This series was as chaotic as a first home series of the season could get. The home opener was, in hindsight, unnecessarily postponed to the following day. Vibes were high, the new scoreboard is huge, rings were received, and expectations remain high for this ball club in spite of two terrible series to start the season.
The pitching this whole series was better than expected and really is why the Phillies won the series. Wheeler, Falter, and Walker all had great home outings. Bellatti (an absolute workhorse to start the season), Soto, Alvarado, and Brogdon all did their jobs in relief the entire weekend. Seranthony fell apart in the third game to prevent the sweep and Kimbrel keeps giving scares, but overall the pitching was solid. Bellatti deserves a lot of credit and recognition for his vast improvement as he’s pitched in all but two games for the Phillies this year and hasn’t allowed a single run.
The offense keeps hitting and it’s finally starting to turn into runs, but the miscommunication on the bases has to be fixed sooner rather than later. Schwarber, Castellanos, and Marsh have all been caught at least once advancing to the next base when they had no shot at getting there safely. The Reds’ starting pitching in games one and two did a number on our lineup, but the boys were able to come through eventually. The most notable batters in this series were Sosa, Stott, Castellanos, Bohm, JT, and Marsh. They are each having fantastic starts to the season.
Castellanos messing with the pitcher while on third base is going to be fun to watch this year. This along with some timely hitting by him contributed to the first run in game one and helped the rally in game two. Sosa had a ridiculous highlight play at third base in the final game of the series, which is great to see considering we’re going to be seeing him there a lot more now.
A Stott walk-off to complete a three-run rally in the ninth brought back “Red October” energy and is hopefully the juice this team needed to get going. It’s a long season, but the Marlins are coming to town and they need to take care of business.
