Tuesday, April 10, 2012

2009 Upper Deck O-Pee-Chee Preview #OPC-50 Ryan Howard

Marlins 6, Phillies 2
Game 4 - Monday Afternoon, April 9th in Philadelphia
Record - 1-3, 4th Place in N.L. East, 3 games behind the Mets

One Sentence Summary:  Once again, the lethargic Phillies offense resulted in a boring loss.

What It Means:  Zzzzzzz.

What Went Wrong:  After four games, the offense is hitting .198 collectively while the starting pitchers have a 1.65 ERA.  It's been a frustrating start to the season, but I'm not ready to follow the rest of the lemmings off the cliff.  We're four games in, and it will be OK.  I hope.

Half of the team's six hits and all of their two runs came in the seventh inning.  The only big hit of the game was a two-run double from Freddy Galvis, his first hit in the Majors.

Cole Hamels pitched 5 1/3 innings, allowing three earned runs on eight hits while striking out nine.  Omar Infante touched the Phils for two solo home runs.  And the very first batter Jonathan Papelbon faced in his home debut, Austin Kearns, launched a home run to left.

Featured Card:  The last time the Phillies started a season with a 1-3 record was way back in 2009.  As everyone knows, the Phillies never recovered from the 1-3 start and they went on to . . . win the National League pennant.  The most uplifting sight from today's home opener was Ryan Howard jogging out to the first base line during pre-game introductions.  Hopefully the Big Piece is further along in his rehab than the team is letting on.

Section 36 Contest:  Unfortunately, I caught some sort of random bug on Monday morning and I decided to stay home from work.  It pained me to miss work, but what are you going to do?  (Cough, cough.)  Fortunately, the Phillies were playing in the afternoon and the game was televised.  So with my official Section 36 Scorecard in hand, I scored the home team's lackluster performance.  As you can see, there really wasn't much excitement during the game for the home squad, save for the seventh inning.  This is also my official entry into the April Contest currently running over in Section 36.  Go and check it out and hopefully by the time the contest ends, the Sox will have won a game.

And yes, I started to write "Florida" before crossing it out.

3 comments:

Matthew Appleton said...

Wow. It's an utter coincidence we picked cards from the same set to post today. It's a good thing I picked a different card.

Section 36 said...

It's funny, lemmings don't follow each other off a cliff. The NG photographer admitted he chased them off to their death to make a better story. With the state of sports radio today, that might be an even more accurate description of fans. I definitely think I'm being pushed.

Thanks for the entry! I can't believe you did that live...penmenship is too good.

The Sox did finally win...thanks!

Hope that cough gets better soon.

Jim said...

Matthew - What are the odds? I wanted to go with a 2009 Ryan Howard card. I almost went with his Seasoned Veterans insert from the Ticket to Stardom set, but I decided on using this one instead.

S36 - I've long since given up on listening to sports radio and I've found I'm much happier. And unfortunately I felt better today and went to work.