PHILLIES NEWS

The Phils continued their series with the Mets on a wacky sunday afternoon, in which Met's starter Oliver Perez was lifted from the game in the 1st inning, with 2 outs and a 3-0 count against the pitcher, Pedro Martinez, The Met's Angel Pagan, led off the bottom of the 1st with an inside the park homer, after Shane Victorino lobbied unsuccessfully for the umps to call a ground-rule double with the ball lodged underneath the padding on the outfield wall, The 3rd base umpire correctly over-ruled the 2nd base umpire on a fly-ball in the top of the 9th inning, on which Jeff Franceour made a diving catch so spectactular that the 2nd base umpire thought he had trapped it under his glove, and finally the game itself ended on an unassisted triple play by Eric Bruntlett, the first time that's ever happened in a NL game, and after he had committed an error, and failed to properly field another ball, to start the inning and put runners on 1st and 2nd with nobody out for Franceour. The weirdness pretty much overshadowed Pedro Martinez' return to New York, which was only okay as he allowed 4 runs on 7 hits in 6 innings. Thanks to hot hitting for the Phils, and despite the wacky stuff, Pedro's 6 innings were enough for the win, but realistically proved nothing, other than that he'll get 1 more start and we'll see after that. As for the Phils bats they were smoking right off the bat. In the top of the 1st, Jayson Werth and Carlos each slammed 3 run homers for a 6-0 lead, which is why Perez was on such a short leash. In the top of the 3rd, Martinez helped himself with an RBI single, and Jroll lined a sac fly to push the Phils ahead 8-2. New York just wouldn't go away though as Angel Pagan's 2nd homer of the day, this time a real one, helped the Mets cut it to 8-4. It was down to 8-5, when Matt Stairs walked, moved to 2nd on a wild-pitch, move to 3rd on fielder's choice, and then scored on another wild pitch in the top of the 8th inning, for a 9-5 lead. By the time the bottom of the 9th rolled around it was 9-6 and Brad Lidge was in for the save. First, Pagan tripled right through Ryan Howard's glove. Then Bruntlett booted a groundball off the bat Luis Castillo, allowing Pagan to score and Castillo to reach 1st. There should have been 2 out and nobody on, but just like that there was 1 on and nobody out with the tying run at the plate. Next Daniel Murphy grounded a ball right back up the middle but Bruntlett couldn''t field it cleanly and it was safe all around, allowing Francoeur to come to the plate as the winning run. He smashed a line drive up the middle, a sure RBI single at least to cut the lead to 9-8 and put runners on 1st and 3rd with nobody out. Instead as luck would have it, Bruntlett was covering 2nd and the ball when right into his glove for 1 out just at the exact moment he was streaking across the bag for the 2nd out, and Mets perhaps foolishly, had the runners going on the play so Murphy was right at 2nd for Bruntlett to tag out for the the 3rd and final out. Believe it! So anyway the Phils move to 71-50 overall and still 6.5 games up in the NL East.