Five Cuts: Lowe's mental lapse lets Game 1 get away

Derek Lowe should have shaken off his catcher before throwing a sinker to Chase Utley in Game 1 of the NLCS. AP Tom Verducci's Mailbag Submit a comment or question for Tom. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND

1. Derek Lowe wasn't rattled. He wasn't tired. He was only 80 pitches into shutting out the Phillies in the sixth inning of NLCS Game 1. His game-changing mistake, however, was in failing to slow down the game. The crowd at Citizens Bank Park had come back to life thanks to a two-base throwing error by Dodgers shortstop Rafael Furcal. Chase Utley was the next hitter. The situation called for Lowe to step back and gain conviction for his next pitch, which is exactly what he had done in the previous inning in a key at-bat against Jimmy Rollins. Lowe's instinct was to throw a breaking ball after Utley had smacked a sinker for a hard single in the first inning, Lowe had fanned him in the fourth by throwing Utley five straight breaking balls.

"I knew he was going to swing," Lowe said -- all the more reason to go with the breaking ball.

Catcher Russ Martin called for a sinker. Instead of shaking it off and going to the breaking ball, Lowe simply went along with the pitch, a pitch he threw without conviction. "A mental mistake," Lowe called it. Utley drilled the sinker into the right-field seats to tie the game. Lowe faced 23 batters. Utley's home run was the only time the Phillies swung at the first pitch against him.

Pat Burrell broke the tie two batters later when he lined a 3-1 sinker into the left-field seats to provide the margin of victory in Philly's 3-2 win. But the pitch to Utley is the one that will haunt Lowe. It is also a pitch that serves as a reminder that at this time of year, every pitch counts.

2. Ryan Howard can stop wondering how the Dodgers are going to pitch to him. Howard saw 20 pitches in Game 1; 18 of them were breaking balls, including 11 in a row at one point. (The two fastballs the Dodgers did throw were pure diversions; neither was in the strike zone.) Los Angeles will go soft and softer against Howard all series.

3. Terrific job by Phillies left-handed ace Cole Hamels. I don't remember another ace pitcher who throws his changeup such a large percentage of the time. Hamels, for instance, had five 2-0 counts in the game. In all but one instance, he threw a changeup -- and in every one of those cases he threw it for a strike.

In the third inning, in one of the biggest at-bats of the game, Hamels fell behind James Loney 2-0 with two runners on and two outs. What does he do in such a jam? He threw three straight changeups: called strike, called strike, swinging strike. Inning over.

Here's a question: If you could chose from among pitchers on the four remaining teams, who would be your top three choices to start a playoff game? Based on pure stuff and the way they're throwing right now, I'd go with these picks: 1. Jon Lester. 2. Cole Hamels. 3. Chad Billingsley.

4. Does anybody else out there feel we're overdue for a long series somewhere this postseason? It's no secret that television ratings rise as a series gets extended, as the drama builds and the storylines gather momentum. But too often the postseason series are over too quickly. Of the past 26 postseason series, only three of them have been played to the full complement of games. There have been 12 consecutive League Division Series played without a Game 5. And the World Series? We've gone four straight years without seeing even a Game 6, never mind a Game 7, while playing only one game more than the minimum. What baseball needs most of all right now is a Game 7 somewhere.

5. Yes, Boston fans, that was Manny Ramirez comfortably holding court with the media after the game, one of the first Dodgers to appear at his locker and answer questions. Manny? The same guy who was nowhere to found at Fenway Park, win or lose? Well, sort of. This is indeed a new Manny. Ramirez, who yapped with the media for about 20 minutes on the workout day before NLCS Game 1, even had fun talking about his 410-foot screamer in the first inning that bounced off a fence atop the center-field wall -- just about as far as you can hit a ball at Citizens Bank Park without getting a home run. Quoth Ramirez, "I guess I'm going to have to work on my angles. What can I say?"