Game 74 - Tuesday Night, June 21st in St. Louis
One Sentence Summary: The Phillies piled on nine runs in the eighth to stun the Cardinals and win the ballgame, 10-2.
What It Means: The Phillies have a 4 1/2 game lead over the Braves in the division, and their record improved to 46-28.
What Went Right: It wasn't pretty, but we'll take it. The bats were fairly quiet throughout the first seven innings and they really didn't do all that much in the eighth, but the Phils capitalized on the Cardinal bullpen's meltdown to rally from behind. The offense victimized five different Cardinals relievers in the inning on five singles, four walks and two hit batters. Three of the runs scored on two bases-loaded walks and a hit batter.
Before the deluge, the big hit came from pinch-hitter Ben Francisco, who lined a single to left to give the Phillies a 3-2 lead. After that, things got sloppy and per the team's official Twitter feed, the top of the eigth took 43 minutes and 26 seconds.
Carlos Ruiz was on base all night, going four for four with a walk.
Roy Halladay was lifted in the seventh for a pinch-hitter. In his abbreviated (for him) start, he gave up a run on four hits while walking two and striking out five.
Featured Card: My Phillies cards from Topps Series 2 are sitting in front of me in a small pile waiting to be checklist'd and added to Zistle. One of those cards is this Ben Francisco card, which features a different pose from Francisco's card found in the Topps Phillies team set.
It was maybe the most surreal inning I've seen so far this year....LaRussa brought in a righty to pitch to Howard....craziness, but awesome when it goes the Phillies' way.
ReplyDeleteJim Salisbury, the Phillies beat writer for CSN Philly Tweeted, "If Tony LaRussa knew his team would play such an ugly inning he would have never invented baseball in the first place."
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