Apr 08 2009
How many walks does it take to give the Phillies a win?
Today’s game started out much the same as the previous two in this series with the Philadelphia Phillies. Another Brian McCann two run homerun put the Braves on top 2 to 0 before the home team came up to the plate. Javier Vazquez pitched well enough to deserve the win but the Atlanta bullpen didn’t show up.
10 to 3 in favor of the Braves was the score going into the bottom of the 7th. This is when Bobby Cox went to his bullpen, specifically the arm of Eric O’Flaherty. Why Bobby would pull the young lefty will I imagine be questioned by the press, for it was not as though he was exactly stuggling. A bloop hit to Chase Utley and hitting Ryan Howard with a pitch does not exactly scream out pull him to me. Especially being up 7 runs still.
Next out of the pen came Peter Moylan, appearing in his first game since undergoing Tommy John surgery 11 months ago, and Blaine Boyer. Combined the two managed to throw 25 pitches, only 8 of which were strikes. Not many games will be won or sustained by these two if they manage to perform like this, and I would suspect a nice little session with Roger McDowell is in order.
Sweeping the defending champ Phillies would have been the perfect start to the season, a start which I thought was a given going into that 7th inning. However the force field that was obviously blocking the plate in that inning put this dream to an end. Even so, taking two out of three is quite the accomplishment. Especially pleasing from this series was the play of Brian McCann, Jordan Schafer, and Jeff Francoeur. With these three playing well I believe the rest of the team will take notice and up their play as well.
