The Phillies Advance

Celebrate Good Times

I'm a day late and not really having enough time or skin in the game on this, but the real fun of sports is when you see players achieve in stress situations. Especially when it's surprising.

In the 8th inning of the clinching win, Seranthony Dominguez, with an ERA of over 11 since returning from injury, struck out Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado with men on base to preserve the lead. The fact that Phillies (somehow still interim) manager Rob Thomson did this, and it worked, was everything about this.

For the Cardinals faithful, multiple Hall of Fame careers ending in back to back losses at home has to be hard to take. But that's baseball, and while it's very small consolation, the final at-bats from Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina were base hits. Not so much from their MVPs.

It's all small sample size and that's the fun of it, and whether it will hold up against the Braves is a whole 'nother matter, but who cares. They won. They get to keep playing, probably against a Braves pitching staff that will make them look very, very bad. But at least some of those games will be at home -- and unlike the Mets, they are still playing baseball. Good times!