Pedro Gets The Job Done, Bats Wake Up in 12-5 beating of the Cubs

The much anticipated start of Pedro Martinez turned out well for the Fightin Phils as they rolled to a 12-5 victory over the Cubs last night. Pedro struck out 5 in 5 innings of work and had some good velocity on his pitches and his location was better then expected. It is a little to soon to completely evaluate what Pedro will do for this team but it is nice to have another right handed pitcher in the rotation who is a big game pitcher. What I liked about Pedro's start last night was he threw strikes. In the early going Pedro ended a few innings with strike outs and gained confidence early on. This is still only his first start in over a year and he will only get better and more comfortable. The offense got going last night in a big way, "Everybody Hits.....WoooHooo!!!" type of night. Victorino tripled in the first, followed up with a double by Utley and then Big Brown, Mr. Howard trucked around the bases with a head first sliding triple to put the Phils up 2-0 before Martinez even stood on the mound. Then in the third Victorino sent a 2 run blast deep to right field to put the Phils up 4-1. The 4th inning the South Philly Bombers put up a snowman on the Cubbies in one of the more exciting offensive innings all year. The Phils batted around plus 2 with 2 of the outs coming from the pitcher in that inning. Rollins and Ibanez both hit 3 run homers that inning and Werth had a single and a double and Feliz reached base twice with a pair of singles. With a 12-1 lead now all Pedro had to do was not implode and he successfully did that. I got argued with during the game for saying that it would have been a lot closer if Moyer was on the mound but I don't care what others was saying. Pedro is gonna do a much better job then what Moyer has been doing lately and he gives the Phillies a better chance of winning.

Later on in the game with the bases loaded and 1 out, a deep fly ball was hit to center where Victorino went under it to catch it. Some idiot Cubs fans decides to throw a plastic cup of beer at Victorino right as the ball was going into his glove. Of course since this is in Chicago the national media seems to ignore such bad behavior by the lovable cubby fans. If this was in Philly, we would be hearing it over and over again. More on this topic later.

Today the Phillies go for the sweep in a Thursday afternoon matinee with the General Cliff Lee on the mound against Ryan Dempster.