May 08, 2015
The Phillies beat the New York Mets 3-1 in a high-profile starting pitching matchup on Friday night at Citizens Bank Park. Here’s what I saw:
The major storyline tonight was the starting pitchers, as the two teams’ respective aces took the mound. I’ll talk about Cole Hamels’ night in-depth for tomorrow’s story, but he settled down nicely later in the game to give the Phils seven innings of one-run ball. There were some issues in the early innings, though. The Mets hit a few balls hard right at fielders and Hamels continued to experience control problems with two walks and two wild pitches.
"All I can do is try to give our team a shot," Hamels said after the game. "It hasn't gone as I've planned as much this year, but there's always times to get back at it and start something great."
In case you were wondering, that’s legendary New York talk radio host Mike Francesa’s phonetic spelling of “Harvey.” Coming into the game, “The Dark Knight” (dumb nickname, bee tee dubs) had won his first five starts and sported a 2.72 ERA. Matt Harvey only made one major mistake tonight, but the Phillies were able to sort of plug away (Jonathan Papelbon used the word "swag") and scrape across three runs on six hits against him in six innings. Even with the off night, he’s had a great start to the season after missing an entire year due to Tommy John surgery.
"I think going against a guy like Harvey tonight, we were prepared and accepted the challenge," Papelbon said.
After two games off and a three-day mental health break, The Struggling Chase Utley (that’s his official title, right?) returned to the lineup and batted in the three-hole. As it turns out, a Cy Young candidate with electric stuff isn’t necessarily the best guy to ease your way back in against.
Utley not only went 0-4 at the dish to drop his average down to .099 (*insert bad Mendoza Line joke*), but he heard some pretty loud boos after grounding into a double play in the eighth inning.
Oppo-boppo for Ryan Howard, who jumped on a first-pitch fastball from Harvey and deposited it into the left-center field flower bed in the bottom of the fourth inning. As we start to creep into the part of the season Charlie Manuel famously dubbed Hittin’ Weather, Howard is the former All-Star that is heating up. After struggling big time to start the year, he has six homers since April 21st.
More times than not, the Phillies lineup is going to be totally overmatched against a pitcher like Harvey. In addition to hitting more balls hard tonight than expected (particularly timing his fastball the third time through the order), they made a couple of things happen on the basepaths. The Phils’ first run was the result of Freddy Galvis stealing a bag and scoring from second on Howard’s single into the shift. Later, they scored again when Hamels got down a sac bunt, which his counterpart failed to do earlier.
"I just went for it," Galvis said after stealing two bases, doubling his career output in that category. "I think he [Harvey] had a little bit of high leg-kick and I had good timing. I picked good pitches and just went for it."
Before the game, the Inky’s Matt Breen caught up with Ken Giles, who discussed how he’s still been plenty effective (0.73 ERA entering the game) despite a decrease in velocity. There’s a school of thought that relievers like “100 Miles Giles” (good nickname, unlike Harvey’s) start to throw harder as the season goes along. Tonight was definitely a start in the right direction. He was consistently at 97-98 miles per hour on the stadium gun tonight, which is around what his average velocity was last year.
Jonathan Papelbon gave up a leadoff single to Daniel Murphy and had to throw 22 pitches, but he got Dilson Herrera to harmlessly fly out to end the game. More importantly, that ties him with Jose Mesa for the franchise's all-time saves record with 112. The Phillies are now the second franchise that Papelbon holds the all-time mark, along with Boston. Fans may or take or leave Papelbon's loose cannon personality, but the guy has pitched really well here.
"It means a lot actually," the closer said about the milestone. "A lot of people may or may not think that, but it really does mean a lot. I will say the number one thing is it's humbling to be at the top with Jose Mesa. I didn't necessarily set out to come here and break this milestone, I set out to come here and hopefully win some championships. You know, we're still trying to get to that realm but for it's really humbling... especially in this organization with all of the history it has. It really is."
Ryan Howard was honored before the game last Friday for passing Fred Luderus, he of the 1910-1920 Phillies, to become the Phillies’ all-time leader in games played (1,298 of those bad boys) at first base… Dillon Gee, who was supposed to start against the Phillies on Sunday, was placed on the 15-day disabled list. The Phillies will instead get to see the always-entertaining Bartolo Colon, so there are no complaints here… Decent crowd tonight, as the announced attendance of 32,734 was the most since opening day... In the minors: Phillippe Aumont threw six scoreless innings for Lehigh Valley, Tom Windle gave up five runs in Reading, and J.P. Crawford got on base four times for Clearwater.
