Phillies seeking that special slump buster

The baseball gods are a superstitious lot. Amongst theballplayers who call themselves the devoted, the trick is to never disturb the gods and upset a happy equilibrium. Jim Thome used to say he had a little thing he liked to call karma, but really he was talking about the baseball gods and how they mustn’t be trifled with.

Based on these beliefs, it is clear that someone with the Phillies messed up. Somehow that delicate equilibrium was disturbed in such a way that the team is caught in an epic hitting slump that should carry a parental warning before the television broadcast.

WARNING: Children with the slightest interest in baseball should leave the room when the Phillies come to bat. Please, think of the children. Self-masochists only.

No, the Phillies recent bit of suckitude is not for the weak. They have scored 10 runs in the last nine games, including a game where they scored an unearned run and won thanks to Roy Halladay’s perfect game. During the current road trip the team went from second in the league in batting average to sixth and from second to ninth in runs scored.

But thank those baseball gods for Halladay. With Mr. Perfecto leading the way with five complete games and three shutouts, the Phils lead the National League with six complete games and have a solid, staff wide ERA of 3.68.

So for a club that has been at the top or just off the top spot in runs scored and homers since 2004, a solid pitching staff ought to be about all she wrote, huh? The NL East ought to just about wrapped up by now, right?

Not so fast. The Phillies kick off June just as they started May… in second place. That’s just the way it goes for a bunch of hitters that have been shut out six times and lost another six games when the opposition scored four runs or fewer. Meanwhile, the Phillies have won eight games by scoring just four runs or less.

The question now is who disturbed the baseball gods, and how do they make amends?

Oh, there are theories for both questions. One of the biggest theories floated around is since Mick Billmeyer was caught with binoculars in the bullpen in Colorado, the team just hasn’t been the same. That may be nothing more than a coincidence considering Billmeyer was convincing with his stance that nothing untoward was happening, leaving it with the caveat that he wouldn’t do it unless he knew he could get away with it.

Besides, there is no way to relay the signs to the hitters with just a pair of binoculars from the bullpen. Sorry to say, but Mick just isn’t sharp enough to pull that off and that’s no knock in the bullpen coach. No one is sharp enough.

So that fact that the Phillies are hitting just .237 and averaging a little more than three runs a game since Billmeyer was “caught looking,” is just one of those funny little coincidences. And even though the slump has been about two weeks, manager Charlie Manuel says it feels like forever.

“It seems like it’s been months,” Manuel said. “Something’s got to break for us.”

Not ha-ha funny, though. Instead that’s where theories on how to break free of the swoon and decades of tried-and-true superstition come in.

Oh yes, the Phillies need a slump buster…

We’ve heard ballplayers talk about specific ways to break a slump, but they would require another parental warning to describe here. Or, as Shane Victorino once so delicately put it, the Phillies need to find a “500-pound chick.”

Yeah. There’s that.

No one needs to be told that of all the superstitious athletes, baseball players are the superstious-ish. Sure, Jimmy Rollins has been hurt and Placido Polanco needs a few days off after an MRI. The Phillies slump very well could end when the regular lineup is together and back in place. It really could be as simple as that.

But baseball players don’t think that way. They can’t even rationalize it. Though a patch-work lineup and some injuries could be the culprit for the swoon, ballplayers are going to take some extra batting practice, look at some video and then hit the town in order to entertain a plus-sized lady after the ballgame. The most integral part of the equation is the evening out with a certain type of lady.

Look, no one is arguing that baseball players aren’t pigs. We get it. The problem is the Phillies are in Atlanta for the next couple of days, which rates very low in the Men’s Health magazine’s list of “fattest cities.” Conversely, Philadelphia usually rates very high in these types of rankings. If fattest city rankings were like Major League Baseball, Philly would be like the Yankees or Red Sox—some years they are the best, but they’re always hanging around.

In other words, if you see one of the Phillies out on the town during the next week or so, just leave him alone because he’s working on his swing.

Chooch gets the party started

Carlos Ruiz runs pretty well for a catcher. No, he’s not going to go from first to third on a single hit in front of the right fielder. He’s also not going to steal too many bags or stretch a double into a triple. That’s just not his game.

But Ruiz will always run full out even for something as simple as backing up first on a grounder to second. In fact, catching Ruiz in a forgetful state is a rarity. If he needs to be somewhere he will get there as quickly as possible.

