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Stick around baseball long enough and you’re bound to hear something new every once in a while. That is the beauty of it, after all. Nothing stays the same, which is good because it chases away the boredom. Still, it was a remarkable thing to hear some of things Roy Halladay said just about a year ago.
“This is where we wanted to be,” Halladay said during last December’s introductory press conference at Citizens Bank Park. “It was an easy decision for me.”
Halladay just didn’t say it that one time either. Oh yes, the big right-hander made it point to drive home his point that more than anywhere else, he wanted to be in Philadelphia.
My, how far we have come.
“He did say that his was the place where he wanted to be,” general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. pointed out the day the Halladay trade went down. “A player of his caliber saying that? I’m not sure [if that’s happened].”
Remember how it used to be, though? Ballplayers used to go out of their way to avoid our fair city. Some even had it written into their contracts that they could be traded anywhere in the world as long as it wasn’t to Philadelphia. Then there was J.D. Drew and Scott Rolen, for whatever reasons, needed to play anywhere else. In fact, with Rolen it was turned into something personal instead of what it really was…
He was sick of losing.
But even Rolen admitted that in order for the Phillies to get to the level they enjoy now where players like Roy Halladay beg to be sent here, he was the one who had to go. See, before the 2002 season then general manager Ed Wade reportedly offered Rolen a deal that he would still be playing out. Oh sure, with Rolen at third base and healthy, the Phillies never would have had David Bell, Wes Helms, Abraham Nunez, Pedro Feliz or Placido Polanco. Chances are they would be trying to find someone take the last few years of the 10-year, $140 million that was said to be offered.
See, it was OK that the Phillies had a veritable revolving door at third base because that meant players had changed their minds about going to Philadelphia. Plus, 10-year contract aside, if Rolen had taken the deal, he said.
“If I would have stayed there, there was no way they would have gotten Thome,” Rolen told me during a conversation at old Yankee Stadium in 2003. “They might have been able to get [Kevin] Millwood, but there's no way they would have been able to have Thome and me on the same team.”
Jim Thome was the linchpin. Without Thome there is no Cliff Lee or Pedro Martinez. Without Cliff Lee there is no Roy Halladay. Without Rolen, Bobby Abreu and those not-quite-ready ball players, the Phillies don’t get the draft picks for Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins, Pat Burrell or Ryan Howard.
Still, it was Thome who made all the difference… Thome and that crazy six-year deal worth $85 million that just came off the books last year.
“We needed to do something at the time,” Rollins said. “He brought excitement back to Philly baseball.”
More than that, Thome was the secret to the formula. Getting the future Hall of Famer to agree to a six-year deal even though he would have preferred to stay in Cleveland sent a message to the rest of baseball that the Phillies were serious about being serious. Sure, it might have been the best contract, but that $85 million looks pretty cheap these days.
“At that point he was the most-coveted and the best player during the off-season and we really made a push to get him to Philadelphia,” Amaro said last December. “I really believe, honestly, that put us over the hump.”
Yes, getting that one player can have a trickle-down effect. It’s like a snowball that rolls downhill and turns into a runaway behemoth by the time it gets to the bottom.
“He came at kind of the right time for all our kids," Amaro said. “The Rollinses and Utleys and those guys weren’t quite coming into their prime and we’re fortunate to have those guys, with Ryan Howard, step up and come into their own. … All those guys didn’t get to their primes until after Jimmy was gone, but he certainly helped legitimize what we were trying to do.”
So is that what the Washington Nationals are attempting to do with Jayson Werth? No doubt the seven years and $126 million makes the Thome deal look like tip money, but is Werth the kind of guy a team uses to draw the others to town?
That is the $126 million question.
Let’s get it out of the way right here… Jayson Werth is no Jim Thome. Not even close. Sure, Werth is popular with the stat geeks and is certainly a better fielder than Thome was, but as far as the whole package goes, no, not in the same ballpark. Thome is revered by teammates, coaches and the press. He is a leader whose words carry weight in the clubhouse. Werth is an acquired taste. Sure, he’s a tireless worker and has a lot of friends in the clubhouse, but in certain circles he can be merely tolerated.
Jayson Werth is a piece teams like the Phillies add, not a centerpiece to be built around like the Nationals say they are going to do.
“He’ll be a centerpiece of our ballclub on the field and in the clubhouse,” Nats GM Mike Rizzo said to The Washington Post. “It kind of exemplifies Phase 2 of the Washington Nationals’ process. Phase 1 was a scouting-and-player development, build-the-farm-system type of program. We feel that we’re well on our way of doing that. We feel that now, it's the time to go to this second phase and really compete for division titles and championships.”
Rizzo isn’t laying out an unfamiliar program. In fact, it is the program to build a winning team. It’s the same one the Phillies relied on many times in their history, like when they got Thome or Pete Rose before the 1979 season. Not only were they deals that resonated in terms of the finances (Rose got $3.2 million for four years), but they changed the way everyone saw the franchise.
They changed the culture of the organization.
Werth is doing that in Washington, but he’s not going to be able to do it all by himself. Ryan Zimmerman will be by Werth’s side until at least 2013, and ace of the future Stephen Strasburg should be recovered from Tommy John surgery in time for the 2012 season. The ETA on last summer’s top pick of the draft, Bryce Harper, could be 2012, too. But there are still many question marks that go with prospects. If Werth is going to be what the Nats expect, the Lerner family (owners of the club) need to spend some more cash.
Werth’s close friend Cliff Lee would be a good place to start.
“I think in a short time, we’re going to surprise a lot of people,” Werth told The Washington Post. “I’ve been given a lot of assurance by the Lerner family and by Mike that we’re going to go after some guys that are going to make a difference, that are going to put this team where it needs to be. . . . I came here to win.”
