Phils Take Series by Bludgeoning Jon Niese

Roy Halladay ended the string of poor performances by starting pitchers with his outing today.  Halladay threw seven innings of shutout ball and showed the revamped Mets lineup why he won last year’s Cy Young Award.  At the risk of sounding cheesy, we should all feel lucky to watch this guy pitch.  I have never seen anything like him.  He commands both side of the plate.  His ball moves all over the place and everything he throws looks so heavy.  I know that every pitcher can get hit around, but this guy seems to have the ability to mitigate damage and get out of situations that would make most guys cave.  Roy is truly and completely a certified bad ass.

Halladay took on Jon Niese today.  Niese, a left hander with an above average curveball and cutter, is the type of pitcher that the Phillies lineup traditionally has trouble with.  Not today.  The Phillies struggled early (Niese struck out seven in four innings), but augmented their approach and ended up getting to him for eight hits and six runs in his four innings of work.  The Phils started to figure him out in the bottom of the third when Placido Polanco doubled in Wilson Valdez and Shane Victorino.  They busted the game open with a four run fourth, with RBIs from Carlos Ruiz, Wilson Valdez and another two from Polanco.

The Phillies offense racked up 16 hits in all today with Valdez setting a career high with four hits.  Polanco went 2-5 with four RBI and Raul showed everyone how hard he worked this offseason by hitting his first home run of the year.

Behind Halladay and the offense, the Phils took the final game of the series 11-0.

The only negative from today’s game was the fact that Jose Reyes went 2-4.

Tomorrow, Cliff Lee versus Tim Hudson.  Should be a pretty good one everybody.