Reds rally past Lidge and Phils

For the sixth straight game last night at Citizens Bank Park, the Phillies got a quality start. This one was from lefthander J.A. Happ, who held the Cincinnati Reds to three runs over seven innings.

But quality starts are best remembered when complemented by timely hitting, which is what the Phillies did not get in a 4-3 loss that ended their winning streak at four games. The Reds scored the winning run in the top of the ninth off Brad Lidge, who entered the game with the score tied at 3 and took the loss.

Afterward, manager Charlie Manuel aptly summed up a night of frustration.

"I feel like we let this game slip away," he said.

After five games of this 10-game homestand, Phils starters have a 1.85 earned run average. But Manuel, along with the 32d sellout crowd of the season, began to feel queasy about the outcome of the game in the third inning, when the Phillies had a 3-0 lead, the bases loaded, and no one out. Two hot hitters - Jayson Werth and Greg Dobbs - were ready to take their turns.

But the faucet that poured out 22 runs the night before and three more early last night tightened.

Werth, who had joined Ryan Howard to hit back-to-back homers in the previous inning, struck out. Then righthander Aaron Harang set aside Dobbs on an infield pop-up and Pedro Feliz on a feeble grounder.

"I felt like the game kind of shifted when we didn't score more in the third inning," Manuel said.

The feeling became more acute after Brandon Phillips hit the first of his two homers to pull the Reds within 3-2 in the fourth. In the sixth, Phillips tied the score with his second homer.

"We were trying to go away and he put a pretty good swing on it," said Happ, who struck out seven and walked none. "The second one, it was frustrating, I thought it was a pretty good pitch. It was just a tough one tonight."

Instead of adding crucial runs, the Phillies continued wasting them. They stranded five runners on third base with less than two outs. Aside from the bases-loaded mess, the most notable squandering of a run came in the fourth, which Carlos Ruiz led off by banging a triple off the center-field wall. Three outs later, Ruiz was still standing on third.

Then in the eighth, the Phils failed to get Feliz home after he started the inning by reaching second on a two-base error.

So a night after the Phillies couldn't help but score, they were shut out over the final six innings.

"You get everything in the flow and you come out tonight when you get the chance to add on and it doesn't happen," Manuel said. "That's kind of hard to figure out."

Even though the Phillies lost to Atlanta on Thursday, Happ began the Phillies' string of quality starts in that game by holding the Braves to two runs over seven innings. Happ had a 1.64 ERA in his three starts before last night's.

"I feel like I threw the ball pretty good except for a couple hits," Happ said. "But the result was not quite what I was looking for."

After signs that he had finally found his rhythm, Lidge faltered in the ninth. He hung a slider to Joey Votto that the first baseman ripped down the right-field line for a leadoff double. Votto scored the deciding run on a single by Ramon Hernandez.