LOS ANGELES (AP) -Whenever the Philadelphia Phillies need a boost, their backups on the bench are ready to provide it.
Part-time third baseman Greg Dobbs is 6-for-11 (.545) in the playoffs, including 3-for-6 with a double, a walk and two runs scored in the NL championship series. Matt Stairs, another left-handed batter, came through with a pinch-hit homer that broke an eighth-inning tie Monday night in Game 4.
“We’ve all been around for a while and it’s a situation where I know the lefties have been talking about who we’re going to be facing, the type of pitching they’re going to throw,” Stairs said after Philadelphia beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 7-5 to move within one win of the World Series.
Stairs became the third Phillies player with a pinch-hit home run in the NLCS, joining Bake McBride and Jerry Martin. They connected against the Dodgers in 1978.
e know we have a strong bench coming off and the leadership of a lot of characters on the team that are pulling for each other,” Stairs said.
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KNUCKLED UNDER: Tim Wakefield’s domination of Tampa Bay was bound to end.
It did, this year.
The Boston knuckleballer was 19-3 lifetime against the Rays entering this season, then went 0-2 with a 5.87 ERA in three matchups with them.
Wakefield will face them for the first time in postseason play in Game 4 of the AL championship series on Tuesday night against Andy Sonnanstine.
“There’s been some struggles this year,” Red Sox manager Terry Francona said before Boston’s 9-1 loss to Tampa Bay in Game 3 on Monday. “Part of that is the fact that they’re now a 97-win team as opposed to 67. Some of it is they have different players.”
Whether he pitches well or poorly, Wakefield said he grips the ball the same way he’s done it for 15 years. He went 10-11 with a 4.13 ERA this year for the defending World Series champions.
“The change is in my delivery, or finger pressures,” the 42-year-old righty said. “Obviously my mechanics, my margin of error is very small because I have to try to throw it without any spin. If I come out of my delivery at all, the ball is going to spin out of my hand, and that’s when it gets kind of ugly out there.”
all is fluttering all over the strike zone, Wakefield can be unhittable.
“We’ve had a little bit better success more recently against him, and I really don’t know why,” Rays manager Joe Maddon said. “When that thing is righteous and on, nobody hits it on any given day.”
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PIERRE IN, KEMP OUT: Juan Pierre made his first start of the postseason in Game 4 of the NL championship series, replacing Matt Kemp in center field for Los Angeles.
Pierre went 2-for-3 and scored a run in a 7-5 loss that left the Dodgers trailing 3-1 in the best-of-seven series.
Pierre signed a $44 million, five-year contract before the 2007 season, and played in just one of the Dodgers’ first six playoff games, going hitless in one at-bat.
“Matt’s been fighting himself a little bit,” manager Joe Torre said. “I just told him just take a day. We’ve done this before. So we’ll send Juan out to center field and Matt will probably be a part of it before the day is over. I didn’t think it would hurt to take him out from what I’ve seen.”
Kemp entered as a pinch hitter in the sixth and drew a walk. He stayed in to play center.
Torre said Kemp will start Wednesday night in Game 5 against Philadelphia lefty Cole Hamels.
r-old left-handed hitter batted .283 with one homer, 28 RBIs and 40 stolen bases in 52 attempts.
Pierre had his consecutive games played streak snapped at 434 when he didn’t play on opening day. He wound up playing 119 games after playing a full season in each of the previous five years.
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LINEUP CHANGES: Boston shortstop Alex Cora and Tampa Bay right fielder Rocco Baldelli started Monday for the first time in the AL championship series.
Neither appeared in the first two games when Jed Lowrie played shortstop for the Red Sox and Gabe Gross was in right field for the Rays.
Baldelli hit a three-run homer in Tampa Bay’s 9-1 win in Game 3. Cora went 1-for-4.
Boston manager Terry Francona prefers the left-handed hitting Cora against a hard-throwing righty like Matt Garza, who started for the Rays. The change also gave Francona flexibility with the switch-hitting Lowrie available to pinch-hit.
“With the bunch of lefties they have in their bullpen, we can have Lowrie sitting over there, where (right-handed) has been his more successful side,” Francona said.
Baldelli played in 27 games with the Rays this year after wondering in spring training if a mitochondrial disorder, a condition that slows muscle recovery and causes extreme fatigue, might end his career.
many doctors as he could,” Game 4 scheduled starter Andy Sonnanstine said. “It’s just amazing. It speaks a lot about his character to just get through it and persevere and get back to playing.”
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HAMELS RESTED: While Game 1 loser Derek Lowe worked on three days’ rest in Game 4 of the NLCS, Game 1 winner Cole Hamels said it never occurred to him.
Hamels will pitch for the Phillies in Game 5 on Wednesday night, getting an extra day of rest. He’ll oppose Game 2 loser Chad Billingsley, who will go on normal rest.
“I think pitching every five days is a good assessment of what I can do and what I’m capable of doing,” Hamels said. “And I can be at my best. I don’t think they want to risk it with me trying to go an extra day early for one more win, because it takes four. And if it causes me to have some extra soreness, I know the next time around I might not be as successful.”
Hamels, a 24-year-old lefty, was 14-10 with a 3.09 ERA in his third season with the Phillies. He established career highs with 33 starts, 227 1-3 innings and 196 strikeouts. He said he would like to work on short rest at some point, but because he never has, he wouldn’t want to risk it in the postseason.
And I think it will be something where it will show what I’m truly capable of doing, whenever we make the postseason again.”
Manager Charlie Manuel believes the Phillies have handled Hamels properly.
“I think that we have to have a plan,” he said. “I think it was the right plan.”
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MADDON’S MEMORIES: Joe Maddon was 21 years old when he pinch-hit for World Series star-to-be Joe Carter.
It happened in 1975, the manager of the Tampa Bay Rays recalled, when the Boulder Collegians won the National Baseball Congress national championship. Others who played for the Collegians in the ’70s were outfielder Tony Gwynn and pitcher Burt Hooton.
“I don’t know how many guys were drafted in the first round out of that particular team,” Maddon said Monday. “I was a player-coach and actually got a chance to pinch-hit for Joe Carter in the NBC world championship at Wichita that year. Jim Dietz was the manager.
“Jim gave me a lot of leeway with it. And eventually when I made it to managing in the minor leagues and being a scout with the Angels, it was an invaluable experience for me.”
Eighteen years later, Carter hit the World Series-winning homer for Toronto against Philadelphia in Game 6 in 1993.
Maddon attended Lafayette College from 1972-76, where he majored in economics and was a catcher.
ut Boulder is “where it all began for me,” he said. “I don’t want to get too long winded about this, but that part of amateur baseball no longer exists. And that was a tremendous program between Alaska and Kansas and Colorado, and I wish that would come back.”
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AP Sports Writer Howard Ulman in Boston contributed to this report.
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