Before Wednesday night’s game and his first major-league start, Cody Asche took the field a little earlier than normal.
It was his moment to realize that he made it to the bigs -- he didn’t want to wait for game time.
"I didn’t want to be that guy that's out there just trying to soak it in and then I've got a couple of balls slammed down my throat," Asche said after the Phillies' 9-2 loss to the Giants (see game recap).
And it was a good thing he hit the diamond early, because he was tested at third base in the first inning with a smoking grounder off the bat of former Phillie Hunter Pence. The 23-year-old Asche made the diving stop, rose to his feet, gathered his composure and impressively threw out Pence by a step.
At the time, the play eliminated further first-inning damage by the Giants, but it didn’t extinguish any pregame jitters.
"You still got to focus pretty hard over there," Asche said.
Unfortunately for Asche, he couldn’t translate his defensive success to the plate. The Nebraska alumnus went 0 for 4 in his first big-league start, prolonging his search for his first career hit.
"I felt good at the plate," Asche said. "I missed a couple of pitches that I should have done more with. But overall, I saw some pitches, swung at some good pitches and had a couple tough outs."
Asche, a 2011 fourth-round draft pick by the Phillies, hit .295 with 15 homers and 68 RBIs at Triple A Lehigh Valley this season before making the jump to the bigs.
“He didn’t really hit the ball real hard,” Charlie Manuel said of Asche's performance on Wednesday night. “But at the same time, he will.”