillies collapse that much more heartbreaking.

The Phillies entered their weekend series against the Marlins hoping to take one game from the Marlins. Two games seemed to be asking a lot since the Phillies faced the two Marlins aces, Dontrelle Willis and Josh Beckett, on Saturday and Sunday.

There's nothing better than kicking back at a Phillies game and making a nice Tomas Perez pie joke, or really any joke about any of the Phillies bench players. Except maybe Shane Victorino. Maybe. But Ramon Martinez was able to fire a shot back last night in the form of a grand slam that helped the suddenly surging Phillies defeat the Atlanta Braves last night, 12-4.

The Phillies played in front of the smallest crowd in Citizens Bank Park history last night, but the lack of attention suited them just fine: the Phils, behind winless rookie pitcher Eude Brito, topped the Braves and ace starter Tim Hudson 4-1.

Even though the Eagles are starting their season tonight, we're going to annoy you for a moment with some Phillies news. After some heartbreaking losses to the Astros, the Phillies came roaring back by taking 2 games out of 3 from the Florida Marlins over the weekend. The wins pulled the Phils to a game and a half behind the wild card leading Astros and a game behind the second place Marlins.

Phils fans were happy - jubilant, even - for just a little while last night. It started with a two-run Bobby Abreu homer that tied the game at 5. The ball was smashed to center field and many fans probably imagined that the clutch eighth inning homer was drilled right down the through of Howard Eskin. The throat of Howard Eskin being A.J. Finch's catching mitt, obviously.

Chris Mustazza and Phil Sandick, our resident Phillies writers, return this week with talk of one-game wonder Eude Brito, Jim Thome and the Phils' playoff chances heading into September.

The Texas Leaguer. The Mendoza Line. The Can of Corn. All of these time-tested baseball-isms have their own charm, but the one that has stood as my favorite is: the golden sombrero (sometimes also referred to as the silver sombrero). 4 strike outs in one game. If Ryan Howard hadn’t homered to centerfield, above the Lukoil sign, and instead swung and missed at three straight strikes, the Phillies could have easily followed up with a David Bell pop-up, a Mike Lieberthal fly-out, inning over, game over, and I would have been talking about Ryan Howard’s failure to produce in the clutch, his shiny golden sombrero. That’s a lot of pressure that Ryan Howard was going up against but he handled it with cool assurance. After Howard smacked Yhency Brazoban’s second pitch to the seats, Howard walked slower to first base than if he had struck out. He knew it was gone, as did the Philly faithful, who exploded at the park, but also in front of their TV’s, satellite radios, in their cars or on their headphones.

Friday night, Ryan Howard came to the plate representing the winning run in a 9-7 game in the bottom of the ninth inning against Florida closer Todd Jones, and Howard struck out looking. Todd Jones collected his 200th save, and finished off the Phils on a night when it looked like it would be hard to come back, but Philadelphia fought back from a 8-3 deficit in the sixth inning to make it competitive again for their home crowd by the bottom of the ninth. Can’t blame Ryan Howard for this one; he merely struck out against a rejuvenated closer. He will have other chances. And Phillies fans, take that energy that you were ready to use to cheer Howard’s game tying home run, and remember these tough times when Howard does put one into the seats in the ninth inning. It won’t be long from now.

Normally, coming off the all-star break with a win over a pretty tough team like the Marlins would warrant praise; however, we can't help but feel worried by the Phils’ performance last night. The style of play that the Phillies demonstrated was the same thing that gave them the 12-1 homestand and made them lose on the road to Seattle and Oakland: taking advantage of the deficient left field wall at Citizen’s Bank Park and hitting homeruns that would be merely pop-flies in any other park. This style might serve them well in the short term while playing at home, but it is not sufficient to make them a winning team.