Hey, maybe Werth is the man to build a club around. Why not? He's a young 31, a former first-round pick who has been to the top of the game with the Phillies and nearly quit a few years ago when he was unsure if his injuries would clear up. He's from a baseball family in which his grandfather and uncle spent a combined 33 years in the majors, and his dad played 11 pro seasons with a cup of coffee with the Yankees and Royals in the early 1980s. Yes, Werth has a baseball education, but can he pass it on?
Give Rizzo, the Lerners and the Nats credit for taking big risks. After all, there is a chance Strasburg never comes back at all and playing in a city that is rather ambivalent about its third crack at a big league franchise, the future of the team very well could be on the precipice.
Think about it… Washington is a two-time loser in baseball, yet when the Expos where no longer right for Montreal, MLB insisted on giving the city a third shot. Worse, they stuck it to the overburdened taxpayers of D.C. and forced them to build a ballpark that no one goes to. So yes, there is plenty of culture to change for Werth and his young sidekicks.
The future of the team could depend on it because Washington could be a three-time loser with baseball with a guarantee that there will not be a fourth chance.
On the last day of August in 1987, Phillies lefty Shane Rawley pitched 8 1/3 innings at Dodger Stadium to improve to 17-6 for the season as his ERA dipped to 3.70. It was the third game in a row that Rawley pitched at least eight innings and it came five days after he got 10 strikeouts and allowed two runs in a complete-game loss.
The truth was Rawley looked very much like the Cy Young Award winner in the National League.
And why not? To that point in the season, Rawley very well might have been the most consistent pitcher in the league. After all, he had lost just twice going back to the middle of June and went 9-1 through July and August with a solid 3.50 ERA. In fact, Rawley even went on Roy Firestone’s interview show, Up Close, for ESPN during the trip to Los Angeles where it was agreed upon that the Cy Young Award was his to lose.
That’s exactly what happened.
Whether it was a curse or an injury or whatever, Rawley didn’t win a game for the rest of the season, going 0-5 in his final seven starts with a 7.82 ERA. Worse, Rawley struck out just 22 and walked 21 over those final seven starts. Four times he didn’t make it past the fifth inning and twice he barely made it into the second frame, including one start where he was pulled after giving up eight runs and four hits in the first inning.
But by that point the Cy Young Award had already escaped Rawley. Seemingly, so too did his career as the left-hander pitched two more seasons, winning just 13 more games.
“The last month of the season I pushed myself,” said Rawley, who these days owns Shaner’s Sports Bar and Pizzeria in Sarasota, Fla. “We started to sputter as a team the last month and I probably tried too hard. I tried too hard to get it.”
As a result, the 1987 Cy Young Award was up for grabs. That’s not at all like it is this year where Roy Halladay won his second Cy Young Award by collecting all 32 first-place votes. On the next-to-last day of August in 2010, Halladay pitched seven innings to fall to 16-10 for the season as his ERA rose to 2.27. The difference between Halladay and Rawley is that this time a Phillies pitcher finished the deal by going 5-0 with 29 strikeouts and four walks in 36 2/3 innings.
Halladay’s Cy Young will be the first by a Phillies pitcher since 1987 when Rawley let it slip away. Instead of the Phillies’ lefty starter taking home the most prized award in pitching, a right-hander reliever got it with the fewest amount of wins in the closest ever voting.
Yes, at 5-3 with 40 saves and a 2.83 ERA in 89 innings, Steve Bedrosian will have the phrase, “Cy Young Award winner” tied to his name. Better yet, Bedrosian capped off a run from 1980 to 1987 where Steve Carlton, John Denny and Bedrock won the award four times.
So how to Bedrosian do it while Rawley could not? Or how come it has taken so long for another Phillie to win it? Moreover, how has winning the Cy Young Award affected Bedrosian’s life now that he has been out of the game for 15 years?
Better yet, how was the zany reliever able to keep his stirrup socks in perfect position every time he took the mound?
Steady as he goes
To start, Bedrosian won it in 1987 because of his uncanny consistency. After all, Rawley was second in the league in wins, finishing just one behind Rick Sutcliffe, who went 18-10 with a 3.68 ERA for the last-place Cubs. In the final voting, Bedrosian slipped past Sutcliffe, 57-55, while Rick Reuschel finished with 54 points finishing third.
Bedrosian probably won it because the BBWAA voters could not give it to Nolan Ryan. Though Ryan led the league in ERA (2.76) and strikeouts (270 in 211 innings), he went 8-16 as a 40-year old for the Astros.
Did Bedrosian win it by default because there were no other standout pitchers in the league? Shoot, he very well might have put together better seasons in 1982 and 1984 with the Braves relying on a hard fastball. Later he was a key pick up for the Giants during their run to the World Series in 1989 and a solid bullpen piece for the World Champion Twins in 1991. In fact, Bedrosian was on the mound for the Giants when they closed out the NLCS in five games against the Cubs in ’89. Considering that the Phillies were 22-40 when they traded him for Terry Mulholland on June 16 of that season, the deal worked out pretty well for Bedrosian.
Everything went pretty well in 1987, too. Sure, some of the stats types have written off Bedrosian’s victory in ’87 as the worst Cy Young Award winner ever, but that’s missing the point. Though the rapidly aging Phillies won 80 games that year, Bedrosian saved exactly half of them. During one stretch he saved a game in 13 straight appearances and, taking away a blown save that turned into a win, Bedrosian went through a 20-game stretch where he saved 19 games and won one.
Back then it seemed as if Bedrosian only went into games where he was in line for a save, and there very well might have been something to that. According to a Sports Illustrated story from the summer of ’87, there were reports that during the saves streak Bedrosian had twice refused to pitch in blowouts to preserve his shot at the record. That wasn’t exactly the case, according to Peter Gammons:
But in fact, manager Lee Elia had called the bullpen to ask Bedrosian if he wanted an inning's work because he hadn't pitched in a few days. Bedrosian said no thanks. “I felt I was pretty much in sync even without having pitched,” he says. “And my job is as a stopper. But heck, I'll pitch anytime.”
