Game 56 - Friday Night, June 5th in Philadelphia
Record - 21-35, 5th Place, 9 1/2 games behind the Nationals
One Sentence Summary: Home runs from Ryan Howard and Maikel Franco weren't enough against Tim Lincecum and the Giants as the Phillies lost the series opener, 5-4.
What It Means: In case you missed it, the Phillies are now firmly back in last place in the East, 2 1/2 games behind the fourth place Marlins.
What Happened: I wonder how much longer the Phillies can keep going with Jerome Williams as a starting pitcher option. Williams was pulled with one out in the fifth inning of this game, and when the dust settled he had allowed four runs on nine hits. His ERA of 5.68 ranks him as 123rd out of 128 qualifying Major League pitchers and he leads the National League in hits allowed with 87.
Williams did double home the Phillies third run of the night, so it wasn't a total bust of a night for him.
Featured Card: Might as well go with another Franco card here. Franco hit his third game-tying home run in four games in the sixth. This is Franco's card from the recently released Panini Diamond Kings set, which doesn't actually look Diamond King-ish to me. I get the feeling Panini wanted to produce a logo-less set with current players and veterans, using artsy washed out photos. In lieu of coming up with a non-recognizable set name, they decided to just slap the Diamond King name on this set.
Transaction: Dustin McGowan was added to the bullpen to take the place of the demoted Jake Diekman.
Looks like a relatively nice card, at least by Panini standards... Well, I'm not crazy about the logo right on top of Franco's naughty bits. But yeah, it's not really a Diamond Kings design.
ReplyDeleteI guess I wouldn't be so down on the card if they had called it Panini Invincible or Panini Immaculate or whatever. I just expect my Diamond Kings cards to be paintings with inexplicable geometric shapes in the background and Dick Perez's signature.
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