That’s an important role on a team as good as the Phillies. After all, when the team clinches a spot in the playoffs or World Series, it needs someone like Ruiz to hustle to the mound in order to wrap up the pitcher into a bear hug. The best example of this was after Brad Lidge threw that slider past Eric Hinske to end the 2008 World Series. Not even a beat after the ball hit his glove, Ruiz was up and sprinting toward Lidge. Two steps into his dash, Ruiz flung his mask aside like he would if he were chasing down a foul pop behind the plate. A couple more steps and he had collided into Lidge’s arms seconds before Ryan Howard and the rest of the team buried him.

Ruiz is eerily consistent, too. After the Phillies sewed up the NLDS and NLCS in 2009, he was right there on top of Lidge by the time the last out was recorded. Certainly there’s rarely a time before the playoffs begin where a party starter like Ruiz is needed, however, because the Phillies have been so good lately the catcher has ironed out his routine pretty quickly. Undoubtedly, those abilities came in handy on Saturday night after Roy Halladay finished up his perfect game in Miami.

So when Ronny Paulino hit a sharp grounder to Juan Castro at third, Ruiz took a route to back up the play not too far from the base line so that when Howard picked the throw he could be a few steps closer to mob Halladay.

And just like in the postseason, Ruiz dashed toward his pitcher with his arms, eyes and mouth wide open. It’s almost as if any great moment can be officially complete for the Phillies unless there’s that shot of Ruiz running with unbridled joy bursting through the picture.

Just don’t take this as proof that Ruiz is some M.L. Carr type waving a towel and firing up the crowd, guess again. Not only could Ruiz get to an All-Star Game—thanks in part to all those sellouts at Citizens Bank Park—but he very well could be on the way to establishing himself as the best Phillies catcher ever.

OK, that’s a bit of bold line considering Ruiz is in his fourth full season in the majors with a .251 lifetime batting average and is already 31-years old. Actually, the fact that he even made it to the big leagues at all is a testament to his fortitude. Shifted to catcher even though he was signed as an infielder, Ruiz fought against himself and the position to succeed. As a result, he got the nickname, “Chooch,” because he used a derivation of that term as a self-insult to not be afraid of the ball when turning into a catcher.

Not only did a nickname emerge from the veritable trial by self-masochism in a mask, but also a really good catcher arrived, too. Initially, Ruiz was seen as a stop-gap or transitional backstop between Mike Lieberthal and some other guy. The problem with that idea was no other guy emerged. Sure, maybe someone will come along soon, but no time soon.

That means more Chooch… and that’s good.

So aside from his ability to get to the mound quickly, Ruiz is the catcher the Phils’ pitchers love to throw to. Watching Halladay in interviews after his perfect game, he was quick to give credit to his catcher.

“I can't say enough about the job that Ruiz did tonight, really," Halladay told reporters. I felt like he was calling a great game up until the fourth or fifth, and at that point, I just felt like I'd let him take over and go with him. He did a great job. Like I said, it was kind of a no-brainer for me. I'd just go out, see the glove and hit it."

It’s always big deal to Ruiz. Bullpen coach and catching instructor Mick Billmeyer says if there is one fault Ruiz has in his game it’s that he cares a lot. If a pitcher has a bad outing, Billmeyer says Ruiz looks at it as a reflection on him. Even when pitchers shake him off, Ruiz takes it seriously.

Indeed, he is a serious man. So much so that when asked which catcher he is most impressed with in the majors, Billmeyer's answer was quick and to the point.

"I like our guy," he said.

Now where does Ruiz rank amongst the past Phillies’ catchers? He doesn’t have as much experience as guys like Darren Daulton, Bob Boone, Andy Seminick, Clay Dalrymple and Lieberthal, but his career averages are just as good in most offensive categories. The difference is unlike Boone and Lieberthal, Ruiz doesn’t have a Gold Glove Award, but even there it’s just a matter of time.

Meanwhile, though Ruiz has been dealing with a sore shoulder he’s hitting this season like he usually does in the playoffs. Better yet, in 38 games Ruiz leads the league in pitches seen per plate appearance and is second in on-base percentage.

In other words, he’s a hitter now, too.

He’s a catcher first, though. When it comes to that, Ruiz spent the night after Halladay’s perfect game on the phone with his mother in Panama reliving the big night.

“It was special for me,” Ruiz told reporters.

