The Phillies closed out their 3 game series with the Arizona Diamondbacks with a 7-3 victory, thus celebrating a 3 game sweep of the Diamondbacks and riding a 4 game win steak into their 4 game series with the Washington Nationals.

The Phils offense got behind starter and winner Ryan Madison (6-3) early by jumping on D-backs rookie and losing starter Dustin Nippert for 6 runs over his 5 innings of pitching.  Madison held the D-backs to 1 run through 7 innings of excellent pitching in what may have been his best performance thus far this season. 

In the first, Bobby Abreu (7 HRs, .284 BA) doubled home Chase Utley (11 HRs, .318 BA) with the 1st run.   In the 3rd, Ryan Howard (21 HRs, 53 RBIs, .292 BA) hit a 2 run homer with Abreu on, 3-0.  Jimmy Rollins (6 HRs) blasted a 3 run shot in the 4th, 6-0. 

Arizona scratched 1 run in the 5th off of Madison which was offset by another  Sal Fasano (3 HRs) solo homer (1 each in the last 2 games) in the 6th inning to close out the Phils scoring.  Arizona scratched out 2 more runs off of Madison in the 8th, as Rheal Comier (2-1, 0.87 ERA) finished the 8th inning and Tom Gordon (2-2, 1.67 ERA, S18) finished the game shutting the door on the D-backs.

However, in the opener with the Nationals, the Phils’ winning streak came to an end as Washington defeated them by a 5-2 score.

Washington starter and winner Mike O’Conner (3-3) pitched 6 solid innings giving up 2 runs, 3 hits to Phils as the Nationals scratched out a 4-2 lead.  The Washington bullpen shut the door on the Phils as closer Chad Cordero (1-1) recorded his 12th save of the season.

Once again, Phils starter and losing pitcher Eude Brito (0-2) got touched up for 4 runs on 5 hits as he also walked 3 in his 4 2/3 innings of pitching.   Alphonso Soriano (23 HRs, 46 RBIs, .310 BA) added frosting on Washington’s cake with a 7th inning homer off of reliever Ryan Franklin (1-4) to close out the scoring for both teams. 

The question here is was the Phils loss of the opener due to fatigue, having 7 games in 7 days without a break, merely an occasional loss, or yet another reversal such as was seen following their 9 game winning streak?   Their series with Washington is 4 games and should pretty well determine which one of the scenarios marks the Phils’ situation.  On good sign is that the bullpen continues to pitch consistently well.

Today’s game stacks up on paper as a nice pitcher’s duel with Brett Myers (4-2) going for the Phillies vs Tony Armas (6-3) for the Nationals.

For all of today’s scores, box scores and recaps of the games in both leagues, click here.

Add to:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. | del.icio.us | digg | Furl | Reddit | YahooMyWeb |

This entry was posted on Friday, June 9th, 2006 at 11:00 am and is filed under Real-Time Baseball News and Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.