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Phillies were this close to evening series

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Jon Paul Morosi

Jon Paul Morosi is a national MLB writer for FOXSports.com. He previously covered baseball for the Detroit Free Press and Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He began his journalism career at the Bay City Times in his native Michigan. Follow him on Twitter.

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Updated Nov 2, 2009 3:55 AM ET
     
 

PHILADELPHIA

One strike, and the Phillies would be on the verge of drawing even with the Yankees in the World Series.
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One strike, and the Phillies would face Phil Coke, not Mariano Rivera, to start the ninth inning. One strike, and Charlie Manuel's decision to start Joe Blanton in Game 4 would start looking like a managerial masterstroke. One strike, and Brad Lidge would be a postseason hero in Philadelphia once again. And the Phillies almost got it. Instead, all they had after Sunday night was a bitter 7-4 defeat and 3-1 series deficit. "Real close," Lidge would say later, and he was absolutely right. Lidge was on the mound in Sunday's ninth inning. It was his first World Series appearance since throwing the final pitch of last season. None on. Two out. A 4-4 tie. His fastball looked good. His slider looked even better. He had just used it to strike out Derek Jeter, and now Johnny Damon was about to meet a similar fate. Lidge moved ahead of Damon, 1-2. He snapped off another slider, low and out of the strike zone. It would have been nearly impossible for Damon to put the ball in play, but he swung. His bat nicked the ball. Barely. Phillies catcher Carlos Ruiz, a terrific receiver, reacted as he should have. His glove tracked the ball downward. He almost squeezed it for a foul-tip third strike. We're talking about a difference of inches — maybe four, maybe three, maybe two, maybe less. But the ball skipped away, and this World Series probably won't ever be the same. Damon battled his way to a ninth-pitch single. Then Lidge came apart. He hit Mark Teixeira at 1-1. He gave up the tiebreaking hit to Alex Rodriguez. He surrendered a two-run single to Jorge Posada. Now the Yankees are one win from their 27th world title, and it certainly looks like they are going to get it. As Mariano Rivera set down the Phillies in order, I thought back on the near-strikeout of Damon more than any other play in the dramatic ninth. Yes, even more than Damon's shift-breaking steal of second and third that will be discussed at every spring training site in February — and on plenty of high school ballfields thereafter. Ruiz did nothing wrong on the play. Catching a foul tip, or not, is a matter of instinct. Low sliders are particularly difficult to handle. "Not impossible, but it's hard to catch that," said Phillies bullpen coach Mick Billmeyer, a former catcher. "The ones going down, they have bite to them. That's just luck. "A foul tip — it's luck." The Phillies were a very good, very lucky team in 2008, and they won the World Series. Their combination of considerable talent and a little destiny was on display as recently as the National League Championship Series, when it took a ninth-inning meltdown by Jonathan Broxton to prevent the Dodgers from regaining home-field advantage in a near-mirror-image Game 4. The Phillies still have the same talented players that carried them through the NL playoffs. But they have stopped hitting consistently, particularly against left-handed pitchers. Their worst fears about Lidge — that he might unravel at a crucial postseason moment — were realized on Sunday.
And when Ruiz opened his glove, hoping to catch a little good fortune, he ended up with dust. "But that didn't lose the game," Billmeyer said. He was right. It didn't. Yet, the missed play told us a little about this team: It might be a little more talented and a little less karmic than it was last October. A number of moments swung Game 4 to the Yankees, and most of them had to do with Philadelphia's big hitters failing in the clutch. First inning: Chase Utley was standing on second base after a one-out, run-scoring double. Ryan Howard (strikeout) and Raul Ibanez (strikeout) stranded him there. Fifth inning: Jimmy Rollins led off with a single, Shane Victorino walked, and the Phillies appeared to be on the verge of a big inning. But they didn't score at all. CC Sabathia retired Utley, Howard and Jayson Werth to end the threat. Too many innings when it seemed like the Phillies didn't have a real chance to score. Too many innings when Sabathia toyed with their left-handed hitters. Too many innings — namely the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and ninth — in which Philadelphia couldn't produce an extra-base hit. Rollins, Victorino, Howard and Ibanez — two switch hitters and two left-handed hitters — have combined to bat .190 in the World Series. If you had known that was going to happen prior to Game 1, you would have predicted that the Phillies were going to be in trouble. Well, that has happened, and the Phillies are in trouble. "We all know what we have to do," Rollins said. More specifically, they must win three games in a row. Two of them could be started by left-handed pitchers at Yankee Stadium: Andy Pettitte in Game 6, Sabathia in Game 7. Take away Utley's impressive production — three solo home runs, one double — and Sabathia has allowed exactly two hits to left-handed batters in 13 2/3 innings. The lack of production by Howard and Ibanez is a much bigger influence on the Phillies' current predicament than Manuel's choice to start Blanton in Game 4, rather than short-rested Cliff Lee. Blanton's performance was almost exactly what the Phillies expected: six innings, four earned runs. He was not great. He was not awful. He was OK. And that was good enough for his teammates to have a chance. Remember: The score was tied, 4-4, with two out in the top of the ninth. Lidge needed one more out. Correction: He needed one more strike. Even after Damon singled, he had a chance. But then the Phillies failed to properly defend Damon's steal of second base, and he darted to third when they left it uncovered. His presence there — a wild pitch away from scoring — probably contributed to the fact that A-Rod saw two fastballs (as opposed to sliders in the dirt) during the game-winning at-bat. Lidge admitted later that he "probably should have gone to the slider sooner." If he had, maybe Rodriguez would have rolled a comebacker to the mound. Maybe Rollins would have become a walk-off hero once more. And maybe the Phillies wouldn't need to wake up on Monday, wondering if they are about to lose their crown.

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