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Let's talk about the good things from tonight's game.
Ben Revere made two great catches in center field tonight. It's true! There's even video proof!
If I face-planted that hard, I'd be dead. My face would be staring out the back of my head. My chest would be concave. And he actually face-planted like that twice in the span of ten minutes. Ben Revere is made of rubber.
The second video isn't embeddable yet, but you can watch it here. It's also pretty super. If it were possible for Ben to give a million percent when playing baseball, he would. He gives his entire being to baseball when he plays, and I can't resist that. He also had two hits tonight, and his average is now .324.
Carlos Ruiz had two hits and his average finally climbed out of the .100s. Domonic Brown doubled -- he's hit in six straight games, and in seven of the eight games this season. He's hit in every game he's started. Cody Asche had a pinch hit double, which confirms that thankfully his hamstring tweak is not a big deal.
Some aspects of tonight's pitching were good. Jeff Manship had himself a clean relief inning, allowing just one hit. I find it hard to concentrate sometimes when Jeff Manship is pitching, because I'm busy imagining who would be on my own personal man ship. Jeff Manship would probably not be. In the non-Manship division of Phillies pitching, Roberto Hernandez allowed four runs (three earned), and struck out nine.
Roberto Hernandez's nine strikeouts are his most since Sept. 15, 2007. His name was Fausto Carmona then.
— Matt Gelb (@magelb) April 10, 2014
Interesting night for Roberto Hernandez. Induced 21 swinging strikes and had 9 Ks through five laborious innings.
— Corey Seidman (@CoreySeidman) April 10, 2014
So a sorta kinda half-good half-weird start for Hernandez. That certainly could have been worse. And to be honest, I'd rather see him pound the strike zone and get burned than leave pitches up or walk a ton of guys. And speaking of pounding the strike zone, Jake Diekman struck out the side in the seventh inning, allowing just one hit. He faced four righties and made it through unscathed, which means Ryne Sandberg will probably do this again really soon. I wish he wouldn't, since coming into tonight righties have hit Diekman to the tune of a .283/.388/.395 triple slash. But I can complain about that another day.
So those are the good things from tonight's game. But I'm not going to lie to you. There were bad things, too. More errors and sloppy play. Ryan Howard had a particularly egregious miss at first base late in the game, which burned Antonio Bastardo for two unearned runs. (Bastardo burned himself as well when he hit a batter and gave up a triple to Ryan Braun.) Jimmy Rollins was charged with an error when he couldn't handle a particularly high, funky hop. And the capper on the night was Justin De Fratus, who allowed a two-run home run to Mark Reynolds in the ninth inning.
The Phillies scored four runs again tonight, which would be great if they could just prevent the opposing team from scoring more than that. That's really the key, I think, to winning baseball games. Even though the Phillies aren't quite getting that concept right now, I'll say this much for them: their games are entertaining, and I'm always sad when each one is over. I waited six long, cold months for Phillies baseball, and now that it's here I'm going to enjoy it, dammit. I'm going to enjoy it even if it kills me.
Source: FanGraphs