Phillies 2, Marlins 3: Good God, What Was That?

This is all going to be a Domonic Brown bitch-fest, so anything I write tonight is pretty much TL;DR anyway. But we have standards and stuff. Game. Excellent starting pitching, excellent bullpenning, poor offense and defense straight out of Dante's Inferno.

Things started out with Henderson Alvarez and A.J. Burnett starting for the Marlins and Phillies.  Both pitchers were fairly hot coming into the game, with Alvarez in particular just riding a smoking hot streak.  The pitching match up met expectations tonight, though the strike zone was a little wonky at times, visibly frustrating Burnett at points.

The real action came in the top of the fourth inning with the score knotted at nil- nil.  Derek Dietrich, who made a couple of really good defensive plays tonight, grounded out to Utley who made a fabulous diving stop, but this was followed by singles from Giancarlo Stanton and Casey McGehee. With runners at first and second, Burnett got Garrett Jones to strike out in a way that reminded me eerily of the heyday of Travis Lee. Marcell Ozuna came to the plate and all hell broke loose.

Ozuna hit a liner pretty hard right at Brown. Brown took a step or two in, froze, then leaped ineffectually at the ball as it flew over his outstretched glove by a couple of feet. He could have, and should have, caught the ball. It was another in a series of terrible defensive plays recently by Brown. Stanton scored and runners were on second and third.  Jarrod Saltalamacchia drilled an 0  -1 pitch the other way into the left-center gap scoring two, and that was the game.

The Phillies clawed back a couple of runs, but could not capitalize on a number of decent chances, including a bases-loaded situation in the fifth where Chase Utley drilled a ball to center that was a few feet from being out. It scored one run on the sacrifice fly, but it could have been more. The Phillies had baserunners throughout the game, but the hits they needed to score the runners were either hit at someone or they were just short.

The game was filled with nifty defensive plays, despite the butchery in left field by Brown and Ozuna (pictured above). In the first, Jake Marisnick laid out to get a ball in center. The Marlins had a couple of infield errors, but also a couple of gems, one by Dietrich as he snowconed a ball at second as he went far to his left to get a chopper by Cody Asche. Dietrich was just able to throw out as Garrett Jones barely held the bag with his heel.

Boy, I could go for some good Cole Hamels. Fangraph of Dom Brown's martyrdom:

Source: FanGraphs