Phillies Pound Jays 10-0
Posted June 27, 2009 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Brad Mills has shown small glimpses of why the Toronto Blue Jays feel he’s got a bright future but right now the left-hander is heading back to triple-A so he can continue to work on his game.
The left-hander was battered for eight runs on eight hits and two walks in four-plus innings Saturday afternoon, and was optioned to Las Vegas after a 10-0 loss to the World Series-champion Philadelphia Phillies.
“Hopefully I’ll know what to expect when it happens again, as far as getting to pitch up here,” said Mills, who gave up four runs in 3 2-3 innings in his debut at Philadelphia on June 18. “Get over the nervousness and all that stuff.
“I still know my stuff plays up here. I just have to execute a little better.”
It was the Phillies who were executing on Saturday, ending a three-game losing streak and winning for just the third time in 14 games.
J.A. Happ pitched a five-hitter and Jayson Werth, a former Blue Jay, homered twice, including a two-run shot in the four-run first that travelled into the 500 level, the 14th homer ever to reach the upper deck at Rogers Centre.
“When I hit it, I didn’t know if it was going to stay fair,” Werth said. “I watched it a little bit longer than I usually do but it stayed pretty straight.”
He has 12 hits, eight of them home runs, with 17 runs batted in over 36 career at-bats against the Blue Jays, who traded him to the Los Angeles Dodgers for relief pitcher Jason Frasor in 2004. His other home run Saturday, and his 15th of the season, led off the sixth against B.J. Ryan before a crowd of 28,801.
“We’ll be kind of glad to see that last of him,” said Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston.
The Blue Jays fell to 4-1 this season versus the Phillies, who held a 20-minute meeting after Friday’s 6-1 loss. They took their frustrations out on Mills (0-1), who struck out seven batters but left far too many pitches up.
“Once he got his changeups down, you know they move a little bit and they run away, and he seemed to get guys swinging through them and popping them up,” Gaston said. “He will be back, he just needs to get the ball down in the strike zone.”
Mills’ demotion clears a spot for ace Roy Halladay, who’ll come off the disabled list and start Monday versus Tampa Bay.
The Phillies opened a 4-0 lead in the first on Werth’s mammoth homer and another two-run blast by Pedro Feliz.
That would be all Happ (5-0) would need as he pitched the first shutout and complete game of his short big-league career.
Gaston felt giving up such a long home run in the second at-bat of the game had to shake his 24-year-old. The last player to reach the 500 level was Blue Jays centre-fielder Vernon Wells, on Sept. 14, 2004.
“If you have any insides at all, I think it’s got to affect you a bit,” Gaston said. “And then not even get through the inning and give up another one. But that’s just part of growing.
“He battled back and gave us some innings.”
Mills said the blast was “no different than any other home run.”
He allowed a run in the fourth on a one-out single by Chris Coste and a two-out double by Carlos Ruiz.
In the fifth, Mills allowed Werth’s leadoff double, a walk to Chase Utley and Ryan Howard’s run-scoring single on his 95th and final pitch.
Shawn Camp replaced Mills with runners at the corners and no outs and hit John Mayberry to load the bases. Coste knocked in a run with a single, Eric Bruntlett hit a sacrifice fly and Ruiz’s infield hit scored the fourth run of the inning.
Phillies manager Charlie Manuel had hoped to wake his team up with Friday’s meeting and he seemed to accomplish that.
“Usually you have to have anywhere from two to four of those meetings a year,” Manuel said. “If you can get under four, that means you’re doing pretty good.”
