There are not many parks in the majors where you can hit a ball 400-plus feet and not end up with a homer, but Manny Ramirez hit it to that one spot in the first inning and ended up with a RBI double instead of a two-run homer. The two homers that the Phillies socked off Derek Lowe in the sixth inning, when they got the only runs that Cole Hamels needed, would have been warning-track fly balls in a lot of places.
Hamels still pitched a very good game, but it's important to have that bit of context when the columnists are talking about who was clutch. (The second Dodgers run was also ballpark-assisted, with Matt Kemp looping a ball down the right-field line that fell in and bounced out of play for an automatic double.)
The best reads on the web coming out of this game are Crashburn Alley's writeup on the game and the response Baseball Prospectus' Joe Sheehan wrote in regard to Tim McCarver's ignorant comments about Ramirez. The Dodgers can still win this in seven games.
Something to mull over is whether the Dodgers bring back Lowe in Game 4. He was taken out in the sixth inning. By the way, when was the last time Fox aired a LCS game and it was over in less than three hours? (ShysterBall coined a new word to describe the typical Fox playoff broadcast: "Turgid-a-thons.")
Other bidness
- For the ALCS, The Beep's Christina Kahrl says Rays in six.
- An Ottawa Can-Am League update: The city does want to work to keep baseball in town, even as it's trying to recover costs from the Zipperheads.
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1 comment:
The comments that Tim McCarver (and Joe Buck) made about Ramirez last night, after Sheehan took him to task, were despicable at best and racist at worst. Let us all be thankful for the mute button.
I don't know if the second homer off Lowe was really a warning-track ball elsewhere. That sucker left the field pretty damn quickly. (So did Lowe.)
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