PHILADELPHIA — With one more loss to the Phillies, CC Sabathia and the Milwaukee Brewers will have all winter to rest.
Brett Myers rankled Sabathia with a pesky at-bat and dominated the rest of the Brewers from the mound, and Philadelphia defeated Milwaukee 5-2 on Thursday night behind Shane Victorino’s grand slam for a 2-0 lead in their best-of-five NL playoff series.
Myers allowed two runs and two hits in seven innings, pulling the Phillies within one win of the NL championship series. Ryan Madson and J.C. Romero worked the eighth, and Brad Lidge had a suspense-free ninth for a change.
Pitching on three days’ rest for the fourth consecutive start, Sabathia had his worst outing since joining the Brewers in a trade with Cleveland on July 7.
“I don’t think starting on three days’ rest had anything to do with it,” Sabathia said. “I just didn’t make pitches when I needed to.”
The left-hander allowed five runs and six hits — all for extra bases — in 3 2/3 innings. He walked four, his second-highest total of the season.
“When you’ve got a guy like CC on the ropes, you’ve got to take advantage,” Victorino said.
Sabathia had all his pitches working in the first. Victorino doubled with one out and stole third, but Sabathia struck out Chase Utley and Ryan Howard to end the threat. Utley couldn’t touch Sabathia’s off-speed stuff, and Howard had no chance against a 96 mph fastball.
Sabathia was uncharacteristically erratic in the second, and the Phillies took advantage. Jayson Werth lined a one-out double to left-center, and Pedro Feliz followed with an RBI double down the left-field line to tie it at 1.
“I just didn’t finish at-bats, finish innings,” Sabathia said.
After Carlos Ruiz grounded out, Myers kept the inning going by working a walk. Digging in, choking up and crouching, Myers drew cheers for fouling off a 1-2 pitch after wildly missing the first two pitches. He fouled off two more during the at-bat and earned a standing ovation from an appreciative crowd that understood the importance of making Sabathia throw more pitches.
“I know I’m a terrible hitter,” Myers said. “It was one of those freakish things where I was able to lay off his good pitches.”
Sabathia then walked Jimmy Rollins on four pitches to load the bases. That brought up Victorino, who had a career-high 14 homers this season. Victorino fell behind 1-2 before driving a hanging cutter into the seats in left to give the Phillies a 5-1 lead.
“I started running, looked up and saw (Ryan) Braun stopped and thought, ‘Did that really happen?’ ” Victorino said.
