Phillies 8, Pirates 7. Pittsburgh threw John Tudor, a pitcher who was solid but not as good as he would be in the near future, against Philadelphia's Steve Carlton, who was solid but no longer as good as he had been in the fairly recent past. If this were the 1985 Tudor against the 1980 Carlton, it would be a pitching matchup for the ages (or something close to that, at least). With both of them in their 1984 iterations, it worked out to be... still a really good baseball game.
The Pirates started off with a bang, as Marvell Wynne walked and Lee Lacy tripled him home. Lacy would score on Bill Madlock's sacrifice fly for a 2-0 lead. After a 1-2-3 first from Tudor and a matching second from Carlton, the Phillies rallied in the bottom of the second with a Sixto Lezcano walk and a Garry Maddox single, but failed to bring either runner home. Pittsburgh countered with a single and walk of its own (from Madlock and Jim Morrison, respectively) in the third, and also did not convert on the chance.
Philadelphia came back to tie the score in the bottom of the third. Juan Samuel singled and stole second with one out, and John Wockenfuss walked behind him. Mike Schmidt singled in his team's first run of the game, and Lezcano walked to load the bases before Glenn Wilson singled the tying run home. Maddox hit into a force at home and Ozzie Virgil popped out to leave the bases loaded, however, and the Pirates struck back fiercely in the top of the fourth. With one out, Eddie Vargas reached on an error by Ivan de Jesus, and Dale Berra walked. After Tudor was retired, Wynne singled in the go-ahead run, Lacy singled in another, and Madlock doubled home two more to give his team a 6-2 advantage.
Tudor allowed a de Jesus single and walked pinch hitter Luis Aguayo in the fourth before recovering to strand both runners. Tug McGraw relieved in the fifth and threw a pair of spotless innings, the first of which was duplicated by Tudor.
The bottom of the sixth was a wildly different story. Virgil led off with a home run. Tudor rallied to record two successive outs, the second of which was pinch hitter Greg Gross, but Samuel then singled, and Tudor's day was done. Lee Tunnell relieved him - and pitched much, much worse. Len Matuszek greeted the new pitcher with a double, and Schmidt doubled in both runners, cutting the lead to 6-5. Lezcano singled Schmidt home to tie the game and took second thanks to an Amos Otis error; he scored from there on a Wilson single, giving Philadelphia its first lead of the day. Maddox singled as well, and Tunnell was finally removed several batters too late, having recorded no outs and allowed five consecutive hits. Cecilio Guante retired Virgil to stop the bleeding.
In the seventh, Larry Andersen allowed a single to Lacy and walked Madlock, but coaxed a double play from Johnny Ray and a groundout from Tony Pena, preserving the one-run lead. That lead increased in the bottom of the inning when Von Hayes added a pinch hit homer. Al Holland and Guante were both spotless in the eighth, and Holland stayed on the hill in the ninth for Pittsburgh's last chance.
It was a good one. Lee Mazzilli led off with a pinch single, and Lacy singled him to second one out later. Madlock followed with a double, scoring one run and putting the tying tally 90 feet away, with the go-ahead run in scoring position as well. But Holland rallied, getting Ray to foul out and Pena to ground out to end the game.
This game's most striking feature was the two-through-five section of the Pirate lineup. Second hitter Lee Lacy went 4 for 5 with a triple, two runs and two RBI, while third hitter Bill Madlock was 3 for 3 with two doubles, a walk, a sac fly, and four RBI; between them, these two accounted for six of the seven runs batted in for the entire lineup. But the hitters behind them (after Jim Morrison, who went 1 for 2 with a walk, was removed) were Johnny Ray (0 for 2 with a double play) and Tony Pena (0 for 5). The 2-3 hitters combined for a striking total of +.954 WPA, but their counterparts in the 4-5 spots (including Morrison) contributed a crushing -.764.
In essense, the heart of the Pittsburgh order was two steps forward, two steps back every time it came up. Had Ray or Pena managed anything at all in the late innings, the Pirates likely would have come out with a win. As it was, the Phils overcame a disastrous outing from their Hall of Fame starter and took the game anyway.
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