Thursday\u2019s Opening Day game against the Texas Rangers had everything a Phillies fan could want: A Schwarbomb, an impressive debut from a rookie, filthy pitching from Cristopher Sanchez, and a way-too-interesting ninth inning. Put it all together, and the Phillies improved to 1-0 on the season with a 5-3 win.<\/p>\n
After Sanchez worked around two ground ball singles in the first, the Phillies scored their first runs of the season with the old bloop-blast combination. Trea Turner beat out an infield single, and Kyle Schwarber went opposite field.<\/p>\n
Rangers started Nathan Eovaldi settled down after that, but he did give up a single to Justin Crawford on the first pitch he saw as a major leaguer.<\/p>\n
In the fifth, Crawford improved to 2-2 in his career with another single, and when Turner followed with another hit, it looked like the Phillies were ready to pile on. But Eovaldi struck out Schwarber and Bryce Harper, which left things in the hands of Alec Bohm.<\/p>\n
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There were a lot of complaints about Bohm serving as the team\u2019s cleanup hitter, but for one game, it certainly worked out well.<\/p>\n
Sanchez was faring far better than Eovaldi. He looked to be in midseason form as he tore through the Rangers\u2019 lineup. He even seemed to be getting stronger as the game went on, striking out the last four batters he faced.<\/p>\n
There are some questions about the Phillies\u2019 bullpen, and manager Rob Thomson tried to cover the final three innings with middle relievers Jonathan Bowlan, Zach Pop, and Kyle Backhus. Bowlan and Pop were able to get through their innings \u2013 including the Phillies\u2019 first ever ABS challenge.<\/p>\n
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I question why Thomson didn\u2019t use closer Jhoan Duran in the ninth. Yes, you normally don\u2019t want to use your closer with a five-run lead, but it\u2019s Opening Day: You\u2019ve got an off day tomorrow, so why not give the festive crowd what they want to see? Not to mention, this would have been an excruciating loss, so why mess around?<\/p>\n
Instead, we got Backhus, and the Spring Training darling did not look good. Two batters in, and the lead was cut to 5-2.<\/p>\n
After another single, Backhus was finally able to retire a batter, but a poor fielding decision by Bryson Stott and an errant throw by Bryce Harper, put a runner at third base.<\/p>\n
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Duran belatedly entered the game, and although he allowed the tying run to reach the plate, he eventually got Even Carter to ground out to secure the win.<\/p>\n
Sadly, the Phillies\u2019 momentum will be stalled by tomorrow\u2019s off day. I understand why they schedule the break, but it\u2019s one of the most annoying things in sports. On the bright side, we get an extra 24 hours to celebrate the big days by Schwarber, Bohm, Crawford, and Sanchez There are certainly worse fates in the world!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thursday\u2019s Opening Day game against the Texas Rangers had everything a Phillies fan could want: A Schwarbomb, an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2397],"tags":[1651,5,1207,1715,5143,3276,13041,5159,21334,81,4,394,3838,144,25,4216,40,69,1713,23295],"class_list":["post-645480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia-phillies","tag-alec-bohm","tag-baseball","tag-bryce-harper","tag-bryson-stott","tag-cristopher-sanchez","tag-jhoan-duran","tag-jonathan-bowlan","tag-justin-crawford","tag-kyle-backhus","tag-kyle-schwarber","tag-mlb","tag-nathan-eovaldi","tag-pennsylvania","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-phillies","tag-philadelphiaphillies","tag-phillies","tag-texas-rangers","tag-trea-turner","tag-zach-pop"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116298099710230703","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}