Despite Himself

Good Phils win tonight: they rode a strong start from Kevin Millwood and home runs from Marlon Byrd and David "Mr. Clutch/Cool Pop-Up" Bell to a 5-4 victory. And once again they managed a victory despite the waves of idiocy radiating out of the home dugout. Notably, Bowa semi-repeated several of his boneheaded moves from last week's 5-4 extra-inning loss to the Cards: with a man on second, no outs and the Phils up 5-3 in the eighth, he brought in Rheal Cormier to face lefty Jim Edmonds. Edmonds grounded out, advancing the runner to third. Then, rather than leaving Cormier--who handles lefties and righties about equally--in to face Scott Rolen, Bowa stayed true to platoon-crazy form, just as in the game last week. Again, he called on a right-hander--this time Todd Worrell rather than the injured Roberto Hernandez, to face Scott Rolen instead of Reggie Sanders. Worrell got Rolen to ground out, scoring the run but leaving the bases empty with two outs, and ended the inning without further disaster.

In the bottom of the eighth, with the Phils looking for insurance, Bowa's worst and most common strategic misstep bit us in the butt yet again: with lefty sluggers Bobby Abreu and Jim Thome hitting back to back, the Cardinals brought in a lefty reliever to face those two and then switched to the right-hander when Pat Burrell came to bat. All three of those guys are much less scary against pitchers from the same side; split Burrell between the lefties and you're going to get at least one real good matchup. But in game after game, Bowa sends them out lefty-lefty-righty, and opposing managers adopt. Sometimes, as was the case tonight, we win anyway. Sometimes it costs us a potential big edge in a close game we go on to lose.

Meanwhile, Wagner came in for the ninth and faced Reggie Sanders, who hit the big three-run triple against Hernandez in the loss last week while Wagner sat in the bullpen. Tonight, he struck Sanders out for the ninth time in 15 career at-bats. Sanders is still looking for his first career hit off Wagner. Sure would have been nice to see that matchup last Thursday.

The Phils once again try to finally scale Mount .500 again tomorrow afternoon. They're something like 1-6 this season in their efforts to reach the break-even mark, with the lone win coming in the second game of the season.