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Wednesday, October 05, 2011
[Jaime] Garcia had allowed a combined three earned runs in four career starts against the Phillies and had cruised through six innings until Ben Francisco hit a pinch-hit, three-run home run in the seventh in a 3-2 victory that gave the Phillies a 2-1 lead in the best-of-five series.
The Phillies can clinch a trip to their fourth consecutive NL Championship Series with a victory in Game 4 on Wednesday.
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1. Edmundo got dem ol' Kozma blues again mamaPhew.
Maybe Manuel doesn't like Ibanez's defense.
I don't know about you guys, but that was really, really, really top notch playoff baseball.
Also, St. Louis kept on hitting dinks right out of the range of or just precisely positioned between Philly outfielders, and yet when the Phillies hit similar balls, there was always a St. Louis player making a gorgeous play.
Good thing Francisco hit that HR.
Has a team ever won a postseason game before tonight in which all their scoring came on a pinch-hit home run?
Mayberry led off the ninth, so that wouldn't have worked. I'm not an expert on the Phillies' roster, but I'm not seeing a really good double-switch option for Manuel there.
It annoyed me that the commentators didn't even discuss pinch-hitting there.
I don't see any reason to pinch hit for jaime there. He was only at about 70 pitches, wasn't missing spots, hadn't lost velocity, and it's not like Ben Francisco is some kind of lefty masher. He's a defensive replacement who plays in a pitcher's park, who's had a reverse platoon split in 2 of the last 3 years (and marginal the year before that), and he's hitting in a pitcher's park that favors lefties. I chalk that HR mostly up to Ol Abner.
But the walking of Ruiz was really frustrating, in that it was a bad move, both strategically AND tactically, and between that and yadi uncharacteristically just plain not catching a pitch, allowing a guy to go to second, seemed to shake Jaime up.
I thought so too at the time. Whether he has thrown 70 pitches or 90 pitches is irrelevant. Each game is so crucial, you can't throw away a scoring opportunity at that point.
And walking Ruiz was too stupid for words.
Even when the pitcher has been very effective and efficient.
The exception would be a good hitting pitcher, but Garcia doesn't qualify.
EDIT: In case it's not clear, I'm not advcating hitting for Garcia to get him out of the game, but to increase the chance of scoring (and potentially scoring multiple runs)
The Cardinals should have gone to Holliday.
This
This
It was pitching around Posada that was the beginning of Detroit losing the other night as well.
If you have seen BenFran play the OF very often, you would not have typed that. He's pretty much an offensive-oriented 4th OF at this point who had a bad offensive year and has been relegated to the 2nd RH PH off the bench when Mayberry doesn't start.
First, do no harm. He got out-managed.
also, there's this, from phillies beatwriter todd zolecki:
This one, at least, was probably a good idea.
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