Your Closer: Roy Oswalt 1-3

The Phillies went in this game knowing it wasn't gonna be easy, but it was an even harder loss. Reality of it is, Joe Blanton only did a little less than what you can expect out of him, and you can't blame him for the loss. He gave us his 3 runs and ate a few innings for us, and for both teams it became a weird twisted battle of the pens.

As it was promoted we went into this game with the debate of using Halladay on short rest. My previous post however was proven right to a tee. Blanton kept us in the game with 3 runs, and we scored 5. However they tied the game off of a clearly rusty Chad Durbin who came in to relieve Jose Contreras who recorded one out in the 5th. It was the kicker to another frustrating night by the umpires and the Phillies offense.

The bats keep showing signs of life, but it's just not consistent enough to keep a commanding lead. Every batter not in the 9-hole got a hit. That's literally. Well Polly got 2, but still. Nowhere near what we would expect out of this team. You add that to the spectacular calls by Derryl Cousins' Crew and that's the equation for a disappointing loss.

More strikezones were debated, and more calls were botched. In particular the Madison Bumgarner balk call that didn't occur. Jimmy Rollins attempted to steal 2nd-- I know, you haven't heard that in a while, right? Believe it. The moment Jimmy Rollins feels confident enough to go for a steal, and it gets ruined by a blatant balk. There were also some screwy foul-fair and fair-foul balls... If there's any reason to start reviewing umpires and their interaction in the game, use this NLCS as a prime example.

And yeah, before I forget. Roy Oswalt offered himself to pitch the 9th for Lidge. He figured he would give him a break since it's not a save situation. For real? Roy Oswalt gathers another loss for the postseason after throwing his bullpen session during a neck-and-neck game.