Phillies Scuffle, Lose to Johnson and D'Backs

PHOENIX -- After battling and scrapping for two tough wins against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Friday and Saturday it would seem the Phillies wouldn't be intimidated by the creature they would have to face Sunday afternoon.

Maybe they should have been.

That creature, a.k.a the Big Unit, or more commonly, Randy Johnson, overcame a second inning run to go eight innings and throw 146 pitches in his team's 6-1 win over the Phillies in Bank One Ballpark. Fresh off a 20 strikeout performance against the Cincinnati Reds, Johnson seemed to get stronger as the game wore on. His fastball was clocked at 93 m.p.h. in the first inning and increased in velocity to 98 m.p.h. in the seventh. Coupled with a nasty slider and a generous strike zone from home plate umpire Jerry Meals, that meant a tough day for the Phillies.

But if it wasn't tough enough facing the Big Unit, it got tougher in the bottom of the eighth.

Trailing 2-1, Mark Grace hit a grand slam off Ricky Bottalico to put the game out of reach. Grace's slam took some of the offensive load off of Reggie Sanders, who hit his third two-run homer in two games for the Diamondbacks, off starter Robert Person. Until Grace's shot, Sanders had driven in the last six runs for the D'Backs over the last two games.

Home runs aside, Person (3-4, 3.68) kept pace with Johnson until the sixth. Facing Sanders one at-bat after a fourth inning two-run shot, Person plunked the rightfielder in the back.

Person was thrown out of the game for hitting Reggie Sanders in the back with a pitch with two outs in the sixth inning of Sunday's game against Arizona. Person's 1-0 pitch was high and inside, barely missing Sanders' head. The next pitch struck Sanders between the numbers in the back.

Sanders headed toward the mound, but home plate umpire Jerry Meals rushed ahead of him and emphatically ruled that Person was ejected. That's when the benches cleared.

Arizona's Mark Grace and Matt Williams were among the first to get there, along with Diamondbacks pitching coach Bob Welch, who was restrained by Craig Counsell. During the brief melee were nothing more than a little shoving and a lot of shouting took place, Phils manager Larry Bowa and Johnson appeared to have exchanged heated words.

"Why is a guy going to hit a guy on purpose in a 2-1 game?" Bowa said. "It makes no sense."

Person said he'd struggled with his control all day.

"I don't care what it looked like, there was no intent," Person said. "I'll be the first to tell you, I'm not Greg Maddux. I can't throw the ball where I want it every time. And, you know, Randy's pitching. I'm not going to try to get somebody killed." Either way, the jostling seemed to wake the Diamondbacks up.

"It might have been something this team needed," Grace said. "We'd been a little lackluster really this whole home stand. You can rally around each other like that, and I guarantee you that Reggie feels good we came out there for him."

But whatever Bowa said to Johnson it didn't work. The big lefty hit double-digits in strikeouts for the seventh consecutive game, the longest such streak of his career.

But the Phillies got on the board first when they took a 1-0 lead in the second when Brian Hunter led off with a single, stole second, then scored on Tomas Perez's two-out double. Hunter was just 2-for-18 against Johnson going into the game.

Unfortunately for the Phils, Johnson didn't allow another hit until Gary Bennett led off the seventh with a single.

Person walked Grace to start the fourth, then Sanders hit the first pitch he saw into the seats in left field to make it 2-1. In the eighth, reliever Wayne Gomes walked the first two batters of the inning before being removed for Rheal Cormier. Cormier allowed a single to Luis Gonzalez to load the bases and was promptly removed for Bottalico who hung a breaking pitch that Grace put into the rightfield seats.

"I wasn't thinking grand slam," Grace said. "He hung a breaking ball. I can still hit those."

At 22-14, the Phillies have the best record in the National League and are six games ahead of the Atlanta Braves in the NL East. The team returns home Tuesday, where it will begin a two week homestand against the Milwaukee Brewers. St. Louis, Pittsburgh and Montreal also come to town for the 12-game, 13-day stand.

Notes: Mike Lieberthal, who injured his right knee in Saturday night's game, will undergo an MRI on Monday in Philadelphia to determine the extent of the injury, but he likely will be out for at least four weeks. ... Johnny Estrada was called up from Triple-A Scranton and will be the Phillies everyday catcher while Lieberthal is out, but manager Larry Bowa decided not to have Estrada make his big-league debut against Johnson after an all-night flight. ... Sanders' 11 homers equals his total of all of last season. ... Johnson tied the record set by Luis Tiant of Cleveland, who struck out 13 on June 29, 1968, and 19 in a 19-inning game on July 3, 1968. He came one shy of the major league record set by Kerry Wood in 1998.

ComcastSportsNet.com