Strong Medicine: Phillies 7, Cardinals 2
by dajafi on May 6, 2010 4:30 PM EDT
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At best, Roy Halladay gave only the third most impressive pitching performance among Phillies starters in this four-game set against the NL Central leading Cardinals Thursday afternoon. Following gems from Cole Hamels and Kyle Kendrick, Doc walked three batters and had just one clean inning of the seven he worked, needing 118 pitches to get that far. Yet if this is "struggling" Halladay, the Phils will take it: the ace earned his sixth win in seven starts, tying his season high with nine strikeouts as his team took its third straight win over visiting St. Louis.
After Halladay escaped a first-inning jam in which the first two Cards hitters singled by getting Albert Pujols to ground into a double play, the Phillies got him some quick support off old friend Kyle Lohse. Chase Utley singled with two outs in the home first, Ryan Howard drew a walk, and Jayson Werth followed with a wind-blown home run to right to give the Phils a 3-0 lead. Werth, whose season-opening streak of 26 games reaching base ended in Wednesday night's win, later added two doubles to stretch his league-best total to 15. St. Louis got a run back in the top of the second, with David Freese tripling to right on a ball Werth struggled to track down and coming in to score on a Wilson Valdez error. But the Phils made it 5-1 in the bottom half, as Halladay reached on an error, Shane Victorino doubled and Howard singled them both home. Neither team scored again until the home fifth, when Raul Ibanez crushed a second-deck solo home run off Cards reliever and romance novel villain Blake Hawksworth.
Halladay struck out Matt Holliday with the bases loaded to escape the fifth and induced an around the horn double play from Jason LaRue to end the top of the sixth, but found himself in trouble yet again in the seventh. Pinch-hitter and less credited Federalist Papers author John Jay led off with a single, and made it to third with one out when Skip Schumaker singled. Halladay fanned Nick Stavinoha for the second out, but Pujols lined a single to left, scoring Jay and cutting the Phils lead to 6-2. At 117 pitches and with Charlie Manuel trudging toward the mound, Halladay looked finished--but as the crowd cheered, he convinced Manuel to turn back. One pitch later, Holliday had grounded to second and the threat, as well as Halladay's afternoon, was over. Carlos Ruiz, who had three hits on the day, drove in Werth for the Phils' final run in the bottom of the inning.
The Phils start a three-game set with the Braves to complete this homestand on Friday night.
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…Cards reliever and romance novel villain Blake Hawksworth…
…Pinch-hitter and less credited Federalist Papers author John Jay…
Bravo, good sir.
This was a really good series. Anyone who questioned whether the Phillies could win against good teams just got their answer. The Cards seem like a lock to win the NL Central and are probably the second best team in the NL and we just beat them pretty decisively this series. I was particularly impressed with our starting pitching holding them to a combined 2 earned runs over the last 3 games in the series. But our bats also came alive with some workman like performances over the last 2 games. Oh, and our bullpen was hardly as bad as I thought it would be with the loss of Madson.
Until the next series, things are actually looking good.
Also, they must have some sort of sacred talisman or something because our pitching completely neutralized Pujols this series. That might have been the key.
IIRC, Madson has held Pujols hitless in a decent number of plate appearances over his career. Maybe his absence worked kind of like Obi Wan Kenobi’s death in Star Wars; struck down, Maddog became more powerful than ever, at least w/r/t Pujols.
That said, I’m damn glad he didn’t elevate that last hit off Doc in the 7th. He stung that shizz.
It seems like for the last few years we have been smacking the crapsicles out the Cardinals to where they would need to clone Pujols several times to make up for the sizable run differential in many of the games. Besides from ‘08 to ’10 he hasn’t exactly put up the most stellar numbers against us.
2007 26 AB .346/.455/.885
2008 20 AB .150/.280/.150
2009 21 AB .190/.261/.333
2010 13 AB .231/.285/.308
Two of the Braves’ five starters have pitched well so far this year. We get the other three in the next series (Lowe, Jurrjens, Kawakami). Jurrjens will be making his first start after a hamstring injury.
