On a Wednesday afternoon in which the Mets were utterly baffled by first ballot Hall of Famer Tom Shearn (and learned they’d lose the services of Carlos D. for at least a week), the Phillies squandered a chance to get back in the NL East race in a spectacular fashion. Blowing leads of 5-0 and 8-2, Brett Myers allowed 3 runs with two outs in the home 9th, the decisive blow coming on a bases-clearing, 3-run double by Matt Diaz — a drive to the warning track that Chris Roberson nearly caught.
While Myers was certainly victimized by poor fielding, Tom Gordon (5 batters faced, one retired, 4 hits, 4 earned runs) was nothing short of diabolical. While the former might have difficulty spelling “retard”, the latter has no trouble whatsoever with “choke”.
Bobby Cox, by the way, would like to remind Myers that it’s only a game, and family’s the most important thing.
San Diego’s Jake Peavy will face the Snakes tonight on 3 days’ rest, a better gambit on the part of Bud Black than say, giving Brett Tomko the ball with all the rest in the world.
Carl Crawford, enjoy a few days off.
Too stunned to post myself. Gordon wasn’t very good but all the hits he gave up were OF bloops. Myers was bad allowing three of Gordon’s runners to score and worse blowing the game.
re : Gordon. It’s that pitching-to-contact strategy that tends to not work out so well in these instances. I guess they didn’t need Ray King, though.
It appears Wickman might be on his way.
I dont believe its an issue of Gordon either choking or pitching to contact. Gordon simply can no longer throw his out-pitch breaking ball effectively and his expiration date was when he went on the DL last August. Making contingency plans for Gordon was one of the major issues I felt Pat Gillick had to deal with last winter and it looks like he neglected to do so. Brett Myers is a #2-3 starter and should not have been thrust into the closer role. I am wondering why the man who brought Ichiro to MLB apparently didnt check out Japan for potential bullpen help. The Boston Red Sox did, with excellent results (Hideki Okajima).