The Phillies and Tigers played an extremely long 15 inning baseball game last night. The Phils came out on top, 3-2, getting a big win—their fourth out of their last five.
"Did you stay up for it?" Phillies manager Gabe Kapler asked Angelo Cataldi duirng his weekly call-in on Wednesday morning.
"I wasn't up when it started, Gabe," Cataldi replied.
"Yes, it was definitely something," Kapler said. "It was a really good, gritty win. Good for the boys. Whenever you play extra innings, especially a lot of extra innings, it's a real gut punch to come out with a loss."
Former Phillies starter, now reliever, Nick Pivetta allowed no hits and struck out five in 3.2 relief innings. Pivetta threw 43 pitches, 27 strikes. Kapler says his mindset in a relief role is different.
"First thing is probably mindset," Kapler said of Pivetta's success as a relief pitcher.
"You come in, in a clutch moment, you know you can step on the gas pedal and you don't have to preserve pitches. And one of the reasons we think Nick Pivetta may be successful in that role, is because he doesn't have to kind of save his energy for late in the game, he's not thinking about getting through six (innings). If he can get through one plus, two plus, he's done a great job for us. The second thing that happened for him last night, is he utilized mainly two pitches—fastball, curveball. They're his two most effective pitches. Utilized his fastball at the top of the zone and then he ripped his curveball, and he ripped his curveball over and over because he knew it was a pitch that hadn't had a whole lot of damage against it. So he set up the curveball with the fastball, which was an effective combination for him last night."
Listen to the interview below.
