by Jeff on April 1 at 10:34AM
The Phil's closed out their spring at Citizens Bank Park with two against the Bo-Sox and I gotta tell you, if that's the way the Phil's are going to play against Boston, I'm glad the meetings are limited to spring and a series or two every couple years.
It started out Friday night with the Phillies first round draft pick from '02 taking the hill. The good news is, Cole Hamels only gave up six hits, the bad news - four of them were home runs as the Phil's drop this meeting 7-5 . Manny, Dustin Pedroia and JD Drew all went yard with solo shots and Kevin Youkilis hit a two run bomb. That makes nine home runs given up by the young left hander this spring, almost half as many as he gave up all last year.
Hamels wasn't very pleased with his spring training performance, citing that," you try a lot of new things in spring," and he just happened to get burned a lot. Hey Cole - when the season starts, why don't you try pitching like you did before you got called up to the bigs, you remember, when you didn't give up four home runs all season, let alone in a single evening.
The big story Saturday aftertnoon was Dice-K's first start in a big league park. The man everyone has been talking about had his moments on the mound, but he was far from perfect. Dice-k's fastball wasn't over powering and he didn't have total control, he walked a few and gave up a two run bomb to Pat the Bat, but he was able to fool some of the Phil's sluggers. Jimmy Rollins said of the 'gyroball' - "it's something we haven't seen in America before, it knuckles and plays tricks on the eyes," after having been fooled by the pitch that may or may not exist.
The Phil's kept Saturdays game one run closer than Fridays, but still end the spring with an "L" by a final score of 6-5.
The team has an off day today before opening up tomorow against the division rival Braves. I hope everyone has gotten all of the new things they wanted to experiment with out of the way and they're all ready for some serious play, because it begins now boys. No more jokes, no more fooling around, now they matter.
Let's get the year off on the right foot. The prospects for a win in the opener are good, Myers will take the mound - he's been in mid season form for two weeks; Howard seems to have gotten his swing back and Pat the Bat has looked a little better of late.
This series against the Braves could mean the most of any opening series in MLB, the whole team wants to live up to Jimmy Rollins' expectations and predictions and the best way to do that is to hit the ground running against the Braves, to win this series convincingly and let everyone in the East know that Jimmy isn't just blowing smoke.
