Phillies vs. Marlins, Game Three: Fish Filet

Well, the Marlins haven’t scored in 27 innings and the last 18 have been thrown by Phillies pitching, so you’ve got to feel like putting Roy Halladay out there doesn’t hurt our chances.  But it is a sweep game, so obviously, celestial bodies are already aligning against us.  Then again, we’ve only scored a resounding four runs this series, so it may not take the arrangement of the heavens to ruin our plans.

Roy Halladay (6-6, 3.80 ERA)

Enough time has passed for people to start throwing phrases around like “Roy Halladay is back,” “Roy Halladay found his form,” or “Roy Halladay is going to break into the Marlins house tomorrow and rip their dreams out of their brains through their nostrils.”

So we can feel confident that Roy Halladay is going to do something awful to the Marlins tomorrow; he’s allowed one run in his last 15 innings.  Of course, this is a potential sweep, and we all know how automatically difficult those games are for no reason.

But Buerhle has had terrible luck and execution of his go-to change up as of late, admitted his catcher John Buck, but he also swears it was working again by the time Buehrle’s disaster against the Dodgers as coming to a close.

PICK A STORY JOHN.

Mark Buehrle (9-11, 3.80 ERA)

With 170 career wins, the question has been raised lately:  Does Mark Buehrle have it in him to win 300 games?  Judging by his recent several-inning, many-run’d performances, the answer is, “What?”

We’re running into Buehrle at a good time; his stats are down, his confidence is down, and Roy Halladay is playing for the opposite team.

Of course he is campaigning for pit bulls’ rights so we can’t hate on him too much.

The Offenders

Hector Luna has good numbers against Buehrle–a career 6-for-8–but Jose Reyes is Jose Reyes and has more prolonged success against Halladay.  Other than that, as stated, neither of these teams seem to be ready to explode with runs, and in a matchup between two perfect gamers, they may be less ready than ever.

Ozzie Guillen has kept his comments tragically tactful, despite his team failing in almost every conceivable aspect, so we can only hope that a sweep today would mean one of those classic Ozzie outbursts where he calls his team dog shit and everybody laughs and laughs.

Meanwhile, somewhere else, offensive juggernaut Placido Polanco begins a rehab assignment.  The league trembles….