Phillies Almost Prove Everybody Right in First Day of Actual Baseball
By Justin Klugh
First, I just want to address some people.
Just because Roy throws two innings of no-hit baseball doesn’t mean you can start referring to everything in terms of a perfect game, Wheels. Okay? It doesn’t. Whe… Wheels? This is important, and I feel like you’re not paying attention. Put down the bobble head. I know its “pretty neat,” just put it down for a fucking second. God. Look at me. Don’t start spitting “perfect game” and “no-hitter” into the microphone after two scoreless frames. Do not. No, not even if you’re being “ironic.” We both know you have no idea what that word means.
The Phillies started the 2011 season with a good idea/bad idea instructional video.
When on a pitching-first team with two of its offensive pillars deleted from the lineup, you should:
- Bad idea: Occasionally hit the ball, but surround the event with impatient at bats that lead to easy outs (Though I like the aggressiveness of trying to beat up Brett Myers as fast as they can, so you know; as usual I introduce two points that contradict each other).
- Good idea: Manufacture bullshit runs through small ball, or if that seems too boring, a singles barrage in the bottom of the 9th.
And we got to see both, with the more emotional toilet flush thankfully occurring at the end, thanks to the encouraging heroics of almost everybody in the lineup. Well done. A new collection of highlights I can absorb on winter nights while clip-binging at three in the morning is born.
So how does this reflect off the assumptions and predictions made about our lineup? Well, at first, all those critics I’ve been shouting at for months now were proven wholly and infallibly correct. Brief offensive oasises in the crap-storm highlighted the first three or four or eight innings, but nobody was really able to build off of them. Meanwhile, Roy Halladay turned the Astros into a disassembly line, routinely ripping out the still-beating heart of batter after batter and eating it in front of his kids.
Sadly, Brett Myers was almost equally dominant, somehow, and he did it throwing way less pitches. Doc came out after 100+ and at that moment, Brett had only tossed like 56 or some insane number. Then the Phillies bullpen came in with plenty of time to waste and temporarily ruined everyone’s afternoon.
So if that sounds like exactly what all those Braves fans told you to worry about, that’s because it is. All of the copy for Baseball Tonight’s breakdown of this matchup was going to include wide of gaps of silence in which the analysts would be nodding at each other. Now, those silences will be shortened or possibly removed for being useless. The world built the Phillies a stereotype, and for a long time today, they followed it, backing Roy Halladay’s performance with nothing but the sound of wind blowing. Will all of these low-scoring affairs end in a miraculous walk off courtesy of a human giant? Possibly.
For now, its just a great way to suck us all back into Phillies baseball, and save the life of my friend’s PlayStation, which I regretfully held hostage with a hammer in case the Phillies couldn’t pull through.
Stray Bullets:
- Ryan looked great
- Wilson looked great
- Roy looked great
- Ben’s arm looked pretty righteous
- Chase looked pissed
Look for a more thoughtful breakdown of today’s events later with Tony.