PHILLIES NEWS

As I mentioned yesterday, the Phillies had a doubleheader today, and well it went kinda like yesterday's doubleheader, except this time the Phils won the 1st game and lost the 2nd. In the 1st game of the doubleheader, it was all about the power of Ryan Howard and Jamie Moyer rebounding from the rough outing he had in his last start. Well at least for the first 8 innings that was all it was about, as Moyer tossed 7 and 1/3rd solid innings, allowing just 3 runs on 6 hits, and Howard homered in 3 straight at bats giving the Phils a 6-3 lead through 8 innings. In the 9th inning however, it got a little tricky. Neither Ryan Madson, nor Fabio Castro could close out the Braves and in fact coughed up the lead completely, as the Braves went up 7-6. Fortunately for the Phils, Geoff Geory was able to stop the bleeding from there, and the Phillies were able to mount a final rally to escape with an 8-7 win on a game-tying single by Jimmy Rollins and a walk off single by Shane Victorino. In the 2nd game however, the Phils weren't so lucky. Brett Myers cooked up a good one, allowing just 1 run on 3 hits over 8 innings, but the Phils offense couldn't get anything going either as they too scored only 1 run through 8 innings. Try as they might, the Phils just couldn't push across a 2nd run in 9th, so the game went into extra innings, and didn't last long from there. A couple innings later in the top of the 11th inning, the Braves finally forged ahead for good, as Geoff Geary, who had saved the day in the 1st game, fell victim to a throwing error and a passed ball by catcher Carlos Ruiz, allowing the Braves to score 2 runs for a 3-1 lead. Unfortunately the Phils did not have another rally in them and went down in order to give the Braves the win. Well, just to summarize again, that's 1 up and 1 down , and at this point a 1.5 game deficit in the wild card race (the Padres won again today). Well, happy trails everyone.