Against Phillies, Rockies Come Up Very Short

The Colorado Rockies came to Citizens Bank Park today, and lost to the Phillies by a score of 20-5. That's right, the Rockies were playing in Philadelphia. One shudders to think what this game's score might have been had the home and away teams been reversed.

It was one of those occasional blowouts that any baseball viewer will come across every once in a while, but to the Philadelphia fans, watching their team play the squad who kept them from advancing in last season's playoffs, it felt good. It's just as pointless to speculate whether the win should be credited to the Phillies' remarkably productive batters, to the Rockies' execrable pitching, or to (most reasonably) a combination of the two as it is to say that the Phillies only six runs in order to secure a win. They clobbered 'em.

The game was actually rather a tense one through its first three innings or so, Jamie Moyer allowing four earned runs, which were matched inning for inning by his team's production against Colorado's Jorge de la Rosa. De la Rosa was pulled after he allowed another run in the fourth, whereas the famously rather venerable Mr. Moyer was allowed to pitch all of seven innings.

The real fireworks began in the fourth, when the Phillies effectively put the game away by batting around in a six run inning. They repeated the feat in a sixth inning highlighted by a home run off the bat of catcher Chris "Cinderella" Coste. Chase Utley, who also had a homer in the first inning, drove in six runs on his three hits, the best of his career. Ryan Howard, though scored with another fielding error at first, drove in three himself. The only Phillie non-pitcher without a hit, in fact was Pat Burrell. Maybe he was saving his for the clutch.

Despite allowing the four earned runs that he did, Jamie Moyer largely demonstrated himself to have settled down after his three-run first. His seven strikeouts were a season high.

The Phillies haven't scored so many runs in a game since 1999. Watching them do it is sweet, even if the Rockies they were playing against were too debilitated by injuries to be thought of as substantially the same team from last season's NLDS. The fans can only hope, however, that Philadelphia batters don't fall into the all-to-common baseball pattern of having a quiet night after blowing out an opponant. A sweep of Colorado would only be more perfect if it began with a 20-5 rout.