The One that Got Away: Marlins 4, Phillies 3

C'mon, baseball. It's been rough. It's been questionable and bizarre and stupid and ugly and hopeful and hopeless.

But it's the Marlins.  We've got this one series at home against the Marlins that means nothing to nobody and we just want the sense of closure, just this once, to complete a sweep and think "Ah, hell, at least we swept the damn Marlins."

And that's how Zach Miner took the mound tonight, with the weight of an essentially pointless sweep on his shoulders. But we should have known that things just weren't going to line up right. For instance, did I tell youabout the part when Zach Miner took the mound tonight.

Starting in place of Kyle Kendrick, who was off being inflamed somewhere, Miner was letting walks and singles put runners on base, but managed to run off the field before any of them scored. He escaped for good in the fourth, when Luis Garcia trotted in and barreled through the inning, before a slow trickle of crap in the fifth allowed the stank of the Marlins to seep in.

Adeiny Hechavarria singled to lead the inning off, followed by a recently reconstructed Jeff Mathis flying out. Sadly, Chooch throwing error'd to first on Nathan Eovaldi's sac bunt, and Garcia reacted to this news with an errant toss of his own on the next pitch, putting runners on second and third.  This allowed Donovan Solano's routine ground ball to turn into an RBI ground-out, and here we are with the Marlins on top.

Fortunately, the Marlins took the incompetence as a threat, and responded with some dumbassness of their own. Roger Bernadina, Cesar Hernandez, and Jimmy Rollins walked, singled, and walked to load the bases with two outs, and Jeff Mathis let a pitch get by him (probably because he is still getting used to his limbs being attached to his body).  Bernadina scored, giving way to Chase Utley, who was obviously going to knock everybody in with the handsomest single in the world, and then did.

It was a 3-1 game for technically no innings, as Ethan Martin entered the fray and allowed a Christian Yelich single.

And then Giancarlo Stanton (3-for-11 with 6 SO's in the series) stepped in and hit ten home runs in one. I mean, he hit that thing so god damned high and far, Joseph Gordon-Levitt wished upon it that the Angels would win the pennant so he and Dermot Mulroney could be a family again.  That was the home runniest home run, ever, to the point that I believe the Phillies actually have to rename the stadium after him.

So it was 3-3, which is never a good position to put the Phillies in (the position of "closer to losing").

Martin stayed in and got the next three outs, then Justin De Fratus became Martin, De Fratus became B.J. Rosenberg, Jake Diekman became Rosenberg. They allowed a few hits, but things stayed quiet.  A Domonic Brown lead off double in the eighth spelled trouble for the Marlins, but fortunately for them, the Phillies don't know how to spell.  Chad Qualls found his way to the mound for the Fish and he naturally retired the next three hitters, because he is NOT a useless warm body that somebody put a baseball cap on as a joke.

Eventually, Ed Lucas homered in the tenth of Cesar Jimenez, and the Phillies were forced to mount a rally in the bottom of the ninth.  Chooch reached on an error, and then Dom Brown doubled again, and suddenly people in their cars in the parking lot didn't feel as confident in the loss!  Just kidding, they were probably listening to music or talking about something else.

Cody Asche was walked intentionally after Darin Ruf flew out and IT. WAS. ON.

...to the end of the game, because Bernadina K'd and Freddy Galvis farted a ground out to shortstop.

Source: FanGraphs