Closing time
Besides, that was a different time. Unlike when Brad Lidge went 41-for-41 in save opportunities, he never pitched more than three outs in any of his 65 games. However, of his 40 saves in ’87, Bedrosian got 22 saves of more than an inning and 15 when he pitched at least two innings. The way it worked for manager Lee Elia was for the Phillies to get the lead by the seventh inning before turning it over to his closer.
Tally it up and Bedrosian went 54 2/3 innings for his 40 saves with a 0.66 ERA in those chances. He also racked up 68 2/3 innings in his 48 save chances that season, holding opponents to a .238 batting average. By contrast, Lidge posted a 1.10 ERA in 41 innings in his 41 saves in 2008.
No, efficiency wasn’t the style in the 1980s. With 89 innings that season, Bedrosian wasn’t even the hardest worked reliever on the staff. Even though the Phillies had four starters pitch from 200 to 229 innings, Kent Tekulve appeared in 90 games for 105 innings. Up-and-comer Mike Jackson went 109 innings in 55 games—not the way they break in 22-year olds these days. Meanwhile, Tom Hume piled on 70 innings in 38 appearances before being released in August, weeks before Rawley tanked.
It worked out for Bedrosian, though. Actually, an All-Star appearance where he memorably tagged out Dave Winfield at the plate in a wild, 3-6-1 double play to keep the game scoreless in the bottom of the ninth, earned Bedrosian a $25,000 bonus. He also got and $100,000 for winning the Rolaids award as the league's No. 1 relief pitcher as well as another $100,000 for the Cy Young. When put on top of his $825,000 salary, Bedrosian got $1,050,000 in 1987 to become the 59th player to earn over $1 million in a season.
He didn’t act like a millionaire in the clubhouse, though. In addition to solid pitching, Bedrosian continued the legacy of oddball Phillies relievers that started with Tug McGraw and was passed down to the likes of Larry Andersen, Roger McDowell, Mitch Williams, Ricky Bottalico and Ryan Madson. He also was a fan of the Three Stooges and was said to have the ability to recite episodes of the show by heart. Still, with 103 saves for the Phillies Bedrosian was the franchise leader until Jose Mesa passed him in 2003, but he likely will hang on to the No. 2 spot until Lidge surges past in 2011.
These days Bedrosian is somewhat affiliated with baseball. As the supervisor of the school board in Coweta County, Georgia, Bedrosian doubles as the assistant coach for the East Coweta High baseball team. That’s the team his son Cameron pitched for before he was the 29th overall pick in the 2010 draft for the Angels.
Interestingly, just as Bedrosian was winding down his career in the big leagues, Cameron’s older brother Cody was diagnosed with leukemia. According to a story in Baseball America, Cody, then just 6, needed a bone-marrow transplant when it was discovered his two-year-old younger brother was a perfect match. Because of this, Cody is cancer free more than 17 years later and Cameron finished his first pro season.
In other words, it’s just fine by Bedrosian if he is finally replaced as “the last Phillies pitcher to win the Cy Young Award” now that Halladay has arrived. Actually, it’s about time.
Keep on closing
Having a long-term, consistent closer is not something the Phillies are known for. In fact, with 103 saves for the franchise in a little more than three seasons, Steve Bedrosian was the franchise leader from 1989 to 2003 when Jose Mesa took the all-time leadership. If Brad Lidge, with 99 saves, can produce a solid 2011 season, he not only will pass Mitch Williams, Bedrosian and Mesa, but also could be the first Phillies’ closer to hold onto the job for four seasons.
1970 – Dick Selma (22 saves)
1971 – Joe Hoerner (9 saves)
1972 – Mac Scarce (4 saves)
1973 – Mac Scarce (12 saves)
1974 – Eddie Watt (6 saves)
1975 – Garber/McGraw (14 saves)
1976 – Ron Reed (14 saves)
1977 – Gene Garber (19 saves)
1978 – Ron Reed (17 saves)
1979 – Tug McGraw (16 saves)
1980 – Tug McGraw (20 saves)
1981 – Tug McGraw (10 saves)
1982 – Ron Reed (14 saves)
1983 – Al Holland (25 saves)
1984 – Al Holland (29 saves)
1985 – Kent Tekulve (14 saves)
1986 – Steve Bedrosian (29 saves)
1987 – Steve Bedrosian (40 saves)
1988 – Steve Bedrosian (28 saves)
1989 – Roger McDowell (19 saves)
1990 – Roger McDowell (22 saves)
1991 – Mitch Williams (30 saves)
1992 – Mitch Williams (29 saves)
1993 – Mitch Williams (43 saves)
1994 – Doug Jones (27 saves)
1995 – Heathcliff Slocumb (32 saves)
1996 – Ricky Bottalico (34 saves)
1997 – Ricky Bottalico (34 saves)
1998 – Mark Leiter (23 saves)
1999 – Wayne Gomes (19 saves)
2000 – Jeff Brantley (23 saves)
2001 – Jose Mesa (42 saves)
2002 – Jose Mesa (45 saves)
2003 – Jose Mesa (23 saves)
2004 – Billy Wagner (21 saves)
2005 – Billy Wagner (38 saves)
2006 – Tom Gordon (34 saves)
2007 – Brett Myers (21 saves)
2008 – Brad Lidge (41 saves)
2009 – Brad Lidge (31 saves)
2010 – Brad Lidge (27 saves)
This is the lull. Free agency doesn’t officially begin until Sunday, and the World Series was too painful for many to watch after the Phillies went belly up against the Giants in the NLCS. Of course it didn’t help that the Giants had a pretty easy time with the Rangers, either.
