PHILLIES NEWS

Sometimes good pitching trumps good hitting and that's what happened to the Phils today. The Phils lineup had been red hot, pounding to 5 wins out of their last 6 games, today however, none of that mattered. Cole Hamels was also on the mound for the Phils today, and he had been there best starting pitcher thus far this season, striking out 15 in his last start, but again none of that mattered as he allowed 4 runs on 8 hits in only 5 and 1/3rd innings of work. In the end, nothing the Phils did today was any match for the mastery of Nationals starter Shawn Hill. Hill is by no means the ace of the Nationals staff, but today he pitched like he was. Through 8 strong innings of work he allowed the red hot Phils to score only 2 runs on 4 hits, one of which was a solo homer by Aaron Rowand which his extended his now league best hitting streak to 14 games, funny how that sort of thing keeps happening to Phillies players. Anyway, no matter what the Phils did today, they simply couldn't figure out Hill, and succumbed to the Nationals, after a furious 9th inning rally against closer Chad Cordero, by a score of 4-2. So, for one day at least the streaking Phils got a little side-tracked, as their record dropped back to 9-12. Still, if they keep playing like this, and consistently win 2 games out of 3, there's no reason they won't be able to get back to the top of the standings sometime soon.