Game 7 - Monday Afternoon, April 11th in Philadelphia
Record - 2-5, 4th place, 3 games behind the Nationals
One Sentence Summary: A bizarre interpretation of the infield fly rule by the umpiring crew contributed to this 4-3 loss to the Padres in the Phillies home opener.
What It Means: In the bottom of the sixth, the Phillies loaded the bases with nobody out. Darin Ruf lofted a pop fly to shallow left field, which fell between the Padres shortstop and the left fielder. The umpires deemed the infield fly rule to be in effect, even though the ball landed no where near the infield. Ruf was ruled out, Odubel Herrera was tagged out at third, and the official scorer called it a sacrifice fly double play. Pete Mackanin argued to no avail. The fans booed to no avail.
What Happened: Aaron Nola was tagged with the loss, as he allowed four runs on six hits in his seven innings. Maikel Franco had three hits, but the offense overall remains relatively quiet and non-productive.
Featured Card: I gave my nine-year-old son Doug the sole vote for this post's featured card and without hesitation he chose Freddy Galvis. Galvis went 0 for 4 at the plate, but he made several dazzling defensive plays at shortstop and without his defense, it wouldn't have been such a close game.
This is Galvis' card from the new team issued photo card set, and I'll dedicate a full post to this new set at some point soon.
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Field Report: And we were there! It turned out to be a gorgeous day for baseball and although the team lost, Doug and I still had fun. I was very happy to see that giant Topps cards were back in Ashburn Alley, with nine giant cards displaying the game's starting line-up. The picture below shows cards that never were (or might not ever be) for Cameron Rupp, Cedric Hunter and Peter Bourjos.
3 comments:
I was at the game too. It was a beautiful day for baseball. You must have been there quite early to get that photo by the big new OPENING DAY sign with no one around. I hope they keep that for future years. We have had a *big* tailgate for the past 11 years (home opener record over that time is 2-9--uggh), and so I usually miss the festivities; it's a hard decision because the tailgate is fun too. Usually I catch the pregame activity later on my DVR. With the nice weather, the crowd seemed to be lingering in the parking lot a lot longer this year and there was a massive line to get in just as the game was starting. Anyway, this year's loss was better than the first 4 in their current 5-game home opener losing streak, which they lost by a combined score of 37-10!
Wish I could have been there, it was a great day for a game! Awesome to see the card of Hunter, I hope he sticks long enough to get a Topps card. Btw Rupp finally has a topps card, he's in the team issued set along with several other first time Phils.
It was definitely a great day for a game, even though we didn't like the outcome.
Burnell - We picked up one of the Topps retail team sets at the game, and I'm glad that Rupp is finally represented on a Topps card.
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