Phillies Swallowed Up Late by Fish
By Matt Veasey
The Philadelphia Phillies dropped the second game of a three game series in South Florida to the host Miami Marlins on Tuesday night at Marlins Park.
Breaking up a tight 1-0 pitcher’s duel, the host Fish exploded for a four-spot in the bottom of the 8th to pull away and even the series up with a 5-0 victory.
For six innings the Phillies starting pitcher Jerad Eickhoff and Marlins starter Tom Koehler took turns shutting down the opposition lineups.
Eickhoff (6-12) took yet another hard-luck loss in what has become a short career’s worth of them. He allowed just five hits and one earned run, striking out eight and walking one batter.
Koehler meanwhile was doing even better with the Phils’ lineup, allowing no earned runs and three hits while striking out five and walking one.
The Phillies suffered what hopefully is not a bad timing loss when right fielder Peter Bourjos slammed into the wall while making an outstanding catch. He had to leave the game with what was termed an “injured shoulder”, which may toss into question the club’s ability to get anything for him as the MLB non-waiver trade deadline approaches.
The host Marlins finally broke the ice in the bottom of the 6th inning when Martin Prado lined a one-out double down the left field line. The longtime Phillies-killer than rolled around to score the game’s first run on a two-out RBI single off the bat of Giancarlo Stanton.
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Eickhoff was finally lifted for a pinch-hitter with one out and nobody aboard in the top of the 8th with the Phillies still trailing by that 1-0 score. He threw 90 pitches on the night, 65 of them for strikes.
In the bottom of the 8th, Phils’ skipper Pete Mackanin called on veteran right-hander Andrew Bailey in relief of Eickhoff. He provided none.
Ichiro Suzuki led off the frame with an opposite-field base hit to left, the 2,9997th of his Hall of Fame career. Bailey then walked Prado and struck out Christian Yelich to bring Stanton to the plate.
Instead of the hoped-for doubleplay ball to get out of the inning, Stanton drove a 1-1 offering from Bailey out over the center field wall on one hop, the ground rule double scoring Ichiro to make it a 2-0 game.
Mackanin then made another move, bringing in Severino Gonzalez to replace Bailey, who promptly yielded a two-run single to Adeiny Hechavarria that double Miami’s lead out to 4-0. He would then score on a two-out double by Mel Rojas to make the final 5-0 score.
“Poor plate discipline, poor plate discipline,” Mackanin said in relation to his lineup per MLB.com contributors. “Swinging at too may bad pitches. We get ourselves out too often.”
The two teams will meet on Wednesday afternoon in the rubber-match series finale. There could be some drama as we wait to see whether or not Jeremy Hellickson, heavily rumored to be headed to the Marlins in a trade as the series opened, gets on the flight out to Atlanta with his Phillies teammates.