Saturday, July 16, 2011

1997 Pacific Prisms #130 Ricky Otero

Mets 11, Phillies 2
Game 93 - Saturday Afternoon, July 16th in Flushing

One Sentence Summary:  The Phils lost ugly, 11-2.

What It Means:  The team drops to 58-35 and they'll try to regroup for the series win tomorrow afternoon.

What Went Wrong:  Cole Hamels (11-5) suffered through a rare bad outing, allowing seven runs on eight hits in his 4 1/3 innings of work.  Ryan Howard and Wilson Valdez contributed to Hamels' misery by badly misplaying two balls early in the game.  Howard let a pop-up drop in front of him in the first, allowing the first run to score.  Valdez let a playable ball get by him in the third allowing two more runs to score.  It didn't help that Hamels had walked the pitcher, Jon Niese, to start the third.  It went downhill from there.

Featured Card:  An ugly loss deserves an ugly card.  During part of the radio broadcast this afternoon, Chris Wheeler mentioned that the last Phillie to drive in five runs without a home run (before John Mayberry, Jr. did it last night) was none other than that Ricky Otero.  Otero accomplished the feat back on September 29, 1996, against his former team, the Mets.  Whenever a list is compiled detailing the worst Phillies players ever, Otero's name usually makes an appearance.  If anyone ever compiles a list of the worst Phillies baseball cards ever, I'd nominate this particular card for inclusion, without hesitation.

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