Phillies survive sloppy Game 2 to go up 2-0

PHILADELPHIA - After Roy Halladay's Game 1 masterpiece, the Phillies and Reds combined to create an unsightly mess of Game 2 at Citizens Bank Park on Friday night.

The teams were responsible for six errors - a Division Series record - and some awful pitching performances. But after a flurry of botched balls and a few questionable calls, the Phillies emerged from the pileup with a 7-4 victory over the Reds and a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five National League Division Series, which resumes Sunday in Cincinnati.

"It is what it is," said the Reds' Brandon Phillips, who led off the game with a home run but made two key errors. "We can't point fingers. We beat ourselves."

During the regular season, Cincinnati was ranked second in the National League with a .988 fielding percentage, a franchise record. The Reds' 72 errors were tied for the fewest in the NL, and they had 106 error-free games, another club record.

But Friday, after a 15-year playoff drought, the Reds committed four errors, tying the Division Series single-game mark. That led to five unearned runs for the Phillies.

When asked what felt worse, getting held hitless by Halladay or Friday's self-destruction, Scott Rolen didn't see any point in comparing the two.

"I don't think it's worth judging losses at this point," he said. "We have our backs against the wall."

No one felt worse than rightfielder Jay Bruce. He hit a fifth-inning homer off Roy Oswalt that helped the Reds build a 4-0 lead, but he whiffed on Jimmy Rollins' sinking liner to rightfield in the seventh, and the error put the Phillies ahead to stay.

With one out and the Reds leading 4-3, Rollins smacked a line drive that Bruce seemed to track, but he lost it in the lights and it darted past his outstretched glove.

"It was a pretty helpless feeling," Bruce said. "It's embarrassing. There's really nothing I could do about it. I was hoping for some miraculous something, that it would fall into my glove. Obviously, that didn't happen."

Two runs scored on that play - helped when Phillips botched the relay throw for another error - and Rollins later scored on Carlos Ruiz's groundout. The catalyst, however, was Chase Utley.

Utley led off the seventh by apparently getting nicked on the elbow by a 102-mph fastball from Reds reliever Aroldis Chapman - or at least that's what plate umpire Bruce Dreckman saw. Unlike Derek Jeter's famous acting job, Utley gave no indication of being hit; he just jogged to first.

Afterward, he was asked where the pitch got him. "It was pretty close," Utley said. "I felt like I thought it hit me."

Then Utley was ruled safe on a questionable call at second base when third baseman Rolen fielded Jayson Werth's grounder and attempted to get the force. His throw was late, according to Ed Rapuano. "I was really shocked by that play more than anything," Phillips said.

In the second inning, Utley made two throwing errors that led to the Reds' second run.

Reds starter Bronson Arroyo retired 10 of the first 12 batters he faced, but in the fifth inning, Phillips and Rolen booted ground balls that helped load the bases before Utley ripped a two-run single to rightfield.

The sixth inning featured an even worse meltdown by the Reds' relief corps as the Phillies closed to within 4-3 on two walks and two hit batsmen.