Phillies-Nationals: Quality Comes With Quantity, 12 Innings of It
It was a long, warm night. It was one where quality came with quantity – twelve innings of it. But it didn’t start out that way. After the first inning, it seemed like it was happening all over again. “We’ve fallen and we can’t get up!” The top of our lineup forgot how to hit and Blanton threw more than 26 pitches to get out of the inning. Then in the second, it became apparent that the top of the lineup really started at the end of the alphabet: Raul IbaneZ, along with Pedro FeliZ and Carlos RuiZ, made offense look E-Z. They each singled like a pack of copycats, with Pedro reaching base in his last eight appearances and Carlos doing it in his last nine. I don’t know the stat on Raul; we’re just used to him doing everything with a capital “Effort” and “Hustle”. Then Pedro Feliz made Davey Lopes proud with his gutsy base running as did Raul Ibanez, Jimmy Rollins, and Jayson Werth. Hey, he’s the base coach who whined that they weren’t aggressive around the diamond so let me pose a wa...