Game 121: Pirates 11 Phillies 6

It occurs to me that my recent "recap numbering" has been off by a game. Hmm. I wonder how long it's been like that. Oh well, it's fixed now. They were more like guidelines anyways.

Paul Maholm did a great job tonight showing us why wins are such a flawed stat. He gave up six runs before he had two outs recorded in the second inning, but then was filled with competency and actually managed to work through seven innings tonight and hold the Phillies at six runs. I credit this entirely to the veteranosity of Matt Morris, who pulled a similar stunt earlier this week. Thank goodness he's around.

All kidding aside, we really piled on poor old Jamie Moyer tonight. Sanchez, Bay, and LaRoche all continued to rake the crap out of the ball and Xavier Nady finally came back and hit the ball as well. With those four inhabiting the 2-5 slots in the lineup tonight, they went 10-for-17 with five doubles and a homer. Nady and LaRoche also drew three walks. Just for fun, that's a .588/.650/1.059 line (by my calculations, at least, I could be off). Talk about a nightmarish stretch of lineup. Too bad that's not really a sustainable pace, but it is fun to see for a night here and there.

One final aside, because the Steelers were on TV tonight and the Pirates weren't, the Phillies feed was the MLB.tv feed tonight. Their play-by-play guy is Harry Kalas, whom I'm sure many of you know. Those of you that don't know Kalas, just take your Super Bowl XL highlight DVD and pop it in. Kalas is also the voice of NFL Films. Really, just a legendary sports voice. And every single time I heard him refer to Jimmy Rollins as "J-Roll" I think a little part of me died. Damn you, Alex Rodriguez. You have ruined nicknames for everyone.