Halladay Settles Down, Bats Heat Up, And Phillies Clobber Cards 11-6

Below are some of the highlights of the Baseball Nation live-blog, which tells the story of the game in bite-sized portions.

You can probably figure out where this ball ended up (SPOILER: the seats). With one swing of the bat, the Cardinals took a 3-0 lead after just an inning.

But looking back now, we can interpret Halladay’s first inning as an act of generosity, as he spotted the Cardinals three runs just to try to give them a chance. Because after the first inning, Halladay went back to being himself.

So about that early 3-0 Cardinals lead. Did it hold up? As you’ve already figured out, it did not hold up. Not even close. But for whatever it’s worth, it did hold up for a while.

A win is now even more certain than before. In the top of the seventh, Halladay retired his 16th, 17th, and 18th consecutive hitters to keep the score where it was. Then the Phillies added on against the Cardinals bullpen.

In the bottom half, the first three reached on singles, including Halladay himself, who reached on an infield grounder. Two batters later, Ryan Howard narrowly missed a backbreaking grand slam, but still successfully hit a sac fly to push the score to 7-3.

Lohse’s line? 5⅓ innings, 6 runs. You’d never know from looking at that that Lohse retired the first ten guys he faced. Dotel retired the next two guys to end the sixth, but now the Cardinals are behind three with nine outs to go, and Roy Halladay has set down 15 batters in a row. Things...things don’t look so good for St. Louis.

Victorino took advantage of the opportunity. He didn’t wow anybody or anything, but he pulled a ground ball single into left field to score Utley and trim the deficit to 3-1. It went in the books as an unearned run, but, more importantly, it went in the books as a run.

So far, through three scoreless innings against the Phillies, Kyle Lohse has thrown just 23 pitches, putting him on pace to through 69 in a complete game.

Since 2000, the fewest pitches thrown in a playoff complete game were 99, by Mark Buehrle against the Angels in 2005. Why, Lohse is on pace to beat that mark by 30!

Again. Kyle Lohse.

Stunning headline, isn’t it? The last time Halladay allowed a home run with someone on base, it was June 5th. Neil Walker hit it for the contending Pittsburgh Pirates.

The last time he allowed a three-run home run? It was August 21, 2008, when Hideki Matsui hit one against Halladay.

There’s just one problem - games aren’t all about the starting pitcher matchups. Roy Halladay is an absolutely phenomenal starting pitcher, yes. Maybe - probably - the best in baseball. But the Cardinals have a good offense. They led the National League in everything this past season. And in the top of the first inning on Saturday, the Cardinals got out to a lead.

That’s bad. If you’re Halladay. That’s good, if you’re Berkman. Berkman jumped all over the first-pitch centered fastball and blasted it out to right for a three-run homer that certainly took everyone in the ballpark by surprise.

It’s just...it’s such a typical Phillies lineup. It’s the same players as ever. This thing is boring. It’s good, but it’s boring. It also isn’t something that looks like it’ll get shut down by Kyle Lohse, but who knows, since this is the playoffs, and perhaps my immediate opinion of Kyle Lohse doesn’t mirror reality.

Here’s a list of the big surprises:

Holliday: 153 OPS+

Craig: 153 OPS+

I like CoolStandings.com a lot. I like it an awful lot. I like it so much that I probably visit it at least once a week during the regular season, even in April and May. I don’t know why, but I guess I just really enjoy staring at playoff odds, calculated by a formula to which I am not privy.

So let’s consider those playoff odds for a moment. Even allowing for the fact that there’s no way these calculated playoff odds are perfect, I think it’s fair to say they represent approximations of the truth, yes? They can’t be that far off. At any given time, they give you a pretty good idea of where a team stands.

In his second season with the Phillies, Halladay was the star of a rotation billed as the “Four Aces”, posting a 19-6 record with a 2.35 E.R.A. and 220 strikeouts in 233 innings pitched. Halladay ranked in the Top 5 in the National League in every major statistical category, leading the NL for a second consecutive season with eight complete games.

St. Louis won six of the nine regular season games, including four of the five games in Philadelphia. The Cardinals took three-out-of-four from the Phillies in Citizens Bank Park in mid-September.