ESPN.com – MLB – Recap – Braves at Phillies – 09/28/2003
Honestly, anybody who will miss Veterans Stadium has something wrong with them. It’s a terrible place most noted for destroying football players’ knees.
The Braves clinched home field through the NL playoffs with the win, as the Giants decided to not contest the game Monday and MLB decided to not force it. The Phillies took early leads of 1-0 and 2-1, but the Braves broke on top with three in the fourth and added a run in the fifth. Maddux went five, allowed the two runs on four hits, and got the win. Cunnane, Wright, and Hernandez pitched an inning apiece, then Jason Marquis pitched the ninth for a save.
The Braves got 11 hits and all five runs off of Kevin Millwood, who was lucky to not give up more runs. The three starting outfielders had two hits apiece, then gave way to the Langerhans-Bragg-Hessman axis. Fick also had two hits and two RBI.
Mark DeRosa was injured when hit on the hand with what was called a foul ball off his bat in the fourth and replaced by Jesse Garcia. Garcia singled home a run and played some nice defense, but with Vinny still a little questionable the Braves can’t lose DeRosa.
The Division Series against the Cubs will be in prime time starting Tuesday. The first game with be on Fox, the next two on ESPN.
Any status on the DeRosa injury? Also, I noticed Smoltz didn’t pitch today? I didn’t see his performance yesterday…do you think it [his poor performance] was the result of the elbow injury or was he just beat?
Ed
Smoltz threw 30 pitches yesterday, so there was pretty much no way he was getting into today’s game so he will be fully rested for the playoffs.
I knew he pitched the 8th and 9th. I hope the team is fired up and NOT thinking about ANYTHING beyond this next series with the Cubs. The Cubs have great pitching and probably enough offense to give the Braves fits.
To be honest I’m not to worried about Wood because his control will get him into trouble in game 1. I think if we win that game we will win the series.
Mac, you should do a posteason NLDS preview section. It’d be fun to read everyone’s views/feedback on how we’re gonna matchup against the damn cubs! As far as good news- Braves hitting dominates the league versus righties (Kerry Wood, Prior, Zambrano and even Clement), Kerry can’t control his pitches a lot of the time, Clement is way overrated, Borowski is going to run into some rough patches (he’s not that good). As far as bad news- Dusty Baker, Kenny Lofton, Sammy Sosa (who owns Braves pitching lately), Prior-Wood-Zambrano (Zambrano is a stud on the mound…he’s almost lights out…he reminds me of Vazquez), Wrigley will be hard to play in because it is cold here in Chicago and the fanatic fans here in the postseason make it harder to play here than maybe Yankee Stadium because as Craig Kilborn said “Cork popped out of Sammy Sosa’s broken bat, which confused the Cubs. They’d never seen a cork pop.”
I’m working on it.
I wish we had the day games. Look at the split? The Braves play much better in the day
By the way I am presuming that you all already are aware of prosportsdaily.com
If not then you should hit up
http://www.prosportsdaily.com/mlb/braves/
and read some of the articles about the cubs-braves matchup ahead of us
I wish we had the day games.
I wish we had day games too. I was looking forward to blowing off working three times this week. Where is that 10 AM pacific game I was hoping for?
Man I hope the Braves beat the Cubs. After USC gave away any chance at a national title this weekend, I need some good news.
By the way who here thinks we should look into the Twins air-conditioning scandal from 1991? Some Air conditioning experts played around with it to favor the ball magically flying to outfield when the Twins came to the plate. I am curious how much of a part this played in determing our loss. Also I’m surprised – is anyone seriously looking into it. I mean this scandal is an all time low, and if we just forget about it then I feel uneasy