Roy Halladay’s pitching helps Philadelphia Phillies defeat Washington Nationals 7-3 - Part 1
The Philadelphia Phillies were successful in sweeping the Washington Nationals 7-3 at Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia on Thursday, May 5.
In the first game of the series on May 3, the Phillies won 4-1 against the Nationals. May 4 saw the Phillies once against win, this time 7-4 over Washington. In the final game that took place on May 5, Philadelphia defeated the Nationals 7-3 and effectively
swept their opponents.
Currently the Phillies are tied with the Cleveland Indians for the best record in Major League Baseball at 21-9. They are leading the National League East and have won 11 out of 14 games.
This game marked the first time for the Nationals to be swept in a series. No other franchise had managed to do that until the Phillies came along.
The final game was a display of team effort and collaborations. Roy Halladay struck-out 10 and Raul Ibanez followed his instincts and belted out hits without over analysing each and every move. He hit a home-run and three RBIs during the game, as the Phillies
went on to take a solid victory.
Currently, Ibanez is eight for eleven along with five extra bases since snapping out from a 0-for-35 slump. "Hitting can be counterintuitive sometimes," Ibanez said. "You think it's better to swing harder, but it's not."
Ibanez has often been termed by Philadelphia’s manager, Charlie Manuel as a worrier. Manuel believes that Ibanez works relentlessly trying to overcome slumps and almost always over analyses his swing.
"He's got a shorter swing, quicker bat, he's staying on the ball, being selective," Manuel said. "The biggest thing is he's getting hits."
Halladay, who is the current National League Cy Young Award winner allowed two runs and six hits to pass him by as he won his tenth consecutive decision against the Nationals. The Cy Young Award is the most coveted pitching award in Major League Baseball.
National’s manager Jim Riggleman said, "We battled against Halladay, had some good at-bats and made him work for it."
The Doc, as he is often termed, has managed to win 13 starts, one after the other, in the National League East. He leads the Majors as he logged his seventh career game in which he had at the very least 10 strike-outs and let no one walk throughout the game.
"We seem to score a lot of runs when I pitch against them," he commented.
It will be interesting to see how the Phillies carry their winning momentum into their next match-up. The Nationals put in a decent performance, but unfortunately it was not enough to contain the strength of the Phillies’ offence.
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