Now What? Phillies Try To Stay In First
The distance between the Phillies’ last visit to first place and this one has been a long and winding road. One-hundred days. A host of injuries. Hitting slumps. Starting pitching struggles.
They survived it, and now the Phillies were back in first place Tuesday night for the first time since May 30.
How did they get here? Well, baseball happened. They fell to seven games back of the hot Braves following a July 21 loss to the Cardinals. But the Phils started chipping away, despite losing Placido Polanco (back), Chase Utley (thumb), Ryan Howard (ankle), Shane Victorino (oblique) and others for extended periods of time.
In the process, the Phils relied on the likes of Wilson Valdez, Cody Ransom, Domonic Brown and Mike Sweeney. GM Ruben Amaro Jr. acquired Roy Oswalt, and the pitching has held up even as the bats have gone into extended skids.
The Phils made up the last bit of ground by winning 10 of their past 13 games as the Braves have now lost five of six.
Now the challenge becomes not letting first place slip away. Because as Charlie Manuel said, being in first place “is the only way to live.”
With that challenge again comes the task of scoring runs for Cole Hamels, who finally got some run support last week and turned it into a victory.
And there’s the task of surviving at least this game without Brad Lidge, who was unavailable Tuesday night with elbow soreness.
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