Blanton, Vazquez hardly dazzling as Phillies beat Marlins
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. - The prelude to a pitcher's duel anticipated across all of baseball was far from stimulating. A Sunday night game played immediately before a nine-day road trip meant the Phillies arrived at their Florida hotel at about 4 a.m. Monday. Maybe 4,000 fans dotted Sun Life Stadium when Marlins starter Javier Vazquez delivered an 88-m.p.h. fastball to Jimmy Rollins at 7:11 p.m.
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. - The prelude to a pitcher's duel anticipated across all of baseball was far from stimulating. A Sunday night game played immediately before a nine-day road trip meant the Phillies arrived at their Florida hotel at about 4 a.m. Monday. Maybe 4,000 fans dotted Sun Life Stadium when Marlins starter Javier Vazquez delivered an 88-m.p.h. fastball to Jimmy Rollins at 7:11 p.m.
Two hours and 50 minutes later, the Phillies had won, 6-4, and there was nothing memorable about it. Seven pitchers allowed 23 hits, and the Marlins had a runner on base in every inning.
When it was over, Joe Blanton could lay claim only to not being as horrible as Vazquez. Blanton allowed at least one runner to reach in each of his five innings in his return from the disabled list. In those five innings, the Phillies turned four double plays behind him.
"I was a little rusty in the first couple," said Blanton, who pitched in a game for the first time in 16 days.
Vazquez was worse even without that excuse. Of the 75 pitches he threw in 41/3 innings, the Phillies swung and missed at none. The $7 million offseason acquisition has a 6.88 ERA for the Marlins.
On Tuesday, if the pitching is not better, it will be an utter shock. Roy Halladay opposes Josh Johnson in a matchup of two pitchers who have practiced complete domination of the National League. When they take the mound, the games are crisp, tense, and quick.
None of that happened Monday. Both teams offended the baseball deities with head-scratching plays.
"It wasn't exactly going along at a fast pace, was it?" Charlie Manuel said.
During a third-inning rally fueled by singles, Placido Polanco ran straight through third base coach Juan Samuel's stop sign. Realizing his mistake, he pulled up midway between third and home. Florida leftfielder Emilio Bonifacio, thinking he could throw out Polanco, hurried a wild toss to home that sailed over the catcher's head.
Polanco paused momentarily, then broke for home. Marlins catcher John Buck scrambled for the ball near the backstop and threw it to Vazquez covering home in plenty of time to tag Polanco. Vazquez fumbled it. Polanco scored in a comedy of errors.
Two innings earlier, Samuel had waved Ryan Howard in from second base on a single to left. That miscalculation caused Howard to cease running about 10 feet shy of home plate, where he harmlessly touched Buck to record his own out. He returned to the dugout laughing.
Blanton threw only 66 pitches in his first start since April 23 after being disabled with a sore elbow. In his bullpen sessions, he threw no more than 40 pitches, so the Phillies were not expecting great length.
He survived only because of his defense. The four double plays - 3-6-1, 5-4-3, 4-6-3, and 6-4-3 - limited Florida to only three runs despite 10 men on base in the first five innings.
Blanton was the first pitcher in five years to have four double plays turned behind him in five or fewer innings. Joel Pineiro did it in 2006 while pitching for Seattle.
"That's called making the right pitches," Manuel said. "A lot of it is luck."
The most valuable pitching was provided by rookie Vance Worley, who absorbed three innings of relief. He allowed a home run to Gaby Sanchez in the eighth but kept a close game from becoming even closer.
That enabled Ryan Madson to wiggle through the ninth for his fourth save.
By then, the remaining fans were most interested in the periodic score updates of the Heat-Celtics game flashed on the scoreboard between innings.
In the eighth inning of a two-run game, an "E-A-G-L-E-S" chant erupted some 1,800 miles from home. Those chants continued into the ninth.
Two pitchers named Halladay and Johnson should shift the focus to actual baseball on Tuesday.
