Well. That didn't go the way we wanted it to, did it?
The worst part of it was, despite what you are going to hear and read for the next 40+ hours until the Phillies play again, Charlie Manuel managed the game the right way.
Forget about the last-minute lineup switch of flip-flopping Chase Utley and Ryan Howard in the lineup, in the grand scheme of things it means little. Most importantly, don't think that the home run Brett Myers gave up in the eighth inning to bring the Braves into a 3-3 tie with the Phillies was due to fatigue and negligence on the part of Manuel to let him go back out there for the inning, despite having thrown nearly one hundred pitches.
After retiring the Braves 1-2-3 with two strikeouts in the seventh, Myers had Edgar Renteria right where he wanted him in the eighth, on an 0-2 count with two outs. What Myers and catcher Rod Barajas should have elected to do was throw a splitter or a curve ball in the dirt and see if Renteria would chase. Instead, Myers threw a fastball down the middle, Renteria nailed it, and the game was tied.
In the ninth inning, Manuel did the right thing by bringing in his best reliever to preserve the tie, Tom Gordon, and in the tenth inning, he did the right thing by bringing in his next best reliever to again preserve the tie.
Photo credit: AP/Phillies.com
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