No Matt Kemp, No Problem: Phillies Drop Second Straight to Dodgers 2-1

I have stated many times that pitcher’s duels are only fun if the team you are rooting for wins.  The Phillies scored one early run off of Chad Billingsley on an RBI single from Hunter Pence.  In the first, it looked like the Phillies were going to knock Billingsley from the game early.  He threw a lot of pitches and a bunch of guys got pretty good swings against the Dodger right hander.  They didn’t.  They also didn’t manage much off of him for the rest of the game.

Luckily, Cliff Lee was really good for most of the game.  He struck out a bunch of guys and only allowed two hits prior to the seventh inning.  He allowed three hits in the seventh including the game winner to random guy Elian Herrera.

The offense couldn’t get anything together off of the Dodger bullpen and Cliff Lee fell to 0-3 with an ERA under 3.00.  No wonder he wanted to beat up Shane Victorino.

The moment that all of our dreams of Cliff Lee strutting off triumphantly were dashed was when Elian Herrera hit a double off the wall scoring Bobby Abreu and Dee Gordon.  In the last two days a career minor league player has knocked in the winning runs against over thirty million dollars worth of pitcher.  I hate the Dodgers.

The most attractive play of the game came in the top of the eighth inning when Hunter Pence threw out Tony Gwynn Jr. attempting to go first to third on a Bobby Abreu single.  It looked like this play would help to get Cliff Lee out of the inning without damage…..alas that didn’t happen.

The Hero of the game for the Phillies was Cliff Lee.  If you give up two runs in 7 2/3 innings of work, you should probably win the game.  Apparently, no one told the Phillies about that.  He also struck out twelve Dodgers.

The villain of the game was Elian Herrera.  Random players that do stuff are always really annoying.  See Ryan Theriot, Cody Ross and Juan Uribe.

Tomorrow the Phillies attempt not to lose the series with Kyle Kendrick on the mound.