Young Phillies lefthander Antonio Bastardo suffered through his most nightmarish inning in the Major Leagues walking 3 and couging up a 2 run homer by Boston leftfielder Jason Bay.  The Phillies defense collapsed around Bastardo for 3 errors as Boston scored 5 first inning runs.  Then the rains came.  1 hour and 40 minutes later, after play resumed, Bastardo was gone and the Phillies rallied to close to 5-4 with 4 fourth inning runs off of Daisuke Matsuzaka who gave up 2 homers.  But, outside of 3 shutout innings by reliever Chad Durbin, Phillies relievers were pounded for 6 more runs while the Red Sox bullpen held the hometeam to 2 more runs as Boston pounded the Phillies by an 11-6 score on Saturday.

The combination of the Phils’ loss and the Met’s 6-2 win over the Yankees left the Phillies with a smaller 3 games lead over the 2nd place Mets in the NL East division race.

Fans, this one was just too ugly.  If you don’t believe it, check out the  pitch-by-pitch on the game.   Both leftfielder Raul Ibanez and 3rd baseman Pedro Feliz homered in the fourth inning, Matsuzaka’s last while rightfielder Jayson Werth homered in the seventh inning.  But aside from Durbin, Phillies pitching, which issued 11 walks in the game, could not hold the Red Sox who added 3 more runs in the fifth, 2 more in the seventh and a single run in the ninth for good measure.

For Bastardo, it was his 1st MLB loss.  Lefthander Hideki Okajima threw for 2 innings, giving up only Werth’s 2 out solo shot, to earn his 3rd win of the season.  Ramon Ramirez and closer Jonathan Papelbon nailed the door shut on the Phillies in the eighth and ninth innings.

For all of the scores of Saturday’s games, click here.

In Sunday’s series final, the Phils hope to salvage 1 win from the series as young undefeated lefthander J.A. Happ is opposed by Josh Beckett.

The Phils have Monday night off before entertaining the Toronto Blue Jays for 3 games on Tuesday through Thursday.

For all of Sunday’s games, click here.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 14th, 2009 at 5:51 am and is filed under Real-Time Baseball News and Commentary
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