The Plight of Jeanmar Gomez: Nationals 3, Phillies 2

It says a lot about these Phillies that when the game was tied 2-2 in the late innings, a Nationals win wasn’t a foregone conclusion.

That being said, the Phillies lost 3-2 in the 10th inning today.

Weirdly, there isn’t a lot to say about this game, other than it was LONG. Good lord this game was long. It was long and there were long stretches of nothing. It was long like... well... it was long like something that’s very long, alright? It was a long game. It was Rob Manfred’s worst nightmare.

Let’s start with the most important part of this game: Aaron Nola looked great. He went just five innings, but he gave up just one run on six hits. And the run he gave up (as well as a decent number of pitches) came on a number of well-placed and simply lucky infield hits from the Nats in the second inning. Nola touched 95 on the gun, and it was great.

Runs were tough to come by for both teams. Tommy Joseph hit his first homer of the year in the second inning off of Stephen Strasburg, and got their second on a Cesar Hernandez single in the fifth. The Nats tied the game up in the seventh, and that’s where it stayed for another eleven million yearsssszzzzzzzzzzz.

By the time Jeanmar Gomez came into the game in the bottom of the ninth, I was praying for it to end. It had been going on for more than three hours and I was just ready to move on with my life. Gomez held off doom and destruction for an inning, thanks to Maikel Franco’s Much Improved Defense.

That inspired these two tweets, which I love.

While those brightened my evening considerably, there was still a matter of another inning. And because Pete Mackanin had a dinner date or he had to pee or because he wanted to live dangerously and play with fire, Mack left Gomez in for a second inning.

You can figure out how that went, right? Putting in his clearly damaged former closer for a second inning of work instead of putting in closer Joaquin Benoit and asking him to go more than an inning? How could that not work?! Putting in the worse pitcher is ALWAYS the best idea when you need a solid inning in a tie game on the road!

Someone hire me to manage a baseball team, I’m clearly qualified for the job.

Gomez gave up a single to Bryce Harper, and then Daniel Murphy doubled deep into left field. Harper trucked around the bases and made it home well before the ball, and the game was over.

Oh well, Phillies. You’ll get ‘em tomorrow.