Cole Hamels was Cole Hamels on Saturday. The Phillies stellar left-hander dominated the Brewers lineup that have significant platoon splits against lefties. Hamels was able to ride back-to-back home runs by Mayberry and Kratz in the 2nd inning.
In the bottom of the 8th inning, Hamels retired the first two batters before giving up a single to Jonathon Lucroy. The next batter was Ryan Braun. Ryan Braun is very good. Hamels was over 100 pitches, and Papelbon was warming up. I don't think it's terrible that Manuel let Hamels pitch to Braun, but if Papelbon is warming up, and was brought in AFTER the home run for a 4 out save, why not just bring him in to face the superhuman RHB?
Hamels is throwing a lot of pitches, and the Phillies stand virtually no chance at playing postseason baseball.
Charlie Manuel frequently makes poor strategic decisions. The 11-million dollar scoreboard in left field would probably do a similar job. We guarantee a post analyzing Manuel's decisions for every Phillies game. Please click on our aliases below to email us.
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Monday, August 20, 2012
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5 comments:
Small observation: you can't be swept for losing 3 games in a 4 game series, thus it's more accurate to say they avoided losing the series for one day (and ultimately did manage to split it).
Small observation: you can't be swept for losing 3 games in a 4 game series, thus it's more accurate to say they avoided losing the series for one day (and ultimately did manage to split it).
I don't know why but my comment was published twice, it wasn't intentional.
Before Saturday's game, they could have been swept if they lost the final 2 games. Maybe I should have said ensures against sweep?
Well you usually reserve that idiom for winning the last game of a three game series after losing the first two. I can go with Ensures against sweep.
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