Phillies hang on to beat Giants, 9-7
For those at home who clicked off their TVs late Thursday night with the Phillies holding a comfortable 9-2 lead . . . They won. They just made it closer than it needed to be.
SAN FRANCISCO - For those at home who clicked off their TVs late Thursday night with the Phillies holding a comfortable 9-2 lead . . .
They won.
They just made it closer than it needed to be.
The Phillies beat the San Francisco Giants at AT&T Park, 9-7, to improve to 2-2 on this 10-game road trip through Atlanta, San Francisco and Arizona.
Righthander Brett Myers, in his first opportunity to close, picked up his first career save with a perfect ninth. Closer Tom Gordon is expected to be placed on the disabled list today with inflammation in his right rotator cuff.
Myers ended a long, chilly, rainy night painlessly. He got Ray Durham to ground out and Pedro Feliz to pop out, and struck out Mark Sweeney swinging in the ninth.
The game started with the Giants' Matt Cain vs. Adam Eaton.
They were two reasons no Phillies fan felt particularly confident about the team's chances. Cain entered the night 1-1 with a 1.54 ERA in five starts. Opponents had hit just .109 against him - the lowest mark in the National League.
He had allowed seven hits and three runs - in his last four starts combined.
Eaton, meanwhile, had allowed 10 hits and seven runs in his last start. He entered the night 2-2 with a 7.71 ERA - worst in the league. He had allowed fewer than four runs in just one of his five starts.
So, naturally, the Phillies blasted Cain.
But the Giants also knocked out Eaton.
The Phillies scored four runs in the second inning to make it 4-1. Aaron Rowand led off with a single and Carlos Ruiz walked with one out. Eaton's sacrifice bunt put the runners on second and third, and Jimmy Rollins followed with a triple to score Rowand and Ruiz. Shane Victorino singled to score Rollins, and Chase Utley sent Victorino home with another single.
The Phillies scored five runs in the fourth to take a 9-2 lead.
It started with another Rollins triple.
It ended nine batters later when Rollins popped out to end the inning.
In the middle, Pat Burrell snapped an 0-for-19 slump with a double to right-center to score Chase Utley and make it 7-2. Burrell had been hitless since April 25, although he had walked 10 times.
In three-plus innings, Cain allowed eight hits and seven runs. It looked like such a rout after the fourth inning that Giants manager Bruce Bochy pulled leftfielder Barry Bonds.
It looks like Bochy made a mistake, because Eaton couldn't hold his seven-run lead.
He walked Ray Durham to start the sixth inning and lasted just three more batters. Ryan Madson came in and allowed a two-out double to Randy Winn and a triple to Eliezer Alfonzo - Rowand tried to make a diving catch and missed to allow the ball to roll to the wall - to suddenly make it 9-7.
The inning ended when Todd Linden, hitting for Bonds, struck out looking.
But in five-plus innings, Eaton allowed eight hits, six runs and three walks, and he hit one batter. He struck out five.
He has a gaudy 8.18 ERA.
So it appears that the Phillies caught a couple of breaks: Cain wasn't his usual self and they didn't have to worry about Bonds late. Linden went 0 for 3, by the way. He ended the fifth, sixth and eighth innings, leaving at least one runner on base each time.
Not that the Phillies minded.