Burrell blasts Phillies to 6-2 victory over Braves; Marquis and Cubs slam Mets, 9-5

I’m hoping Greg Golson earned a little managerial regard tonight with his running. The guy is a great tactical weapon, and would be a lot more useful on the post-season roster, assuming we make it, than So Taguchi.

(And I’d still rather see him as Burrell’s late-game defensive replacement than Bruntlett.)

WholeCamels, droppin’ the Yiddish and the flower-power hip-hip in the same post. Much props.

It is sort of crazy that we’re 14-2 against the Braves. We’re obviously not that overwhelmingly better than they are. Somebody should do a chart of our games against them and see how they break out, squeakers vs. blowouts. I suspect it’s a long string of games that were fairly close and could have gone either way, and 14 out of 16 of them happened to go our way.

I mean, 6-2 isn’t a squeaker, obviously, but it’s certainly close enough that a call here and a call there could have swung the outcome – say, Golson’s incorrectly called out at home just because the throw beat him there (an umpiring tradition that benefitted the Phils on Saturday in Miami), and the McCann double in the ninth is ruled a homer (still not sure why they didn’t review that – on replay, I couldn’t tell if it was a foul, double, or homer). Now it’s 5-4, at least. I’m not saying we didn’t win fair and square, cuz we did, I’m just saying that 6-2 is a couple of rulings from 5-4, and 5-4 isn’t far off from 5-5 and extra innings, and over the course of a season you’d expect that to happen a few times and as a result, for one team not to end up 14-2 against a non-horrible opponent.

So, not squeakers vs. blowouts – more like, competitive games vs. blowouts.