Still, there isn’t much that will be memorable about the 2010 World Series. The pitching duels between Cliff Lee and Tim Lincecum didn’t exactly pan out, and the Rangers’ offense that tore apart the Yankees, didn't show up.
Actually, the Giants’ offense didn’t exactly conjure memories of Willie Mays or Willie McCovey or even Will Clark. Edgar Renteria was the MVP because he hit two home runs and got seven hits against a team that had one run in its last three losses.
Hitting-wise the World Series was disappointing, though not an all-time worst. That’s excluding former Phillie Pat Burrell, who not only set a record for the most strikeouts in a five-game series (in four game, no less), but also appeared to be defying physics, geometry and basic biology by failing to put the bat on the ball.
How bad was Burrell?
Let’s take a look…
***
As the 1952 World Series bounced back and forth for a week during a tense, ping-ponging of leads and ties, people in the borough of Brooklyn went to church to light candles and pray for Gil Hodges. Watch any of those saccharine-sweet documentaries about the so-called “Golden Age” of baseball when the Dodgers still played in Brooklyn and the Giants were still in the Polo Grounds in Harlem and invariably there will be a segment about Gil Hodges and the ’52 World Series.
Hodges went 0-for-21 with six strikeouts and five walks during the seven game series against the Yankees, which very well could be the most famous slump of all time. In fact, Hodges’ epic oh-fer is one of those flashpoints in time for a lot of baseball fans. Shoot, even Charlie Manuel has spoken about Hodges not being able to get a hit against the Yankees in the World Series, a moment from his youth he recounted in pre-game chats with the scribes. Manuel was eight during the 1952 World Series and said it was unbelievable to imagine a hitter like Hodges struggling like he did.
Would Gil Hodges ever get a hit? The Brooklyn fans held up their end, including Father Herbert Redmond of St. Francis in the borough who announced during an unseasonably warm mass, “It's far too hot for a homily. Keep the Commandments and say a prayer for Gil Hodges.”
With Hodges batting sixth for the Dodgers in the Game 7 at Ebbets Field, he was able to tie the game in the fourth inning on a ground out. But with no outs in the sixth inning and the tying run on first base, Hodges grounded into a double play to further dishearten the Dodgers’ spirits. They got two more base runners for the rest of the game as the Yankees won yet another title.
It’s still easy to wonder how Brooklyn’s fortunes would have turned if Hodges had gotten just one hit in the World Series. Considering he led the team with 32 homers, 102 RBIs and 107 walks, the Dodgers’ success or failure was tied to Hodges’ ability to drive the ball. Strangely, in ’52, Hodges hit 15 fair balls in seven games and not a one of them dropped onto the grass for a hit.
Funny game.
But was Hodges worse than the 0-for-13 with 11 strikeouts Pat Burrell posted for the Giants in five games of the 2010 World Series? Think about that for a second… Burrell went to the plate 15 times, he walked twice, popped out twice and was benched once. So in four games he flailed hopelessly at pitches, rarely putting the onus on the defense to make a play.
He swung and he missed. And then he did it all over again.
Now the extremists in the religion of advanced metrics will tell you that a strikeout is just one out, no different than any other. They will also explain that instead of bouncing into a double play during the sixth inning of Game 7 of the 1952 World Series, Gil Hodges would have been better off striking out. And you know what? Technically they are correct.
But do you remember the feeling of what it was like to strikeout in little league in front of family and friends or in a legion game where your smart-ass friends were sitting a few rows up in the bleachers making wise cracks at every swing and miss? You do? Well, guess what… it’s the same thing for a lot of major leaguers. The feeling of crippling failure that a strikeout leaves one with never goes away, according to some of the guys who have done it in the big leagues. In fact, some guys don’t even want to talk about the strikeouts. When the subject was brought up to Ryan Howard after he set the single-season record for whiffs, the normally affable slugger clammed up and brushed off the significance of the strikeout.
“It’s just one out,” he said dejectedly.
It is just one out, but it’s also the greatest indication of failure in sports. It even looks nasty in the scorebook with that vulgar-looking “K” slotted next to a hitter’s name. For Burrell, his ledger was riddled with them, closing out his time with the Giants with seven of those ugly Ks in his last two games.
So in going 0-for-13 with just two fair balls against the Rangers, did Pat Burrell have the worst World Series ever? Hell, is Burrell the worst World Series player to win two titles? With the Phillies in ’08 and the Giants this October, Burrell is 1-for-27 with 16 whiffs. He has fewer hits in the Fall Classic than Cliff Lee and the same amount as pitchers Joe Blanton, Cole Hamels and utility man Eric Bruntlett—in far fewer at-bats, too.
Yet his 1-for-27 has come to two rings. That’s two more than Ted Williams and Ernie Banks and one more than Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, George Brett and Mike Schmidt.
Nevertheless, it’s a tough to determine if Burrell’s performance is the worst because the Giants won the series in five games. They won it despite Burrell’s strikeout with two on and one out in the seventh inning of a tied Game 5. Burrell whiffed on a 3-2 pitch from Cliff Lee with first base open in what had been the biggest at-bat of the game to that point…
Three pitches later Edgar Renteria hit a home run to deliver the title to San Francisco for the very first time.
Indeed, Burrell, unlike others, was left off the hook. Maybe that was because the Jesuits at his alma mater Bellarmine Prep in nearby San Jose, Calif. lit some candles for him?
Evan Longoria was not so lucky. In 2008 he went 1-for-20 with nine strikeouts in a series where the Phillies won three of the five games by one run. Like Burrell and Hodges, Longoria was a middle-of-the-order hitter for the Rays who’s only hit of the series drove home a run in Game 5.
