If there was one glaring lesson from last night’s game, it was how quickly a dominating pitcher can get humbled. Joba Chamberlain looked like he was at the top of his game, blowing away Jayson Werth and Raul Ibanez with 97 MPH fastballs. After getting ahead of Pedro Feliz with two swinging strikes, Phillies hitters had missed on the six of seven swings they had taken against Chamberlain that inning. And then Feliz hit one out of the park to tie the game.
Fast forward to the ninth inning, and Lidge had no problems dispatching Hideki Matsui and Derek Jeter. All three strikes to The Captain were of the swing-and-miss variety, as Lidge showed the stuff that caused Manuel to still believe in his closer. And then, after getting to within one pitch of ending the inning, he allowed the next four guys to reach base and lost the game.
Forget hindsight – at the moment of their failure, both Chamberlain and Lidge looked great. There was nothing to suggest that a problem was lurking. They were throwing the hell out of the ball, and then they got hit. Trying to predict the future is really hard.
Unless, of course, you have ESPN, the extra-sensory perception network.
Posted by David Pinto at 2:13 pm | Pitchers | Permalink | No Comments
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