It took three starts and sellout home crowd, but Roy Oswalt delivered in a big way.  The big deadline acquisition three seven innings of shut-out ball. He allowed five hits, but K'd just as many.  Oswalt demonstrated all of his talents that made his such a desirable commodity.  Oswalt's final pitch hummed 95 mph by Matt Kemp as his 109th pitch of the night.  Some of his brilliance can definitely be credited to the big home crowd:

“There’s a lot more adrenaline than when your pitching in front of 15,000 fans trying to get to the end of the season,” Oswalt said. “I don’t get caught up looking around, but you can hear it’s a lot louder.”

Hopefully Roy can build on this because the Phillies could really use some dominant pitching with half the team on the DL.  If Roy, Roy, and Cole can pitch like this all together, the Phillies will have to be a playoff favorite.  However, we're a long way off before that, gotta make it there first.

Brad Lidge came in for the save and in typical (just kidding) Brad Lidge fashion he only needed 11 pitches to strike out two Dodgers and get a third for the quick save.  Throwing behind his only teammate Oswalt might have gotten him all jacked up, I don't know.  Regardless, it's much more fun no sweating out the ninth every once in a while.

Offensively, Ibanez continues to pace the team, extending his hitting streak to 18 games (Polanco is flying under the radar at 10 games himself).  Just when he looked like Ibanez might be washed-up, he puts this stretch together.  It's not about how you start, it's how you finish and I greatly prefer this sequence to last years.  Ibanez was certainly better in the first half of last season, but peaking through the finish line is what's important.

It's a tough one to lose Ross Gload right now.  He's been playing so well and doing a great job filling in for Ryan Howard.

1. First response isn't "what happened", it's "how did the Braves do?"  It's easy to say just worry about yourself, but in the stretch run every game counts for you and your rivals.  With a Braves win, the team is 2.5 games back in the division, also 1 game back in the wild card race.  This is striking distance, anything can happen at this distance even if it's like this with only a few games to play in September.

2. Kyle Kendrick is a frustrating pitcher.  Not because he's bad, because we all know that, but he lures me in with a few good outings and then BAM! shit outing.  3.1 innings, 8 hits, 6 runs (5 earned), 1 strike out.

3. Vicente Padilla getting a win against the Phillies always pisses me off.  I was so happy to see the big Venezuelan go, but for him to be a better pitcher now at 32 than he was for the Phillies at 27 is just nonsense.

4. Andre Ethier had four hits, scored four runs and reached base six times.  I've always liked that guy.

5. It's not often that you score 9 runs on 14 hits and lose big.  If I was especially determined today I'd do some research on that for you, but I'll settle for assuming it doesn't happen all to often.

6. 12 pitchers threw today and all but three of them allowed earned runs.  Octavio Dotel (.1 innings), Contreras (1), and Durbin (.2) all accomplished this amazing feat.  The bullpens combined for 10.2 innings, 18 hits, 14 runs.  Abominable.

7. The top four hitters in the Dodgers batting order -- Scott Podsednik, Ryan Theriot, Ethier and James Loney -- had 11 hits and scored 11 runs.  That might actually be the recipe for pitching failure.

8. Maybe it's the position?  Ross Gload jacked two two-run-HRs in the game and is doing a fantastic Ryan Howard impression these past few games he's been out.  Gload hasn't been a huge spark this year off the bench, so this stint as a starter is a great time for him to get his mojo going as a big bat down the stretch.

9. It sucks that Domonic Brown's first career home run came in a downer.  It would have been nice for it be at a time we could celebrate it, but it's sweet nonetheless.  Let's call it the first of many. Hopefully... DoBro is the future around here.

10. If I just posted Charlie's quote about the game I could've saved us all a long of time in this recap: "We got so far behind it was hard to catch up," Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said. "Our guys swung the bats well, but we couldn't stop them."

11-12. Werth and Ibanez continue to play well reaching base a combined 5 times, but unless they hit a combined 5 home runs, I'm not sure they could've saved the Phillies today.  Ibanez's hit streak continues to 17 games.

13. Gibbons returned to the major leagues on Aug. 8. His homer off David Herndonwas his first since July 17, 2007, while with the Baltimore Orioles.  Grrrreat.

14. Every Phillie had a hit but Chuuch Ruiz.

15. Every Dodger had a hit except Jamey Carroll who went 0-5.  Tough day when the team finds 18 hits and you can't get even one.