The one we remember all too well in these parts came during the 1983 World Series where Mike Schmidt dug in against the Orioles 20 times and got one hit in five games. Schmidt, of course, was the MVP of the 1980 World Series, but three years later he whiffed six times and came to bat 10 times with runners on base and four times with runners in scoring position, yet got just one chance to run the bases.
When Schmidt did barely loop one over the infield and onto the turf at The Vet, base runners moved, a rally started and a run actually crossed the plate. It’s funny how that happens.
Weirdly, Schmidt batted .467 with a homer and three extra-base hits in the NLCS before managing to eke out one bloop single in the World Series. That’s kind of reminiscent of the postseason experienced by Placido Polanco in 2006.
In leading the Tigers back to the World Series, Polanco batted .471 in the first two rounds of the playoffs, including .529 during the ALCS to take home MVP honors, only to hang up an 0-for-17 in five games against the Cardinals.
Odder yet, Polanco whiffed just once during the ’06 World Series. The same goes for Scott Rolen in ’04 when he went 0-for-15 with just one whiff against the Red Sox. Rolen very well could have been the MVP of the NLCS on the strength of a seventh-inning homer off Roger Clemens to give the Cardinals the lead they never relinquished. In fact, Rolen belted two other homers in the Cardinals’ Game 2 victory and had six RBIs in the series, which was dwarfed by four homers and a 14-for-28 showing from Albert Pujols.
Of course Rolen whiffed nine times in that series, too, yet still managed to get some big hits.
Not in the World Series, though. Better yet, both Polanco and Rolen put the ball in play to make something happen, but walked away with nothing. Kind of like Hodges.
Funny game.
The tenets on building a successful baseball club according to the practices put in place by Pat Gillick are complex in their simplicity. The basic idea is to mix in some younger players with the veteran to ensure that everyone on the team doesn’t get old all at once.
“… No one in the game is as patient anymore,” Gillick told writer John Eisenberg for his book, From 33rd Street to Camden Yards. “But you still have to have somewhat of a program of integrating younger people to your team, because if you don’t, everyone gets and collapses at the same time. …”
There are some trap doors in this approach, though. For one, just when is a player too old? Another is just how much patience is the proper amount for a young player? Certainly that has a lot to do with the veterans on the club and whether or not they are “too old.”
Better yet, just what does all of this mean for the Phillies?
Come Nov. 30 when Shane Victorino turns 30-years old, all eight of the 2010 Phillies position players will be 30 or older. Eleven days after Victorino’s birthday, Joe Blanton also turns 30, leaving only Cole Hamels as the only player amongst the core group under 30. Come Dec. 27, Hamels will be 27 with five big-league seasons under his belt.
In other words, the time is right now for the Phillies. You know that window of opportunity they talk about that opens only so often and closes quickly? Yep, the window has reached its apex and is beginning to make its slow descent. General manager Ruben Amaro Jr. talked about being caught beneath the crush of it all collapsing at the same time when he traded Cliff Lee last December. It kind of made sense, too, considering the Phillies had traded seven of what they labeled prospects. The idea was to replenish the farm system in a Gillick-like fashion so that those prospects could be sprinkled in appropriately.
Ah yes, but there’s the other caveat… what if the prospects aren’t any good? What then?
That’s where the real GMs separate themselves from the pack. It’s one thing to throw money at the best players every winter, but it’s another all together to develop the talent and keep it together for a long time. The Braves did it with some consistency in the ‘90s when they put together a string of 14 straight division titles, but only one World Series title. The Phillies have a good base, too, considering that many of the main group of players came through the ranks together.
However, the question remains if someone like Brown is ready to be sprinkled into the mix right now, or if guys like Howard, Utley, Rollins, Polanco, Ruiz and Victorino are going to collapse at the same time?
That’s what Amaro is going to have to work on this winter when deciding which pieces to add to that rapidly aging core. The Giants’ victory in the World Series should have hammered that point home loud and clear.
Think about it… like the Phillies, the Giants are built around pitching. Of the four pitchers the Giants used during the playoffs, Jonathan Sanchez is the oldest and he doesn’t turn 28 until Nov. 19. Tim Lincecum had two Cy Young Awards before his 26th birthday and Matt Cain turned 26 just before the playoffs began. Meanwhile, the Giants’ No. 5 starter, Barry Zito, is younger than Roy Halladay and has more career appearances.
The best part for the Giants is that they control all of their starting pitchers until 2012 when Zito’s deal is up. Lincecum and Cain aren’t going anywhere any time soon.
The youth of the pitching staff isn’t the only thing the Giants have going for them. Buster Posey, the 23-year-old catcher has carved out his spot behind the plate and could turn into another Johnny Bench. Better yet, the Giants have a little over $76 million committed to nine players for 2011 and will shed veteran contracts for Aubrey Huff, Pat Burrell, Edgar Renteria, Jose Guillen, and Juan Uribe. Huff likely will return and Uribe probably won’t be too costly to retain, either. So if they do it right, the Giants could become the dynasty everyone thought the Phillies were on the verge of becoming.
Of course they can’t go out and give out another 7-year, $126 million contract like they gave to their albatross, Zito.
So how do the Phillies get better? They have just seven open spots on the 25-man roster and $143 million earmarked already. Plus, manager Charlie Manuel rides his regulars hard. Just look at how much Chase Utley has played even when injured. Or, not to pigeonhole just Utley, look at the offensive production during the playoffs. Did the combination of so many games over the 2008 and 2009 runs to the World Series contribute to the injuries and offensive malaise in 2010?
Maybe. Or maybe some of the Phillies need to get a little younger in time for the 2011 season. Hey, that’s not as strange as it sounds. Check out what Jamie Moyer has been able to do for, oh, say the last three decades. If the Phillies want to stave off the Giants in 2011, it seems like time to get healthy, fit and a little bit younger in time for spring training.
