Quick Stains: Phillies Phodder for June 5th

After the battle of the pitchers-who-were-born-during-a-little-thing-called-the-Vietnam-War ended in the seventh inning, I was shocked by the performance of our bullpen, who performed as if they actually played in the majors. Anyone else? Was that the Phillies bullpen out there, or did we transcend some sort of dimension to a place where our pitchers are actually competent? Someone get me Doc Brown on the phone.

As for the performance of the offense, I can't recall a worse display of base-running than our third base coach deciding not to send Chase Utley home on Aaron Rowand's base hit in the top of the sixth. I feel like Burrell could have still made it back to second if he didn't decide to stutter step back to third when there was no chance in hell he was going to get there--Chase was simply distracting Lo Duca to buy Pat time, but in such a bang-bang play, you can really plan these things out. The Phils should have been up by one and ended the game in the bottom of the ninth (although with a one run lead, our dimension-transcending bullpen may not have showed up so in the end, I'll take the W). Sloppy and wacky plays continue to be a running theme throughout this season (this could become a column eventually as I would point out the sloppiest play of the night). Stay tuned for more tomorrow.