Entering this postseason, the area that made Phillies fans most nervous was the bullpen.
How do you like it now?
The Phils won their second consecutive National League championship Wednesday night, and they did it with some excellent work by the boys in the 'pen.
Sure, Jayson Werth and Shane Victorino had the big hits in the 10-4 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 5 of the NL Championship Series.
But J.A. Happ, Chad Durbin, and Ryan Madson got some huge outs in relief of increasingly unsteady Cole Hamels.
Durbin retired the dangerous Manny Ramirez with the game on the line in the fifth inning, and Madson navigated a no-out, bases-loaded jam in the eighth by allowing just one run.
In all, the Phillies' bullpen picked up 42/3 innings and allowed just one run. Over the last three games of the series, Phils relievers pitched 82/3 innings and gave up just one run.
Next stop: The World Series.
Here's a look at some key moments in Wednesday night's game:
Hamels opened the game with two quick outs before allowing a home run to Andre Ethier in the first inning.
He started Ethier with three straight off-speed pitches (curveball, change-up, curveball) to get ahead, 1-2. He then threw four straight fastballs, and Ethier fouled off each one. Hamels appeared to become frustrated with his inability to put away Ethier, who hit just .194 against lefthanded pitching in the regular season. Instead of changing the look on Ethier and using his change-up or curveball, Hamels stuck with his fastball, and Ethier clubbed it into the right-field seats for a 1-0 Dodgers lead.
Can the Phillies win the World Series with Hamels pitching this way? He failed to get out of the fifth inning Wednesday night. His ERA in three starts (142/3 innings) this postseason is 6.75. Last year, he had a 1.80 ERA in five starts (35 innings).
Like Hamels, Dodgers starter Vicente Padilla got two quick outs in the first inning, then hit a patch of trouble. He walked Chase Utley on five pitches and Ryan Howard on four.
With the crowd getting loud, Padilla threw three consecutive balls to Werth, then clawed back to get the count full. Werth fouled off a fastball before getting another (93 m.p.h.) over the heart of the plate and driving it into the right-field seats to make it a 3-1 game. As the old saying goes, it's not the home runs that kill you, it's the walks before them.
Werth homered again in the seventh inning.