If that happens baseball will go back to lasting until November in Philadelphia again.
If you were ever going to approach Davey Lopes with a question about something, be ready. Actually, there are a couple reasons for the heightened level of alertness, the first one has to do with Lopes himself.
See, Davey Lopes isn’t at the ballpark to hang out and shoot the breeze, so if he deems what you are asking him idle chatter or small talk, he wants nothing to do with it. He might even size you up to see if you are going to waste his time and then he’ll act accordingly.
But if what you have to offer is something Lopes thinks is an interesting topic, get ready because he’ll fill up your notebook and/or recorder. Lopes loves baseball and he enjoys talking about it in-depth just as much. That makes sense figuring that he has given his life to the game, first as a great player (mostly) for the Dodgers and then as a coach and a manager for the Milwaukee Brewers. Lopes’ passion for the game has an intensity that even the most ardent of the baseball lifers do not possess.
Mostly that gruff exterior is just for show and some of the players love to get the now-former Phillies’ first-base coach worked up over something. A great example of this would be to bring up the pivotal game in the 1977 NLCS known in these parts as “Black Friday.”
“Black Friday,” for those who were not around for the 1977 NLCS between the Dodgers and the Phillies, or for those historically challenged on baseball lore, remembers the game as the one where the Phillies missed their best chance to get to the World Series to date. If you thought watching the Phillies lose to the Giants in the 2010 NLCS was difficult, the ’77 NLCS would cause lesser souls to swear off baseball forever. Indeed, it was that difficult to see unfold.
The game in question was where Greg Luzinski famously misplayed a fly ball against the wall at the Vet during a stage in the game where he had been subbed out in favor of the better defender, Jerry Martin. It’s kind of like the Philadelphia version of Bill Buckner in that a move that is made in most circumstances was ignored for some inexplicable reason. For instance, manager Danny Ozark put Martin in for Luzinski the way Red Sox manager John McNamara replaced Buckner for Dave Stapleton. Only when he decided not to make the routine move for whatever reason is exactly the time everything will go wrong.
But that’s not all there was to “Black Friday.” It is also the game where shortstop Larry Bowa made that terrific play to make a throw to first in attempt to nail Lopes on a ball that caromed off third baseman Mike Schmidt. Only first-base ump Bruce Froemming called Lopes safe at first, which paved the way for more miscues as the Phillies blew a two-run lead with two outs in the ninth.
It also opened the door for Lopes and the Dodgers to knock the Phillies out of the playoffs and march on to the World Series and a date with the Yankees.
Nevertheless, when Bowa returned with the Dodgers for the 2008 NLCS—the team’s first meeting in the playoffs since the 1978 NLCS—both protagonists, then on different sides, were marched into the interview room for a formal chat. This is where the normally prickly Bowa played the part of the nice guy in reliving a memorable moment in Phillies’ history.
“They were good series,” Bowa said, clad in his Dodger uniform and that traditional “LA” cap, during the media conference. “We grew up playing them in the Coast League—they were in Spokane and we were in Eugene, Oregon. We had a rivalry going then. They seemed to get the best of us in those games.
“We always made a mistake late. It cost us, but they’re very competitive. You remember when Burt Hooton was pitching and the crowd got into it, he couldn’t throw a strike. Then the rain game with Tommy John. The play in left field where Bull (Greg Luzinski) was still in the game and Jerry Martin had been replacing him and he wasn’t in and it led to a run.
“Davey Lopes. I know Davey says, ‘Let it go.’ But he was out. He knows he was out and he can go look at that all day. A hundred thousand times he was out. But those were good games. They were good games and they seemed to bring out the best in us. I think Garry Maddox dropped a ball which he never dropped. It was just one of those things.”
Lopes, dressed in his Phillies home whites, followed Bowa and put an end to the Philly hand-wringing over the never-forgotten defeat.
“It was 31 years ago. Quit crying and move on,” Lopes said.
Certainly Lopes had a fantastic seat for a lot of great moments in baseball history. He was, of course, at second base the night Hank Aaron hit home run No.715 to break Babe Ruth’s all-time record and was the first person to reach out and shake the hand of the new home run king. Actually, it was a prideful moment for Lopes, who as a man with Cape Verdean descent, was often caught in between two worlds growing up in Providence, R.I. Lopes is not African-American, but is a person of color coming from a small island off the western coast of Africa. As such, he took even more pride in playing the same position for the same team that Jackie Robinson and Junior Gilliam once played.
Howard Bryant, in his new biography about Hank Aaron, recounts a conversation he had with Lopes about why he shook Aaron’s hand after the historic homer.
"I remember when I first came up. We’d be in spring training and Junior would tell me to come with him. I’d say, ‘Where we going?’ and he would just tell me to come on. We’d be in St. Petersburg and he’d point out the majestic hotels. He’d say, ‘That’s where the Dodgers used to stay,’ and I was in awe. Then we’d go farther into a neighborhood and he’d show me some average-looking house and say, ‘And that’s where we had to stay.’ And it blew my mind, because it wasn’t long ago. I thought about those things, about where we’d come as people of color, and that’s why I shook Henry Aaron’s hand. It felt like something I had to do.”
It was never as easy as just focusing on baseball, either. Lopes missed time at the beginning of the 2008 season after undergoing surgery for prostate cancer that was discovered during a preseason, routine physical. Then, in April, three days before the Phillies’ season opener in 2010, Lopes’ brother, Michael, died in a house fire in Rhode Island.
He says those events did not figure into his decision to turn down an offer from the Phillies, though. Baseball, after all, is Lopes' life. He just turns 66 in May and doesn't plan on giving up baseball just because the Phillies didn't make him a proper offer.
