The Phillies jumped out to an early 3-0 lead over the San Francisco Giants with one run in the 1st inning on rightfielder Bobby Abreu’s (8 HRs, 60 RBIs, .290 BA) sacrifice fly scoring shortstop Jimmy Rollins (9 HRs) and 1st baseman Ryan Howard’s (29 HRs, 73 RBIs, .281 BA) 29th homer with leftfielder Pat Burrell (19 HRs, 58 RBIs) on board in the 4th inning off of Giants starter and winner Matt Morris (8-7), but starter and losing pitcher Jon Lieber (3-7) couldn’t hold the lead as the Phils lost the first game of the 2nd half of the season to the Giants by a 5-3 score.

The Giants closed to 3-2 with a 2 run homer by 2nd baseman Ray Durham (13 HRs, 47 RBIs) with leftfielder Barry Bonds (12 HRs) on board in their half of the 4th inning.

Then, in the Giants 6th inning, rookie catcher Eliezer Alfonso (5 HRs, 14 RBIs, .292 BA) singled driving in Barry Bonds to tie the game and

Randy Winn, pinch hitting for pitcher Morris, drove in a run arriving safely at 1st base on 2nd baseman Chase Utley’s (16 HRs, 53 RBIs, .312 BA) fielding miscue.   3rd baseman  Pedro Felix (15 HRs, 62 RBIs, >273 BA), who was on 2nd base at the time, came around to score on the fielding error by Utley.  Lieber, at this point gave way to the bullpen.

This closed the scoring for both teams as each respective bullpen shut down the other team.  San Francisco closer  Armando Benitez (4-1, 1.90 ERA, 11 Saves) was credited with the save as he shut down the Phils in the 9th striking out 2.

On a couple of statistical notes, Chase Utley singled in the third to extend his hitting streak to 16 games and Bobby Abreu, in goijng 0-for-3, snapped his consecutive streak of reaching base at 34 games.

For a full recap with box scores and play-by-play on Friday’s game, click here.

On Saturday afternoon, the Phils hope to even up the series as Cory Lidle (5-7) faces Giants lefthander Noah Lowry (4-5).

For full coverage of Saturday’s games in both leagues, previews, recaps, box scores and play-by-play coverage  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 Saturday, July 15th, 2006 at 4:09 pm 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.