RYAN EXPRESS

Well, that was unexpected.

Ryan Howard ended a tense affair with the Dodgers in the bottom of the 10th inning with an emphatic two-run homer over the Lukoil sign off LA closer Yhency Brazoban to give the Phils an improbable 5-4 victory.

Prior to Ryan's blast, it looked like another heartbreaking defeat for the Phils. The game had been a close, back and forth contest all night. Mexican League fill-in Oscar Robles hit his first major league homer off Brett Myers' fourth pitch of the night to stake the Dodgers to a 1-0 lead. A J-Roll triple and an RBI grounder by Lofton tied it up in the bottom of the inning, and Pat Burrell put the Phils on top 2-1 with a long home run to lead off the second. Los Angeles rallied in the fourth to go up 3-2 on a Hee Choi single and doubles by Jayson Werth and pitcher Brad Penny. Chase Utley re-tied the game in the fifth with yet another clutch two-out RBI hit to score J-Roll, who had doubled. The bullpens took over in the seventh and neither staff allowed another run until the tenth.

In the top of the tenth, Billy Wagner, working his second inning of relief, issued a one-out walk to Jeff Kent. Mike Edwards then drove a fly to deep right field that Bobby Abreu should have caught. Instead, Bobby overran the ball and made an ill-timed leap as it sailed past his glove and off the wall for a double. Once again, Abreu demonstrated that he has no feel for how close he is to the fence and that he tends to panic when he gets close to the barrier. Somebody needs to spend an afternoon hitting fly ball after fly ball off the wall so that Bobby can better gauge how close he is and whether or not he has to jump or can stay on his feet and under control. I don't know whether he's not interested in improving this aspect of his defense, or if the coaches don't push it, but his poor play on balls near the wall has contributed to several Phillies losses over his career and should be addressed. This is not to take anything away from his hitting and his overall contribution to the offense; I'm a big Abreu supporter. It just seems like this is something he can learn how to do, so why not try to improve?

With runners on second and third, Jason Phillips was intentionally passed, and Wags began to extricate himself by striking out pinch hitter Antonio Lopez. Werth then stood by as Billy missed the plate badly on four straight pitches, walking in Kent for the go-ahead run. Wagner recovered to get Jason Repko to bounce back to the mound, but it seemed as though one more game that should have been won had slipped away.

Then came Pat Burrell and his blazing speed. Burrell led off the bottom of the tenth off Brazoban with a deep drive to left just over the glove of the 6'5" Werth and off the cement part of the wall just above the out-of-town scoreboard, about one or two feet short of going out. The ball ricocheted back toward the infield, and Burrell scampered as fast as his leaden legs could carry him. As Larry Anderson mentioned, he "hit a wall" at second base. By the time Werth tracked down the ball, he had a relatively short throw to third, and from what I could see on TV, he nailed Burrell sliding into third. Thankfully, third base ump Joe Brinkman missed the call. That set up Howard, who clobbered the first pitch he saw to deep left center to secure his date with Tomas Perez' shaving cream-laden towel.

The Nats got another strong game from John Patterson to shutout the woeful Rockies, but the Braves lost a late game to the Giants to lower their wild card advantage over us to 3.5 games. Tonight, Corey Lidle tries to recover from his poor start versus Florida against the inconsistent Derek Lowe. Lowe's ERA has been climbing steadily all season, and he's given up 144 hits in 127 and one third innings. His July ERA is 9.22 after enduring pummelings by Arizona and San Fran. We may as well not fight the trend.