Inside the Game: Phillies' bullpen eases worries

Entering this postseason, the area that made Phillies fans most nervous was the bullpen.

How do you like it now?

The Phils won their second consecutive National League championship last night, and they did it with some excellent work by the boys in the 'pen.

Sure, Jayson Werth and Shane Victorino had the big hits in the 10-4 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 5 of the NL Championship Series.

But J.A. Happ, Chad Durbin, and Ryan Madson got some huge outs in relief of increasingly unsteady Cole Hamels.

Durbin retired the dangerous Manny Ramirez with the game on the line in the fifth inning, and Madson navigated a no-out, bases-loaded jam in the eighth by allowing just one run.

In all, the Phillies' bullpen picked up 42/3 innings and allowed just one run. Over the last three games of the series, Phils relievers pitched 82/3 innings and gave up just one run.

Next stop: The World Series.

Here's a look at some key moments in last night's game:

Hamels opened the game with two quick outs before allowing a home run to Andre Ethier in the first inning.

He started Ethier with three straight off-speed pitches (curveball, change-up, curveball) to get ahead, 1-2. He then threw four straight fastballs, and Ethier fouled off each one. Hamels appeared to become frustrated with his inability to put away Ethier, who hit just .194 against lefthanded pitching in the regular season. Instead of changing the look on Ethier and using his change-up or curveball, Hamels stuck with his fastball, and Ethier clubbed it into the right-field seats for a 1-0 Dodgers lead.

Can the Phillies win the World Series with Hamels pitching this way? He failed to get out of the fifth inning last night. His ERA in three starts (142/3 innings) this postseason is 6.75. Last year, he had a 1.80 ERA in five starts (35 innings).

Like Hamels, Dodgers starter Vicente Padilla got two quick outs in the first inning, then hit a patch of trouble. He walked Chase Utley on five pitches and Ryan Howard on four.

With the crowd getting loud, Padilla threw three consecutive balls to Werth, then clawed back to get the count full. Werth fouled off a fastball before getting another (93 m.p.h.) over the heart of the plate and driving it into the right-field seats to make it a 3-1 game. As the old saying goes, it's not the home runs that kill you, it's the walks before them.

Werth homered again in the seventh inning.

The Phillies took a 4-2 lead into the bottom of the fourth and quickly built it to 5-2 on a leadoff single by Werth and an RBI double by Raul Ibanez. Both hits came on Padilla sliders.

Ibanez's double chased Padilla from the game. Reliever Ramon Troncoso allowed a one-out walk to Carlos Ruiz and hit Jimmy Rollins with a pitch with two outs.

With the switch-hitter Victorino due up, Dodgers manager Joe Torre made a desperate move. Clearly thinking that the game was on the line at this point, Torre went to his primary eighth-inning man, George Sherrill. How unusual a move was that? Well, the lefthander had pitched just once before the seventh inning in the last three seasons. He hadn't entered a game in the fourth inning since his rookie season of 2004.

Sherrill threw three straight balls to Victorino before hitting him with a 3-1 pitch, forcing in the Phils' sixth run. Sherrill then struck out Utley to end the inning with the Phils up, 6-2.

Hamels' mystifying mediocrity continued in the top of the fifth when he quickly gave back a run on a pinch-hit homer by Orlando Hudson. He then allowed a double to Rafael Furcal. That was enough for manager Charlie Manuel, who yanked Hamels in favor of Happ.

Happ walked Ronnie Belliard, putting two men on base for the dangerous Ethier. Ethier did Happ a favor, swinging at the first pitch and popping to left for the second out.

But the threat was not over. Ramirez, the potential tying run, was the next hitter. Manuel went to righthander Durbin, who clearly was not intimidated by Ramirez. Durbin got two quick strikes on Ramirez, then jammed him on a 2-2 fastball. The pitch resulted in a half-swing, a broken bat, and a little roller back to Durbin, who threw to first for the third out.

Ramirez's swing has lacked quickness since he returned at midseason from a 50-game suspension for using performance-enhancing drugs. That's why teams began pounding him inside late in the season. Durbin followed that blueprint beautifully and got arguably the biggest out of the game. He pitched a scoreless sixth and was (most deservedly) the winning pitcher in the biggest win of the season.

Remember what we said about walks that precede home runs? The same thing goes for hit batsmen. They kill you when they're followed by a home run.

Trying to keep the game close, Dodgers reliever Clayton Kershaw retired the first two batters in the bottom of the sixth inning before hitting Rollins with a 1-1 fastball.

Rollins is always a threat to run, and Kershaw tried to keep him close with a pick-off attempt. His concentration against the hitter, Victorino, may have lagged. The first pitch to Victorino was a 94-m.p.h. fastball down the middle. Victorino lined it into the left-field seats to give the Phils an 8-3 cushion.

Home runs by Victorino and Werth accounted for six of the Phillies' runs. That was sweet math for both players. Both have found success in Philadelphia after being let go by the Dodgers. Victorino was picked up in the Rule 5 draft before the 2005 season. He did not make the Phillies' roster out of spring training and was offered back to the Dodgers, who said "No, thanks."

Werth was a Dodger from 2004 to 2006. He was injured for the entire 2006 season, and the Dodgers didn't tender him a contract that winter. Former Phillies general manager Pat Gillick, who had drafted Werth a decade earlier when he was GM of the Baltimore Orioles, called Werth the day after the Dodgers let him go and offered him a deal.

Needless to say, the Dodgers castoffs have played a big role in the Phillies' rise to the top of the NL the last two years.

The Phils are 18-5 the last two postseasons. They are 11-1 at home.