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No relief in sight for defending WS champions
by Joseph Birmingham
The Phillies took another game to the wire tonight. With their magic number down to three, they tried to fight for the victory. Moyer pitched 4 in relief of Kendrick, and seems to be becoming the Phillies specialist in long relief. Now all we need is a closer.
The Phillies continue to be an offensive juggernaut. Howard hit his 43rd homerun, Baku chipped in with his 3rd and the Phillies scored 5 runs in the loss to Milwaukee. Walker came in and proved no pitcher can seem to close effectively for these Phillies by allowing 2 runs and getting nobody out in the ninth inning. If Philadelphia had a closer they could be challenging for the best record in the cities baseball history that goes back over 100 years.
This team had the potential to win 110 games this year but they have blown 18 games now with the closers allowing 8th or 9th inning runs. Lidge is responsible for 11 of these, but Madsen has had 6 blown saves and now Walker was initiated with a blown save of his own this evening. It is a shame that this team with such sound fundamentals, offense and starting pitching gets repeatedly let down by the bullpen. Charlie Manuel needs to address this, and he has about two weeks left to do it or I don’t expect the Phillies to get to the second round of the postseason.
It goes down in the books as a 7-5 loss late in a season where the Phillies have essentially secured a playoff spot, but it all but ensures they will not have best NL record for home field advantage and it strikes a blow on this team’s momentum and confidence with little time left in the season to compensate for another loss that should have been a win.
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The closing situation I’m sure isn’t what Manuel had in mind – as for the 110 wins, I think that’s stretching it a bit. I know they’ve blown 18 save opportunities, but the also didn’t end up losing all those games and the Phillies did pull a few games out late that maybe they shouldn’t have. Its like Bill Parcells always says “your record is your record.”