MVN - Most Valuable Network

Moyer drops Marlins again

Jamie Moyer started Friday night’s game at Dolphin Stadium. Need I say more? The 40-something-year-old and his wondrous 76 mile-per-hour changeup once again stifled the Marlins and dropped them to 2.5 games back, dashing any hopes they had of taking the division lead this weekend. Moyer is now 10-0 lifetime against Florida.

On the other side of the generation gap, Ricky Nolasco didn’t have a bad night but he didn’t have a great night and wound up taking a tough loss, his first since June 5. The 25-year-old’s night got off to a rocky start as the Phillies’ usual suspects did immediate damage. A couple of hanging curveballs lead to a couple of home runs, one by Ryan Howard, who has hit safely in all but one of his last 17 games and one by Geoff Jenkins, who, after a rough June, is beginning to settle back into his groove. It was Jenkins’ second hit and second RBI of the night. Chase Utley also plated a run before Nolasco found his own groove in the 5th, getting out of a two on no out situation. He went on to toss a perfect 6th and 7th but the damage had already been done. You can’t win ‘em all. If Nolasco is looking for something to find comfort in, it can be the fact that he’s made it to the 6th inning in his last eight starts or the fact that he’s only allowed 15 earned runs over that span.

The Marlins only real chance to get back into the game came in the 4th as they set up with runners at the corners and no outs. A batter later, Mike Jacobs loaded the bases but Moyer then got Dan Uggla to ground into a double play and induced a Josh Willingham pop up, limiting the damage to just two runs. After that, all the Marlins managed off of Phillies pitching was two singles.

This series continues tomorrow. Kyle Kendrick vs Scott Olsen.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 19th, 2008 at 3:46 pm and is filed under Game Recaps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.