That’s evident, and that’s a big reason why Ruiz has endeared himself to the Philly fans. He might not look like Johnny Bench back there, but he’s going to figure out how to get it done.

'Here comes a fastball in 3, 2... '

One of the better sports books I read over the past yearwas Joshua Prager’s, The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and the Shot Heard Round the World. The title kind of explains the story in which the book documents the events leading up to one of the most famous events in all of sports and the aftermath of its participants.

The event, of course, was the home run hit by Thomson off Branca in the 1951 playoff to determine the champion of the National League played at the Polo Grounds. Even before Prager’s book, Thomson’s homer was one of those historical flashpoints where seemingly every movement had significance and was chronicled in some way. In fact, Don DeLillo’s epic novel, Underworld, opens with the ball disappearing into the left field stands and retrieved by a neighborhood kid who snuck into the ballpark. In reality, no one knows what happened to the ball.

Imagine that… the most famous home run ever hit and no one knows what happened to the ball. If Thomson’s homer happened in our age there would be a court injunction or an Amber Alert to have it returned.

Nevertheless, Prager painstakingly researched the length to which the New York Giants went to create an elaborate scheme to steal the signs from the opposition. First, a member of the grounds crew set up a line of buzzers and signals from the centerfield clubhouse to the bullpen, where coach Herman Franks had stationed himself at a window with a pair of binoculars. There, Franks buzzed the signal to backup catcher Sal Yvars in the bullpen that was actually located in the deepest part of center field on the playing field. When he got the signal, Yvars would tip off the hitter by positioning himself a certain way in the bullpen. If hitters wanted the sign, Yvars had it for them.

In the book Yvars admits that he signaled to Thomson to be ready for a fastball from Branca. The rest, as they say, is history.

Using technology, like buzzers and binoculars, is a violation of the spirit of the game and probably a whole bunch of good rules, too. However, if a player (or players)are able to decode the opposition’s signals through wits or another team’s negligence, then there is nothing wrong with that. Better yet, stealing signs is an art form in baseball. No one wants to admit that they do it for fear of retribution, but trust me… the Phillies have a guy on the team who is really good at stealing signs. This guy once told me that he could pick off most team’s signs just one cycle through the pattern, but later denied this a few years later.

Oh yes, I know what I heard and that Phillies player knows what he told me.

There is nothing wrong with that. A good sign stealers is one of those intangibles like the ability to take a good lead or knowing how to read a ball off the bat. Anyone who complains about that type of sign stealing is a whiner.

And that’s exactly what Charlie Manuel called those complainers before Wednesday’s game in Denver.

“Keep crying,” Manuel said.

Of course, the Phillies have been accused of stealing signs for years, which is something Manuel always greeted with a wary smile when asked about it. Good, old fashioned sign stealing is part of the game and something old salts like Manuel appreciate. However, the latest accusation has some legs to it with the photographic evidence of bullpen coach Mick Billmeyer with a pair of binoculars and sitting next to what could be the bullpen phone.

So the Phillies were caught red-handed, huh?

“Absolutely not,” Manuel said Wednesday. “Absolutely [bleeping] not. In no way were we stealing signs. We don’t do that.

“I understand why they’d be concerned about it, but that’s the truth. We’re not trying to steal signs. That’s it. I didn’t know [Billmeyer] did that. He watches our catcher to help him where he’s setting up. It definitely had nothing to do with signs.”

That’s the Phillies story and they are sticking to it. But that didn’t stop Major League Baseball from issuing a formal warning to the team or the Rockies from piling on the accusations. At the same time, it’s OK to take Manuel at his word but that doesn’t mean anyone has to buy it. Knowing Billmeyer he very well might be checking out the catcher’s positioning, or scoping out girls in the stands. He is the catching coach, after all.

However, teams have access to tons and tons of video and if Mick wants to make a teaching point to Carlos Ruiz or Paul Hoover, he has all of those games and squats at his disposal.

Binoculars? It doesn’t look right.

Who knows if it is even possible to catch a sign and signal it back in to the hitter so that he can react accordingly. To do that, Billmeyer would have to be really good at deciphering the sign with a way to get his message across in seconds. That doesn't seem likely.

On the other hand, Billmeyer could spot tendencies and patterns to what the catcher and pitcher are doing and signal that in... but then again they can figure that out from any point in the ballpark.

So are the Phillies cheaters? Probably no more than any other team… besides, it’s not like they’re getting three extra home games or anything.

Wait… what?