Photo: Philliedelphia/Andrew Gillen
Monday night, it was obvious that the zero run effort in support of Jerome Williams would not help produce a victory. Last evening, a four run improvement was still not enough to hand the victory to A.J. Burnett after his five run outing. Each final score in the first half of the series resulted in the Phillies losing by a single run. If they're going to close it out with back-to-back victories before heading to Oakland, Philadelphia's bats will need to make more of an effort to close the gap and give their starting pitcher proper support.
Hoping to accomplish exactly what San Diego did Monday night, Philadelphia sends their ace to the mound. Returning to his hometown once more, Cole Hamels will aim to continue his good fortune in Petco Park. Since he made his first start in San Diego back in 2006, Hamels has logged a total of 48.2 innings in seven starts. And, of the ten total earned runs he has surrendered in that time, the lefty allowed nearly half (4) of those in his last appearance in that ballpark, his worst career start there. Whether it is the ballpark or the atmosphere, the Phillies most formidable pitcher is very good against San Diego on the road, and shows no signs of slowing that down tonight.
Eric Stults has been with the Padres for the better part of three seasons now, but is having his worst season thus far with San Diego. For those interested in these types of information, Stults is dead last of the qualified 24 Padres pitchers in 2014 in terms of WAR (-1.0), and is also bringing up the rear in terms of FIP (4.92) among the 17 Padre pitchers with at least ten innings pitched. And, for those more interested in the more generic statistics, Stults hosts a 4.49 Era couples with a 7-16 record.
Phillies Lineup
- Ben Revere CF
- Maikel Franco 3B
- Chase Utley 2B
- Marlon Byrd RF
- Darin Ruf 1B
- Domonic Brown LF
- Carlos Ruiz C
- Freddy Galvis SS
- Cole Hamels P
Padres Lineup
- Yangervis Solarte 3B
- Abraham Almonte LF
- Jedd Gyorko 2B
- Rene Rivera C
- Tommy Medica 1B
- Rymer Liriano RF
- Cameron Maybin CF
- Alexi Amerista SS
- Eric Stults P
Andrew Gillen, Managing Editor of Philliedelphia.com