Lopes played in the World Series in 1974, 1977 and 1978 before finally winning it all in 1981. Later he got to the playoffs with the Cubs as a teammate with Bowa in 1984 and again with the Astros in 1986 where he was teammates with Larry Andersen and Charley Kerfeld. It was in the ’77 World Series where Lopes stood at second base when Reggie Jackson belted three homers in Game 6 to tie Babe Ruth’s record and clinch the Yankees’ victory.
In 1978, Lopes hit three homers, including two in the Game 1 victory, before the Dodgers fell again to the Yanks. Finally, Lopes and the famous Dodgers’ infield of Steve Garvey, Bill Russell and Ron Cey, beat the Yankees in 1981. Lopes contributed to the Dodgers’ World Series victory with four stolen bases against the Yanks, which was his forte.
Better yet, stealing bases and teaching others how to steal bases will be Lopes’ legacy. In 16 seasons in the majors, Lopes swiped 557 bases and led the league twice. In 1975 Lopes set the record with 38 straight successful stolen bases and led the league with 77 steals. In 1985 when Lopes was 40 he stole 47 bases and followed that up with 25 when he was 41. Not even Rickey Henderson stole as many bases as Lopes at that age. Then again, Lopes had a knack for doing things at an older age than most. He made his major league debut when he was 27 and after his 34th birthday he was as good as any second baseman ever to play aside from Joe Morgan, Eddie Collins or Napoleon Lajoie.
But it wasn’t so much about the amount of stolen bases Lopes racked up as it was his ability to steal bases and not get caught. When he swiped 77 bags in ’75 he was caught just 12 times and that number dipped to 10 times caught in ’76 when he got 63 stolen bases. When Lopes stole 47 when he was 40, he got caught just four times.
Lopes’ 83 percent success rate dwarfs that of Henderson (81 percent) and Lou Brock (75 percent). Ty Cobb’s stolen base rate is incomplete, but even from what information that is available, Lopes is better than him, too.
So with Lopes coaching at first base with a stop watch in his right hand and his eagle eyes watching every move, spasm and twinge by the pitcher, it’s no wonder that the Phillies led the league in stolen base percentage in four straight seasons. In fact, the 87.9 percent rate the team posted in 2007 is still a big-league record.
Want to get Davey talking? Ask him about statistics and stolen bases. Though the art of the stolen base is not popular in some sabermetric neighborhoods, Lopes says stealing bases is the best bet in baseball.
“The Red Sox are a team that uses the computer as well as any team, but Jacoby Ellsbury adds another dimension to them. You utilize that and it changes a philosophy,” Lopes said during a discussion about stealing bases in May of 2009. “Dave Roberts probably had as much to do with them winning the World Series [in 2004] and what did he do? He stole a base at the right opportunity. But when you think about the Red Sox you think about them banging the ball out of the ballpark.”
Besides, Lopes said, stealing a base is less of a risk than sending a hitter to the plate. Even the worst base stealers are a better bet than the best hitters, he says.
“If you do a statistical format, if you have a guy on first base in the eighth or ninth inning and he has a success rate of 68 percent, that’s still better than any hitter getting a hit,” Lopes said. “I don’t give a [bleep] who it is, he’s still not hitting .700. He has a better chance of stealing a base than the best hitter has to get a hit.”
When he came aboard after the 2006 season, Charlie Manuel pretty much turned the running game over to Lopes keeping only the power to put up a stop sign whenever he wanted. Nevertheless, Lopes’ base-running theories pretty much took over unabated and with such an important aspect of the game resting in his hands, Lopes used it to make things happen.
“The running game puts a lot of pressure on teams,” Lopes said last. “It causes teams to make mistakes, not only with stealing, but with the aggressiveness in which you play. If you run the bases aggressively, you can capitalize on a mistake if it’s made by an infielder or outfielder. If you don’t, you can’t. It’s an after effect—‘Oh, I should have ran.’ Too late.”
Too late appears to be the issue between Lopes and the Phillies, too. Lopes told CSNPhilly.com’s Jim Salisbury that he wanted to come back for a fifth season with the team, but negotiations fell apart. Lopes says he wasn’t asking for a lot of money, just more than the regular first-base coach who isn’t entrusted with so much responsibility to the team’s success.
Perhaps general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. and the Phils’ brass didn’t value those talents too much?
“We just had a difference of opinion on what I felt my worth was,” Lopes told Salisbury. “That’s all. It was a really tough decision because I loved my time in Philadelphia, I loved working for Charlie Manuel, and I have the utmost respect for everyone in that organization.
“I got more enjoyment out of winning that World Series in 2008 than I did the one I won with the Dodgers as a player. I can’t say enough about how much I enjoyed my time in Philadelphia. I am really going to miss the atmosphere and the passion. The fans were great to me. I went from being a bad guy, a Dodger, to someone they really embraced. I really appreciate that.”
Though the announcement came on Monday, a report surfaced out of Los Angeles that the Dodgers could attempt to woo back their old All-Star. Just think of the ways a guy like Lopes could transform the talents of a player like Matt Kemp. Just think what he did for players like Shane Victorino, Jimmy Rollins and Jayson Werth. Hell, big slugger Ryan Howard even swiped eight bases in 2009 and went from just one attempt to 15 attempts since Lopes’ arrival.
If Lopes can make a base stealer out of Ryan Howard, what can’t he do?
Now think about Lopes doing that for another team in the National League…
It’s amazing what a guy can do with his time when he’s been away from the ballpark for almost a week. For me, for instance, I have allowed the charms of the Pacific time zone to wash over me even though it’s been several days since we returned from San Francisco.
Hey, if you can’t beat them, join them.
Nevertheless, in trying to figure out just how the San Francisco Giants beat the Phillies in the NLCS and why we’re not headed to Dallas/Fort Worth for Game 3 of the World Series on Friday, I have been re-reading some notes and old stories searching for ideas and clues. And while I’m not sure if I found an answer, I did find a bit of prophecy from a conversation I had with Aaron Rowand in September of 2009.
