Pedro Martinez looked good in his first professional outing in almost a year Wednesday night, and picked up his first major league victory since August 31, 2008. Martinez went 5 innings, allowed 7 hits, and 3 earned runs, struck out 5, and walked 3. He threw 99 pitches, and said he felt good after the game. Martinez threw his fastball in the upper 80s, low 90s, and even hit 93 on the radar gun. He looked comfortable on the mound, and commanded his breaking pitches well. The Cubs were not hitting his off-speed pitches at all, and Pedro was throwing them for strikes, which is a good sign. Pedro should only improve from this point on, as his arm stretches out, and he gets more comfortable with the Phillies, and more comfortable throwing to Ruiz.
As well as Pedro pitched, the offense made it very easy for him in his debut. The Phillies smashed former Notre Dame wide receiver, Jeff Samardzija, for 12 runs in the first 4 innings alone. Shane Victorino, Jimmy Rollins, and Raul Ibanez all homered, and every starter had at least 1 hit, including 3 hits from Utley. The Phillies had 3 home runs, 2 triples, one from Howard, and 3 doubles last night. Not only was it a successful debut for Pedro’s first start, it is a very good sign to see the offense finally start to hit. This could mean good things for the offense going forward. I should also mention that Chan Ho Park has been unhittable in the bullpen since he has been there, and that continued last night. It’s amazing how comfortable Chan Ho looks coming out of the pen, as opposed to earlier in the season when he struggled as a starter.
There was an incident in the 5th inning, on a deep sacrifice fly to center, just as Victorino was about to catch the ball, he was doused with a beer thrown from the bleachers. In my opinion, Victorino should have thrown the ball at the punk who did that, but that wouldn’t have solved anything. Not much has been made of this, however, if it were a Phillies fan who did this, it would be getting national attention on how horrible the Philadelphia fans are. But when it is another city’s team, it’s not that big a deal, yet people still bring up things that happened involving us Philly fans from decades past. And yes…. I cheered when Michael Irvin was on the ground injured.
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Was mostly pleased with Pedro's performance, though not crazy about 3 earned runs in 5 innings. But, hey, it's his first start in a long time, and his arm looked pretty good: some of his fast balls were zipping in there with authority -- certainly a much better sight than Moyer's puff balls...All in all, a solid start and a reason to feel optimistic about having him in the rotation.
Regarding Victorino's beer bath, you're a thousand percent correct: had something similar happened at Citizens' it would be on a repeating video loop on Sports Center, complete with the know-nothing talking head frauds tut-tutting about the classless Philly fan base. But in hallowed Wrigley (or anywhere else, for that matter), nary a word. Philly fans should actually be applauded nationwide for having the cajones to boo & hurl snowballs at an obviously lame excuse for Santa, and for cheering the well-deserved smackdown of that cocaine-snorting, bling-bling strutting, king of the illegal push-off, Michael Irvin -- one of the biggest punks in the history of the NFL.
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