Halladay Wins, Rauch Terrifying in Defeat

Holy God is Jon Rauch scary.  When I was in school, tall guys were normally skinny and frail.  When the hell tall guys start to look like him?  Rauch freaked out today after he didn’t get two close pitches to Ryan Howard and Shane Victorino singled in a run directly thereafter.

For some background on Jon Rauch, he is the tallest man every to throw a pitch in major league baseball and he weighs roughly three hundred pounds.  He looked like he was going to eat home plate umpire Alfonso Marquez who looked to be about half the size of Rauch.  In summation, Rauch is really big and he was really mad.

Roy Halladay made his first start in Toronto as a Philadelphia Phillie after spending the first twelve years of his career as a Blue Jay.  The fans in Toronto love Doc.  After spending the last two years witnessing what Halladay is, we can all understand why they still love the big right handed robot.  As has become reasonably commonplace, Halladay threw a complete game.  He scattered eight hits, gave up three runs and stuck out eight Blue Jays.  This is just about how the Philadelphia fanbase felt when Schilling came back as a Diamondback, except Halladay isn’t a fat loudmouth.

The Phillies trip to Toronto has reawakened their ability to mount comebacks.  Yesterday, Kyle Kendrick was Kyle Kendrick and the Phillies scored seven runs to mask his obvious inadequacies.  Today, the offense responded every time that Toronto took the lead.  Most notable was Chase Utley’s go ahead two run home run off of lefty specialist Luis Perez.  Earlier in the season, Halladay would have had to shut the Blue Jays out to win this game, today, Halladay gave up three runs as the Phillies got a 5-3 victory.

God damn is Jose Bautista good.  He smashed his twenty sixth homer of the season off of Halladay in the fourth inning.  His blast against Kendrick was understandable, but this one off of Halladay was not a terrible pitch.  His turnaround from nice bench player to top home run hitter in the league continues to be remarkable.   Maybe he could give some pointers to Ben Francisco.

Tomorrow the Phillies go for the sweep with Cliff Lee on the mound.  The Blue Jays run out Jo Jo Reyes.