Phillies 5 Pirates 1

Baseball looks a lot different from Section 8 Row F (that's six rows back from where the pierogies finish their race for anyone counting at home). Prominent among the observations from there are that Ryan Howard is simply too big to be allowed and that Jack Wilson did in fact pump himself up a lot more than I thought he did this offseason (in terms of muscle mass, he's probably the biggest guy on the team, Craig Wilson and Jason Bay included). Also, it's very obvious that Oliver Perez is struggling with just about every pitch he throws. From the first base side up that close you can get a nice view of his mechanics, and they're flat out bad. When he pitches from the windup he does some strange double or triple hitch with the glove. He's clearly frustrated with his inability to just rear back and bring the heat like he used to and he constantly fidgets on the mound. It's just an all around bad situation, and I don't see it getting better any time soon. Also today, the Pirates were truly awful at the plate. The Phillies had a right handed counterpart for Perez on the mound, Gavin Floyd who was throwing about 91-92 and maxing out at 94. He couldn't find the strike zone all game to save his life (at one point in the fourth or fifth he had thrown more balls than strikes) and somehow we managed only a solo homer off him in his 6 and 2/3 that featured 6 hits and 5 walks. Prominently involved in that failure was Jeromy Burnitz, who twice made meek outs with runners on and 2 outs with a chance to get back into the game. Why he bats behind Bay (who took 3 walks today without any protection) is beyond me. The series win is nice, but we still only managed 7 runs in three games. That's not a sign of a team that's getting any better.