PHILLIES NEWS

Baseball Games don't get more one sided then tonight's was. Usually when you play a team that is 14 games ahead of you in the standings you don't beat them so easily, especially when their ace is on the mound as Pedro Martinez was for the Mets tonight. However, the Phils were not intimidated by Pedro at all and touched him up for 6 runs on 4 hits in just 1 inning, yes that's right 1 inning of work. Never before has Pedro been as ineffective as he was tonight. However following the 1st inning it became clear why he was so ineffective, as he left the game with a strained right calf. Darren Oliver came on in the 2nd inning to replace Pedro and he didn't do much better, allowing 7 runs on 8 hits in 3 and 2/3rd innings. In all the Phillies scored 13 runs on 12 hits in just the 1st 4 innings of the night, including homeruns by Shane Victorino, Jimmy Rollins who hit his record 18th homer(no other Phillies shortstop has ever hit more homers in a season), and David Dellucci. Oddly enough the Phillies would not even get another hit for the rest of the night. Of course, the Mets didn't get another hit either, as Cole Hamels and Fabio Castro combined to shut them out on 4 hits. Hamels alone pitched 8 scoreless innings, allowing just those 4 hits and recording 9 strikeouts. I mean I don't know if the Phillies can play any better than they did tonight and that actually could be a problem for the Phillies tomorrow. When you have already play as good you can, you can only play worse the next day. hopefully for the Phillies that will mean scoring 9 runs tomorrow instead of 13 and winning 9-3 instead of 13-0. At any rate I am going to try to not think about tomorrow just yet, so I can savor this sweet victory as long as possible. Oh and by the way the Phils are now within 3.5 games of the wild card leading Reds so don't count them out just yet. Well, happy trails everyone.