PHILLIES NEWS

The Droll days of spring continued tonight for the Phils in the second of their 3 game season opening set with the Nats. The hot days of summer can't get here fast enough. From a 9th inning whitewash on Monday, to tonight things only got the worse for the Phils. It was the season opener for Phils ace Cole Hamels and he pitched well allowing a single run on 5 hits in 8 solid innings of work. Sadly, the Phils offense seemingly had the wind knocked out of it sails from the onset, as the game turned into a pitcher's duel between Hamels and the Nationals' Tim Redding. Unfortunately, Redding out dueled Hamels allowing zero runs on one hit, a single by Pedro Feliz in the 2nd inning, as he wound up combining with Luis Ayala and Jon Rauch to blank the Phils for a complete game shutout, on that single hit by Feliz, a particularly futile offensive effort by the Phils to say the least and on a team were offense is king and pitching is a wing and a prayer, not nearly good enough. By the way the only run scored in this drollest of 1-0 wins for the Nats came on a cheap solo homer by Ryan Zimmeran. So the now the Phils are 0-2 to begin the season and again the questions will come hard and fast, how long this time until they win? how bad a start will they have this time? Here we go again right? Well let's hope not after all there are still 160 games left.