Note From The Phillies’ 3-0 Win Over San Diego

The Philadelphia Phillies won the second game of their series with the San Diego Padres 3-0 on Tuesday night. Their record improves to 3-5.

On The Mound

• Charlie Morton bounced back from a terrible debut as a Phillie last week to anchor the team with 6.2 innings of scoreless ball. Morton allowed four hits and three walks while striking out nine.
• Morton was relatively clean until the seventh inning, where allowed the majority of his baserunners, giving up a single and two walks before being lifted for the bullpen.
• Hector Neris came on to get the final out of the seventh inning. Neris has quietly gotten off to a solid start this season, and may be settling in to the seventh inning role.
• David Hernandez worked a scoreless eighth, earning his third hold.
• Jeanmar Gomez converted his third save, allowing just one hit.

At The Plate

• The offense generated three runs on just four hits.
• Odubel Herrera broke a scoreless game in the sixth inning with an RBI-triple.
• Maikel Franco provided the team’s other two runs in the eighth inning on a groundout.
• Pete Mackanin mercifully took Freddy Galvis out of the leadoff spot, and put Cesar Hernandez back in the role. Hernandez went 0-4, but the team had to get Galvis and his weak average out of that spot.
• Ryan Howard went 1-4 with a single.
• Carlos Ruiz started behind the plate, and went 0-3 with a walk.
• Peter Bourjos continues to start in right, and went 0-3.
• Tyler Goeddel played left, and went 1-2.

Final Thoughts

After a rough start to the season, the bullpen has started to come together.

Pete Mackanin seems to have found a good formula to protect leads late in games, with Hector Neris in the seventh, David Hernandez in the eighth, and Jeanmar Gomez in the ninth.

The problem now is that the unit still isn’t very deep. They can’t necessarily count on guys like James Russell, Daniel Stumpf, or Dailer Hinojosa to come in and get big outs with games on the line, and that will likely come back to hurt the team as the year goes on.

This offense is still very weak, and its going to struggle to put up more than three runs on a nightly basis. While starting pitching should be solid throughout the year, the team needs to find some other viable options other than Neris, Hernandez, and Gomez, or the three will be burnt out rather quickly.