Astros 5, Phillies 4

Last night’s loss felt like an arbitrary encore, after your favorite band finished a perfect set by playing your favorite song.

This must have been the new, unheard material off the upcoming LP, including the critically panned "Bunt n' Steal." Chances are it won’t crack the Top 40. Maybe in Turkey, but not here.

After Sunday’s acclaimed fan-appreciation finale, this was the bonus track, a leftover from the Ernesto Sessions. They must have been experimenting with something more Avant-garde, something in the Captain Beefheart vein. What a buzzkill. It was difficult to walk out of Citizens Bank Park with a clear appreciation of the whole homestand. Shrill sounds were ringing in my ears. Red means go. Red means stop. Red means big Cholly trotting out of the dugout again. Red means anger.

The game felt like Wolf’s curveball looked after 75 pitches. Both pitchers breezed through the first innings. Wolf was popping his fastball for Ks. The Phils were a little impatient at the dish. Then Jimmy put us on top 4-2 with a two-run blast. After that, it grinded to a halt.

The game thread confirmed what we saw during the top of the seventh. Matt Smith was getting the squeeze. Neither Smith nor Rick White appeared on the same page as catcher Mike Lieberthal. The game became slow and tedious like those 30-minute jams from Phish. The Phils were burned for three runs that inning, all coming by way of the free pass. In all, they walked eight batters, probably the biggest reason they lost.

Sixteen pitchers took the mound. The Astros alone used 25 players to get the win. The Phillies used 20 and fell short. By the ninth, Clay Condrey, the Phillies equivalent to a roadie who will ocassionally assist on percussion, was pitching to Astros groupie Hector Gimenez, taking his first Major League at bat.

In a one-run game with playoff implications abounding, only Yoko Ono could have cooked up something so foul.

Comments

[Oisin]

The answer for these remaining six games is clear. in between fixtures, cholly has to lock up the whole team in a house in the middle of nowhere, with hardly any food, and make them run the same plays again, and again, and again, until they deconstruct littleball as we know it and turn it into some miraculous thing that the phillies regularly score and actually win games with.

Oh, and he needs some really silly facial hair too. Rick White's got the right idea.

[enrico]

I'd take a 30 minute Ghost jam over that Phils performance any day of the week.

Slow and tedious? Damn you Weitzel.

[Drama Queen]

why's everyone gotta blame yoko all the time? you gotta admit lennon was screwed up before hand...

anyway, Phils have a six-pack of games left. how it turns out, nobody knows. i'm wishing to the best but preparing for the worst...spoken like a true phillies fan.

[Carolina Phan]

I really like the idea of the lock up. But let's only put Manuel in the house and hope for the worst.

[gr]

captain beefheart? taking beerleaguer in a strange new direction. #9. #9. #9.

[Kevin]

Now more than ever it's time to get behind this team. Go Phils!

[J. Weitzel]

Nothing like a dose of the Captain to help curtail out of control posting.

[SamDracula]

Best part of the game was the camera continuing to show the Saddam Hussein lookalike. They say that Phillie fans are knowledgable. The fans around me last night we're so uninformed, it was embarrassing. What an unpleasant experience it was being at the game last night.

[RickSchuBlues]

To add one more metaphor - after Manuel went out to make the first pitching change, there were some strains of Howlin' Wolf in the air...

[Oisin]

What if instead of being crazy and avant garde, the phillies just got really good as a team, and so could be relied on to produce a string of winning games as inventive and as endless as a funkedelic jam or a really long can track?

Damn. Forgot you need the right personel to do that properly. pah.

[Billy Mac]

SamDrac, I thought the fan they kept putting on the Phanavision looked more like one of the "Super Mario Brothers" than Saddam Hussein. Also I have to agree with you on the comment about the uninformed fan base last night. A lot more casual fans last night than typical. Hey, bandwagon is growing. Don't really have a problem with it, other than stupid wave during a critical at bat.

[Lake Fred]

I was worried that gNat King Cole was on their team, but thankfully, King Cole pitches for us.

The Capt. Beefheart reference made me thing the game was more like the dischordant Revolution No. 9, but GR beat me to the punch.

Back in the old days (late 50s, early 60s) Philly was the capitol of music, but the Phillies were horrid back then. Let's have some new Philly sweet music these last six games, sweet hitting and lights out pitching. When the Phillies are up, I want to hear the sweet sound of wood bats hitting balls that drop, while when the gNats bat, I want to hear the sweet sound of balls meeting leather, accented by a swishing bat sound.

Myers goes tonight, coming off one of his best games ever. If his "secret" new pitch works tonight, maybe he can keep Svengali Cholly on the pines and keep our dreaded bullpen out of the game.

[gr]

did you guys see this?

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/6003070

the nats didn't get back until 5 am this morning. only 2 hours behind me.

[That Dude]

I have no idea if this would mean anything or not, but I would be very curious what our record is by each catcher starting...put em all in there Lieby, Fasano, Coste and Ruiz.

[J. Weitzel]

I would wager that Coste has the best winning percentage.

[Billy Mac]

I would also wager Coste, who caught the majority of the games in August and September. I would also wager Fasano as the worst as he caught a majority during the June swoon.

[clout]

Dude: Certainly has to be Coste since he was main catcher during the winning streak. Not sure what conclusions, if any, you can draw from that.

[ae]

don't know if there's anywhere you can find catcher W-L, but catcher ERAs are:

Ruiz 4.23
Coste 4.65
Lieberthal 4.73
Fasano 4.80

[SamDracula]

Billy Mac, you're right about who he looked like. It was hilarious, though. That stupid wave has got to be distracting to a pitcher. It's like someone yelling on your downswing in golf. The people behind me, who thought they were baseball experts, didn't know who Geoff Geary was. That was the tip of the iceberg with them. It was horrible.

[Lake Fred]

I would imagine that the dumb new CBP fans make the dumb Beerleaguer posters seem like Einstein by comparison. We need to be more tolerant of our psters.