Split with Marlins leaves Phillies a half-game behind Braves

The day-night doubleheader the Phillies played Monday at Citizens Bank Park was like night and day for the team's wildly inconsistent offense, and the result was a split decision with the Florida Marlins.

After managing just one hit in six innings against 28-year-old rookie Adalberto Mendez during an opening 7-1 loss to the Marlins, the Phillies batted around and scored five times in the second inning of Game 2 against Anibal Sanchez on their way to a 7-4 victory.

The doubleheader split left the Phillies a half-game behind the first-place Atlanta Braves, who dropped a 3-1 decision across the state in Pittsburgh.

The second-game offensive surge started with a leadoff single by Jimmy Rollins, who had been dropped from first to fifth in the batting order by manager Charlie Manuel because he was not producing as the leadoff man.

Manuel addressed Rollins' offensive slide after the first game. At the time, the shortstop was in a 4-for-34 tailspin.

"I just put him there," the manager said. "Obviously, he can knock in some runs, so I put him there."

"I see his swing comes and goes," Manuel said. "He has a good night, and then he has two or three nights where he doesn't hit the ball real good. He has been inconsistent. That's kind of what I see."

It's too soon to declare that Rollins has escaped his offensive malaise, because he went hitless in his next three at-bats, but at least he started something big in the second. Raul Ibanez followed Rollins' single with one of his own, and Sanchez self-destructed with consecutive walks to Domonic Brown and Carlos Ruiz, forcing home the Phillies' first run.

By the end of the second, Shane Victorino and Chase Utley had sandwiched RBI singles around a two-run double from Placido Polanco, and an offense that could not score through eight innings of Game 1 suddenly had given starter Roy Oswalt five early runs.

"It was just one of those nights, I guess," for Sanchez, Victorino said. "We were able to capitalize in that one inning and make it a big inning. We were able to focus in . . . and Polly came up with the big two-out knock. We just need to find a way to keep it going."

Oswalt, it turned out, needed the support because he had his least effective start since losing his Phillies debut July 30 against Washington. He allowed four runs on six hits in seven innings. Mike Stanton and Cameron Maybin hit solo home runs off Oswalt, and Hanley Ramirez followed a two-out walk in the third with a two-run homer that just cleared the fence in left field.

It was only the second time in eight starts with the Phillies that Oswalt allowed more than three runs, but it did not matter because the bats that had been missing sprang to life.

"I think it was the first time all year I won when I allowed four runs or more, so that's nice," Oswalt said.

The Phillies supported him with two more runs in the fifth off Sanchez when Utley hit an RBI single and Ibanez lined an RBI double to push the lead back to three runs.

After Game 1, Manuel was clearly miffed at the Phillies' inability to score against Mendez, who was making his major-league debut five days after being knocked out in the fourth inning of his previous start against triple-A Memphis.

"We had good reports" on Mendez, Manuel said. "He was everything we kind of figured he was. He threw fastball-slider, and we didn't do too much with it. His command wasn't real good, and he was given us balls to hit, but we just plain didn't hit them. That's all I can say."

Pitching, on quite a few occasions, has allowed the Phillies to overcome their offensive flaws, but a respectable five-inning outing by Vance Worley in his first major-league start was followed by a bullpen meltdown that turned Game 1 into a messy rout.

"I think our team will be remembered by how we finish," Manuel said. "We've hung in there. Our starting pitching has kept us in there. We're sitting in a good place, and now is a good time for us to pick it up and start putting some runs on the board consistently."

They put up enough runs in Game 2 and moved even closer to the first-place Braves.