Tiebreaking homer leads Cardinals past Phillies 7-6
Bullpen comes undone again after strong Velasquez start in loss to Cards
PHILADELPHIA » The ball was coming almost straight down, Nick Williams remembered Tuesday. Kind of an odd angle, he recalled ... especially after it brushed that weird fence in right field.
“I was trying to time a jump,” Williams said of the deep fly ball Monday night off the bat of St. Louis’ Matt Carpenter in the eighth inning. “It’s tough sometimes, especially here. Sometimes off the bat, I wouldn’t say I expect a homer, but sometimes those really high ones with that wall can be tricky, based on where it’s going to land. I was trying to run to try to time a jump, and then I’m like, ‘No, I don’t got it.’” Instead, it got him. Williams could only look on as the steeply falling high fly caromed off the fence on the way down, and took a course right at his face. He didn’t even flich as it hit him square on the nasal button.
“I was waiting for it to come back,” said Williams, illustrating he thought it was going to bounce beyond his head, “but it came down. It wasn’t a very good feeling at all.
“That was really weird,” he added. “Can’t say I have ever seen a ball do that. I just remember my hands being covered in blood. I can’t believe I got up and threw the ball in.”
Almost by second nature, that’s what Williams did, though his toss rocketed over a cut-off man and into the infield. It was easy to see by the stunned look on his face that he may not have been clearheaded at that moment.
Just as it was instinctual for Williams to finish the play — blood seeping from his nasal passages and all — the feeling wasn’t unfamiliar.
“Yeah. 2005,” Williams recalled about his youth baseball years. “I got hit in the face (with a pitch). When I got hit, I had black eyes for like 11 months. It was brutal. That one was really bad.”
This one not so much, and it was somewhat fortunate, since it was Williams’ replacement in the game, Aaron Altherr, who stroked a game-winning double in the 10th in a wild, 6-5 win. Stroke of fortune or not, Williams has refused to watch a replay of his shot to the nose.
“I was just thinking, ‘I hope my nose isn’t broke,’” Williams said. “Because the thing is, when you get hit in the face you’re just bleeding out of a nostril, and it was both my nostrils. I was just like, ‘oh crap.’”
Less than 24 hours after getting another horsehide punch to the face, however, Williams didn’t really appear to have a broken nose at all. It must not be a very severe one, because as of Tuesday he’d been told the injury would likely only force him to miss Tuesday night’s second game of the Cardinals series.
Besides, no dark circles under the eyes this time ... nose was straight, too. Well, sort of straight, anyway.
“I guess supposedly it never healed,” Williams said of that first facial hit 13 years ago. “I’m just finding out (now) that it healed, but it didn’t heal the bones together.”
Asked if this second fracture might have pushed those little bones closer together, Williams grinned and said, “That’d have been nice.”
*** General manager Matt Klentak indicated he didn’t think Hector Neris’ demotion to Triple-A Lehigh Valley was going to be a long-term trip for the veteran reliever.
“Honestly, it’s tough because because of how much we like the guy, and how much his teammates like him,” Klentak said of Neris. “And just the positive influence he’s had on our group for the last 2½ years. But the reason we sent him down was to get him right, so we can get him back here. We know the type of impact that he can have at this level.
“He’s been a dominant reliever at this level. And we want to see him do it again. He handled that really well. We’re all expecting he’ll be able to get back here and help this team again.”
Klentak said Neris will be in some good coaching hands while with the IronPigs, and added he’s a pitcher not too old to learn.
“Hector is a really smart guy. He communicates well and he knows his strengths and weaknesses,” Klentak said. “So as a group I think they’ll target it. I think the biggest thing Hector needs to work on, and I don’t think this will come as a surprise to anyone who has seen him, is the command of his split. He can live off that split when he can throw it in the zone for strikes and below the zone for misses. He’s borderline unhittable when he does that.”
*** Long time until the non-waiver trade deadline at the end of July, but it’s not too early to gauge Klentak’s thinking on the matter.
Of course, it’s never a good time to expect him to talk about anything like that.
“There’s been a handful of conversations,” was all he would say Tuesday to trade questions. “I wouldn’t say that the trade market has been hot at this point. Once you get through the draft, those conversations start. It’s the proverbial feelingout process, but I guess every once in a while that might lead to something.”