It wasn’t supposed to end this way. Who would have thought that Pat Burrell would be in the World Series this year and so would Cliff Lee, but not the Phillies?
This was the team designed for the post-season with their three dominant starters. Nobody could beat all three of them in a series, but the San Francisco Giants did just that.
H2O as they’ve become known, Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels, were going to keep them in all their games and they did their just that. It wasn’t the pitching which let the Phillies down, it was the bats.
After getting two quick runs in the first inning, they left two runners on in the third. They left the bases loaded in the fifth. They had a runner on third with one out in the sixth inning and left him on. They wasted two singles in the eighth, but were unable to score. Finally in the ninth, they got two runners on with walks and left them stranded.
Ryan Howard was caught looking to end it. It was the third time he was caught looking last night and the big fella had been unable to drive in a single run during this year’s playoffs.
He wasn’t alone. Chase Utley had driven in a run in the first but he didn’t have a good series. Rollins woke up a bit last night, but he had been missing for most of the games. Raul Ibanez wasn’t able to do much and the same goes for nearly all the hitters on the ball club.
They say good pitching stops good hitting and that’s what happened in this series.
The were Outhustled,out-hit, out-pitched and Out-MAnaged all Series long
The better all around team won this series hands down..
Giants use all 25 of the players on their roster to contribute & play while the Phils rely on their position players to hit 3 Run Homeruns to win games.. Where was the base stealing (Giants Catcher has one of lowest % in throwing out would be base-stealers) How can this Phillies line-up continue to
Strike Out and not put the ball in play as much as they do..You expect it from homerun hitters like Howard to Strike-out,but up and down the line-up, they all were whiffing. The WIndow is closing shortly on this Phillie Nucleaus and most of the core players are not getting any younger and starting to get these nagging type of injuries (J-Ro/Utley) Polanco and Ibanez will be another year older and they make about $12-$13 Million each so they become untradeable…
They lose Werth and simply replace him with D Brown, now you have 4 Left-Handed batters in the
Middle of that line-up which will struggle big time versus by solid left-hand pitching..