I think it’ll be Medlen instead. I actually like Medlen a lot — he’s got good command of solid enough stuff — but the Phils should be able to score runs off him.
given the phils track record against crappy nobody pitchers, we’ll probably get shut out that game. Bring up a highly touted prospect and they’ll smack the taste out of mouth.
Bring up a AAAA pitcher and he p3wns the Phils.
E9
This just in: it appears that Werth has been charged with an error on the Freese hit. Halladay’s line changes to 1 ER.
Jesus got a boo-boo
Braves OF Jason Heyward (groin) was not in the starting lineup Thursday against the Nationals, but the rookie said he’s available to pinch hit. Melky Cabrera moved to right in his place.
Not sure if he’ll be able to play this series. He had a 2-RBI single in tonight’s game, but was immediately taken out for a pinch runner. Swing looked good as always, but he couldn’t even move to 2nd on a wild throw home.
"(Jason Heyward) is like the Grim Reaper -- you know he's going to get you, you just don't know where or when."
by Scott Coleman on May 7, 2010 12:43 AM EDT via mobile up reply actions
Is there a history of Halladay pitching this many pitches? It is a bit concerning, and the bull pen did need a rest, but I dont know if having the starters going for 110+ a lot is good long term.
Well, he’s also damn good, which also makes it difficult for his managers to take him out plus makes it more likely he’ll get to over 100 pitches every time out.
I wasn’t quite aware of it until I dipped my toe into fantasy baseball land, but whether you suck or not, generally top rotation starting pitchers go to 100, +/- 10, every time out.
There’s got to be some kind of decision matrix that someone could come up with, factoring in the number of pitches thrown, the size of the lead (if any), the inning, and maybe the importance of the game. Anytime a starter’s under 100, I don’t think a manager needs a reason to keep him in. But if you have, say, an eight-run lead and it’s past the 6th, the manager should always feel required to take his starter out after the inning he hits 100, no matter what. No pitcher should ever throw more than 130 unless it’s a very close, important game. Then there are a bunch of shades of grey in between.
The number of pitches a pitcher can throw before getting tired is like any other form of exercise, you must train for it. You can’t limit starters to <100 per outing and then in game 7 of the WS tell them you need 9 innings and then all of a sudden expect them to throw 120 or more. Pitchers have to build up to these kinds of counts and Halladay has been building up for years.
I don’t think 100 is a magic number for Halladay. I remember reading some other article saying that Halladay tends to do his best pitching from pitches 75-100, which is almost unique among starters. I don’t think he’s risking injury pitching the way he has been this year, and his conditioning helps him with the heavy workloads he’s been facing throughout his career.
It can be a bit concerning, but if anything you should be treating him as if 110 was 100. It’s only very recently that managers have been getting so sharp as to pitch counts.
I had the same thought/concern. As fun as it is to watch him dominate in April/May, nobody wants that to be at the expense of September/October. Especially on a day like today when a decent number of those pitches were “high-stress,” this is worrisome.
That said, I generally feel like Manuel/Dubee have a good sense of what their guys can and can’t do. The one mistake I really remember was Pedro against the Mets last September; he mostly struggled after that. Otherwise they’ve been prudent.
small world
I liked this. Robin Roberts played semipro ball with Jayson Werth’s great-grandfather.
http://mlb.fanhouse.com/2010/05/06/halladay-werth-pay-tribute-to-roberts-in-phillies-victory/
Andre Iguodala is also from Springfield. We’ve had quite a pipeline from there.
Was at the game yesterday. Second game of the season for me and second game with Halladay pitching (so lucky am I, saw him make about $1.7 million). He didn’t look to have his exact stuff yesterday but he wasn’t happy at all yesterday with the ever changing box he was getting from the umpire. I loved when he confronted the ump after the 6th inning, everyone in the stands went nuts.
Keep up the hits Werth, been on base every game this season!!!
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