The Official Site of Chase Utley

Mon, Apr 13th 2009, 12:14

Utley, Stairs rally Phillies past the Rockies

If you let the Phillies hang around long enough, they can turn a game around with a couple of big swings.

Flash back to the National League Championship Series, when Chase Utley and Pat Burrell cranked late home runs to lead the team to victory in Game 1 in Philly. Or fire up the DVD highlights from a few nights later, when Shane Victorino and Matt Stairs pulled off the same trick in Game 4 at Dodger Stadium.

While Chan Ho Park didn’t resemble the hungry pitcher who chased down the vacant fifth starter’s spot this spring, the Phils bats looked a lot like the late-inning heroes of the fall Sunday at Coors Field.

“Charlie (Manuel) told me in about the fourth inning, if we keep this game close, we’re going to win it. He knows,” Stairs said. “We have the type of team. We have good hitters, and we have a lot of power … a few bloops and a blast, and we’re back in it.”

After Utley smacked a game-tying homer in the eighth, Stairs boomed a two-run blast of his own an inning later to help the Phillies erase an early four-run deficit and defeat the Colorado Rockies, 7-5.

“Stairs is amazing — absolutely unreal,” Manuel said of Stairs ability to come off the bench and hit home runs, something the 41-year-old Canadian has done four times since joining the Phillies in late August. “It amazes me because I had that job for four or five years. That’s a tough job.”

Stairs further cemented his cult-like status in Philadelphia with a 432-foot bomb off Colorado closer Huston Street. After Pedro Feliz led off with a double and Chris Coste followed with a sacrifice bunt, all Stairs had to do was hit a sacrifice fly.

But as he said afterward, he tries “to hit every ball as far as I can.”

Stairs waited on a changeup — which he said Street fooled him with when both were in the American League last year — and unleashed a swing that wasn’t unlike the moon shot in Chavez Ravine in October.

“My approach doesn’t change,” said Stairs, who gave his buddies in the bullpen a souvenir. “It’s amazing how it just came up last year that I try to hit home runs — it’s been like that for 15 years.

“It doesn’t happen as much as I’d like to, but it seems like the last couple of times, it’s worked out pretty well.”

After Park’s early struggles, the Phils bullpen five-some of Chad Durbin, Scott Eyre, Clay Condrey, Ryan Madson, and Brad Lidge kept Colorado off the scoreboard while the bats chipped away at the four-run deficit.

“The bullpen was huge today,” Utley said of their 5-2/3 shutout innings. “We don’t win if they don’t do that.”

Jayson Werth (7-for-12 in the series) hit RBI singles in back-to-back at-bats in the fourth and sixth innings to make it 5-3 Rockies. The lead disappeared in the eighth, when Utley followed a leadoff single from Shane Victorino with a two-run bomb into the first row of the right field bleachers.

Utley, whose availability for Opening Day was in question a month ago, finished with his fourth consecutive two-hit game and leads the Phillies in hitting with a robust .476 batting average.

“Pure hitters can take off for a while and come back — he’s a pure hitter for sure,” Stairs said of Utley’s start despite battling back from hip surgery. “If there’s a spot for pure and professional hitters, he’s the one. I’m not surprised.”

A hot start is not rare for Utley — he hit .323 with 14 home runs in the first six weeks of 2008.

“I’m still a work in progress, trying to take it at-bat to at-bat,” Utley said when asked if he feels as comfortable as he did last season. “I’m just trying to find a rhythm and go from there.”

Continue reading….