A CITIZEN'S BLOG

I was watching Sportscenter this morning before I left to catch the bus and my jaw was left hanging by all of the souvenir baseballs people in Chicago took home with them last night. It looked like, as one blog put it, a beer league softball game. It was the third largest number of home runs hit in a two-game span in MLB history (or recent MLB history at any rate). I was mildly surprised to see a Reds-Phillies two-fer back in '99 clocked in with a few more.

My thoughts?

Phillies pitchers and their bruised ERA's should just feel lucky to escape with their dignity intact. I worry about what this series is going to do to the confidence of the Phillies pitching staff, and in particular Ryan Madson. I was happy to see him break into the starting rotation, but the poor kid got annihilated in his first start: he gave up more home runs (3) than he got outs (2)! That is going to mess up his confidence for a while. I am less worried about Eric Milton (not often that you give up four home runs and still win the game), but seeing themselves get knocked around must have been devistating for the rest of the staff.

One more day, one more grueling slugfest? I sure hope not: let's see game three turn into a pitchers duel. We'll see how Myers does... (his '04 BAA, I note, is pretty awful: .288)

I certainly don't worry about the Phils hitters. I didn't see very many zeroes in the box score when I looked at either game. (Lieberthal didn't get a run in game one and Bell didn't get a hit in game two, but aside from that every Phillies starter got a run and a hit in both games.) Pad the stats and go home boys...