Readers: Phillies need better at bats from Victorino

Beerleaguers have more on their minds than Cole Hamels. A sampling.

"Victorino's been my biggest disappointment. Hamels I expected this from, it's just a continuation of the regular season. But Victorino. Here's a guy who excelled the first two rounds, and this series he just swings at everything. Thanks to him and Feliz, Burnett managed to go 7 after throwing 60-plus the first three innings. Then yesterday, he swings and misses at two balls and just hits the sac fly. Could've been a bigger inning. There was also that hanger he popped up." - Tray

"Hamels' collapse has been the most-mentioned event on both the game thread and this one, and rightly so, but this is also worth mentioning: Hamels allowed 5 runs in 4.1 IP. The bullpen allowed 3 runs in the next 3.2 IP. Had those bullpen innings been clean, the score would've been 5-4 heading into the 9th. But Happ, Durbin and Myers each allowed 1 run. That is a recipe for losing." - clout

"Everybody has gone gaga over the Yanks' starting pitching in the series but Burnett was the only guy who really had great stuff and even he struggled a bit in the early going. The only starter the Phils have faced all postseason who I really felt they had no shot against was Padilla in Game 2 of the NLCS. Padilla's stuff was electric that day from a velocity and control standpoint" - MG

"Cholly has always had a penchant for emptying his bench in reverse order of talent. It's like he's constantly saving his best bats for a critical late-game situation, while ignoring the fact that there's a critical moment right before his eyes & that another such moment may never arise. I've always found this to be sort of an ironic mindset from a manager who used to pull Pat Burrell from the game in the 6th inning. If you want to save your best bench player so you'll have him available in the 8th & 9th inning, wouldn't the same be true of one of your best hitters?" - bay_area_phan

Update: According to Twitter reports, Chan Ho Park was ill and unavailable last night and may not be available tonight.

Comments

[clout]

Glad to see klaus and others making fun of the extremely panicky and silly comments on the earlier thread.

Blanton just needs to give the team his usual 6 IP, 3 R. If the heart of the offense is going to continue to struggle, the Phils have no shot at winning anyway. But Blanton can't worry about that and should just pitch wihin himself.

[Faiaz]

LOL Phillies "PH"ans(its so clever changing all f's to ph's... good job on showing creativity there Phillies fans) sure do seem less arrogant now. LOL, what did you guys think? All your pitchers are like Lee? FAIL!!! Looks like the Phillies are gonna be nice and LET us win 2 games... great prediction Rollins. What is he gonna say when we win our 3rd game? OOOPS:( He sure talks a lot for a guy who's hitting .235 in the postseason and hit .250 for the season.

[ozark]

Obviously there's enough blame to go around. Everybody deserves some sans Lee and Werth and maybe Pedro.

[WerthUnstoppable]

Faiaz- you are loser. Get off our board and go on some loser yankees site. Phils will win 3 in a row starting with tonight.

[CY]

We have hung our hats on the offense all year. Going to need them to step it up tonight or we are in terrible shape. Hope blanton gives us 6-7ip and 3-4 runs as clout mentioned.

I still have faith, this team tends to rise to the occasion.

lol @ a yanks fan calling philly phans arrogant.

[Faiaz]

Werthless..."You're a loser" LOL, hope you feel better cuz that hurt my feelings soooo much. I'd be grumpy also if a team that didn't even make the playoffs last year is in the process of taking my team's throne.

[Iceman]

Guys, put on your surgical masks so you don't get a case of "entitlement-itis."

[Kool Earl]

And you are a neurotic trolling a baseball blogs comment section. You have already lost in life

[Tray]

I hate it when my most inarticulate comments get posted in the header. For some reason I can't write well on Beerleaguer. Anyway, as ridiculous as it would've sounded a year ago, this is a far more propitious pitching matchup than last night's. If we can just score 3 off Sabathia and get into their pen, we'd have a good shot at winning. Of course, after only throwing 5 pitches last night, Mariano will probably be available for 2, so it'll be key for some of our more slap-happy hitters to take some pitches and finish off C.C.'s night in 6 or less.

[EastFallowfield]

"A team that didn't make the playoffs last year."

The Yankees are real underdogs. That's why America loves them so.

Anyway,

Yo, new thread

[Shane]

Rollins, Ibanez, The Bench, & Feliz are the wet blankets smothering our offense this post-season.

J-Roll has 4 BB and 9 SO and hasn't done much except for a hit off Broxton.

Ibanez looks impatient to me. Trying to force things to happen. (So is Howard for that matter) He's definitely the 2nd half Ibanez this post-season. Though, to his credit he did hit some line drives right at people.

The Bench has 0 hits. Not one. That Stairs hit was when he started DH. I mean, come on....the pitchers have 3 hits.

Pete Happy is not making me very happy lately, aside from the glove. 6 for 42 with 2 RBIs in 12 games.

If the Yankees learn to pitch around Werth & Ruiz, we may never score again for the rest of the series. They seemed to have solved everyone else. Howard is off balance and everything goes past him. They stopped throwing fastballs to Chase.

It is just so frustrating to see the boys struggle so much. I know they can beat these guys. They know it. It's just not "clicking". I hope Cholly can make them relax and get loose for tonight.

[aksmith]

Aside from Hamels falling in love with his lousy curveball and Charlie going brain dead and pinch hitting Bruntlett as the tying run last night. And Charlie trying to push Pedro an inning beyond prudence. It looks to me like almost the entire team is whipped. It seems as if they are tuckered out by two very long seasons in a row.

I hope I'm wrong. But it seems like they're already tuning up for some gold and barbecues.

[aksmith]

Yeah, they probably have some "gold." But I meant "golf."