Last night, the defending World Series champion Phils let their bats do the talking and showed their ability to step up to the challenge.
Now they’ve got Los Angeles manager Joe Torre and his Dodgers wondering what they’re going to do to control their fire power.
The Phils grabbed home field advantage from the Dodgers in the first game of their best of seven National League Championship Series with an 8-6 win.
You can always count on a surprising contributor to a championship run. Last night it was catcher Carlos Ruiz hitting a three run home run to get the Phils started.
Ruiz does a great job of calling pitches and running things from behind home plate but he’s not expected to be one of the power guys for the Phils. He played the role last night.
Leftfielder Raul Ibanez drove in the winning runs with his eighth inning home run and their Most Valuable Player so far this post-season, Ryan Howard drove in a couple of key runs as usual.
“The Big Piece” as Phils manager Charlie Manuel likes to call him, became the all-time Phllies playoff RBI leader with his eighth RBI in this year’s playoffs. He went took the record from Mike Schmidt, who took 36 games to amass 16 RBI’s, while Howard now has 18 RBI’s in only 22 games.
Still I have to mention closer Brad Lidge who blew 11 saves during the regular season, but he’s turned things around in the playoffs and he contributed his third save of these post season.
The nice thing about Lidge’s save is that he didn’t even create any suspense in getting it.
