D-RAILED

I tuned in to Friday's game for one pitch. It was from Tim Worrell, and it was hit out of the yard by Paul LoDuca to give the Marlins a 9-4 lead. That was all I needed to hear, and was pretty much the story of the game. Corey Lidle was mercilessly pounded by Florida for seven runs on eleven hits in three and a third innings. The bullpen allowed two more, which ended up being the margin of victory in a 9-7 Marlins win. There were some good hitting performances by several Phils, but it wasn't enough to overcome Lidle's execrable outing.

Saturday was a better day. Marlins starter Scott Olsen didn't make it out of the second inning as the Phils scored six early runs on an Utley 3-run homer, a Pratt solo shot, and a Burrell two-run single. There was a rain delay, and then the Marlins battled back to make it 6-4 off Jon Lieber before the Phils tacked on four late runs to pull away to a 10-5 victory. Once again, the offense clicked as every starter got a hit and scored a run.

On Sunday, the D-Train and his 13-4 record pulled into the station against the suddenly effective Vicente Padilla. Vicente himself started off the scoring in the second with an unlikely triple to score Michaels and Ramon Martinez. Utley knocked in a run in the third, and then J-Roll smacked another triple to score a run in the fourth. Lieby, still looking Abreu-ish, homered in the sixth to make it 5-0, and Tomas Perez doubled in two more later in the inning to knock Willis out of the game. Utley plated Perez to saddle Dontrelle with a total of eight earned runs in five and two thirds innings and his fifth loss. The Marlins added four quick runs in the ninth off Worrell, who may as well go back on the DL, before Oogie came in to finish them off. Padilla was fantastic, lasting seven innings for the first time all season and allowing only two hits and two walks. More performances like that would be a huge lift, but Padilla's been anything but consistent in his Phillies tenure.

Today's an off day, and then the injury-plagued Dodgers stop by for three. The NL West leading Padres finish off the homestand over the weekend. The series win over Florida puts the Phils at 48-45, 5.5 games back of the Nats and four out of the Braves' wild card lead. We keep looking superlative at home, but have yet to show any road ability. Unfortunately, we've played six more home games than either the Braves or the Nats, and they both have a better home record than we do, which makes the remainder of the schedule a double-whammy against us. We're either going to have to play even better at home, or finish with a winning road record to catch either Atlanta or Washington, unless they both collapse, which is unlikely. Baseball Prospectus has our playoff odds at 21.6%, and predicts that we'd need to go 42-27 the rest of the way just to win the wild card. I hope Ed's cell phone plan has a lot of minutes.