PHILLIES NEWS

The Phils returned to action today as they traveled to Florida to begin a 4 game series with the 2nd place Marlins. With the Mets and Braves also playing each other in a series right now, the Phils have a golden opportunity to put some real distance between themselves and the rest of NL East if they can take care of the Marlins in this series. To make that happen though, they first needed to start the series with a win tonight. Thanks to Jamie Moyer who tossed 7 scoreless innings in a combined 1 hitter, they were able to do just that. While Moyer tamed the fish, Raul Ibanez crushed 2 homers in the 1st 4 innings to stake the Phils to a 3-0 lead. Then Ryan Howard slammed a solo shot in the top of the 6th inning, his 200th career homerun(making him in just 658 games, the fastet in history to 200 homers, well ahead of the old record holder Ralph Kiner the Pittsburgh Pirates' Hall of famer who did it in 706 games), for a 4-0 lead. From there thanks to Ryan Madson in the 8th inning and J.C Romero in the 9th, that's how it ended. Moyer is now 7-0 in Miami and 16-2 all-time against the Marlins. He's just always in full command of his pitches against these guys and he gets them to swing at bad pitches and get way out ahead of hittable pitches. In a nutshell that's Moyer when he is at his best and I'd like to see him pitch like that against everyone, not just Marlins. Ibanez is beyond amazing at this point, I mean this is the stuff of legends we're seeing from him right now. It's incredible that he can play at this level right now considering that he's not apparently all the way back from his injury yet. So anyway the Phils move to 49-38 overall and now 5 games up in the NL East.