Rowand, of course, is the popular ex-Phillies center fielder whose claim to fame was his penchant for recklessness in the field and his ability to hit well at Citizens Bank Park. Though he spent just two seasons playing for the Phillies after being traded from the White Sox for Jim Thome, Rowand was unforgettable. Specifically, the catch at Citizens Bank Park where he smashed his face into the exposed metal on the center field fence remains the greatest catch I’ve seen.
He also broke his ankle trying to make a tough catch at Wrigley Field and belted the ball around as an integral member of the 2007 club that broke the long playoff drought for the Phillies.
My favorite Rowand injury was the one he got while playing with his kids at his daughter’s birthday party. That little shoulder injury tells you all you need to know about Rowand—whether it was a big league game or his daughter’s birthday party, he went all out.
“The next day I got shot up a little bit and went back out there and it was fine,” Rowand remembered for us about hurting himself at the birthday party.
Nevertheless, Rowand left the Phillies for the Giants after the 2007 season as a free agent when San Francisco ponied up the years in a long-term contract he was looking for. The Giants gave him a five-year, $60 million deal that runs out in 2012, while the Phillies countered with three years. The Giants also gave him a $8 million signing bonus though he hasn’t come close to producing the types of numbers he posted in his two years with the Phillies.
Interestingly, when Rowand jumped to the Giants he took quite a bit of flack for it because it was seen as a money grab. Considering that San Francisco finished last in the NL West in 2007 and improved by one win and one spot in the standings in 2008, it’s not tough to understand why it looked like a rush for a pay day.
But all along, Rowand held fast to the theory that when the core group of young pitchers for the Giants—Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain and Jonathan Sanchez—developed properly, things would change quickly.
He nailed that one.
Not that it was tough, of course. Anyone could see that Lincecum and Cain were the real deal, though the right-handed Cain's current scoreless innings streak through the playoffs is pretty extraordinary... make that downright Christy Mattewson-esque.
Still, the part that stood out was that Rowand didn't give off any false bravado of a guy bragging about his team. He was calm and matter-of-fact. He also knew that the Giants were better than most of us realized.
Though the Giants finished in third place and faded in September in 2009, they won 88 games and the young pitchers began to show their promise. Lincecum won his second Cy Young Award, Cain pitched exactly 217 2/3 innings for the second straight season with 14 wins, and even veteran Barry Zito showed flashes of his old form.
Teams like the Phillies saw what was going on in San Francisco and took notice. Better yet, Rowand, once again, reminded folks about the Giants’ pitching.
“When you look at teams that have success in the postseason, a lot of it has to do with how they pitch,” Rowand said before a game at the Bank in September of 2009. “And when you have a pitching staff like us that you can line up for a five-game series or a seven-game series, you know you have a chance to win every game.”
Not-so secretly, folks in my line of work wondered what would happen to the Phillies if they had to face the Giants in a wild-card series. There was a chance the Phillies would have used Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels and Pedro Martinez against Lincecum, Cain and Sanchez in ’09 in the same way they sent Roy Halladay, Hamels and Roy Oswalt out there in the 2010 NLCS.
Would the result have been the same a year earlier? Probably not. After all, the Giants’ offense got a serious upgrade with Pat Burrell and Aubrey Huff, which speaks to how bad the Giants were with the bats in 2009. They finished toward the bottom in runs and batting average, next-to-last in homers and dead last in on-base percentage in 2009.
Clearly, pitching will take a team only so far. The Phillies learned that lesson the hard way in 2010.
Interestingly, Rowand told us in September of 2009 that he had spoken with Phillies manager Charlie Manuel about the prospect of a Philadelphia-San Francisco playoff series, which is another bit of Rowand prophecy that came true. Stranger still, Rowand said his Giants reminded him a lot of his 2005 White Sox that tore through the postseason by winning 10 of 11 games to win Chicago’s first World Series since 1917.
“[The Giants] reminds me a lot of the team we had with the White Sox in the year that we won. We had a decent offense but we weren’t a powerhouse by any means,” Rowand said back in ‘09. “We had a couple of guys who could hit home runs, but we were a pitching and defense team. In the postseason the pitching staff stepped up and it carried us.”
That’s the way it’s going in 2010 with the Giants. Rowand may have been a year early with his predictions, but he’s right on time now.
It was a preposterous idea. Know how they say truth is stranger than fiction? Yeah, well this one was just too strange for even that. In the most sordid and obscene of tawdry ideas, just the thought of it should make one’s skin crawl and spine shiver.
Cliff Lee pitching in Game 1 of the World Series at Citizens Bank Park? Against Roy Halladay?
It was just too good to be true, wasn’t it?
“I pulled for a lot of those guys, but it’s weird, when a team gets rid of you, you kind of like seeing them lose a little bit. I know that’s weird but part of me wanted them to win where I could face them in the World Series, too. It would have been a lot of fun. You’d like to think that they need you to win type of stuff, when that's really not the case,” Lee said from Tuesday’s media day at AT&T Park in San Francisco, 3,000 miles away from South Philly.
“When a team gets rid of you, it's funny how you have a knack for stepping up a little more when you face them. There’s a little more incentive to beat them, and that’s definitely the case with me watching the game. I was in between. I didn’t want to have to face them or want to have to face the Giants. I let that series play out, and I pulled for those guys individually, but I didn’t mind seeing them get beat, either, just because they got rid of me. That is what it is.”
Oh that Cliff… telling the Phillies they got what they deserved?
Nevertheless, while folks lament the Phillies’ offensive (used as offensive as in a segment of a baseball game and offensive as in deplorable) flop in NLCS, it’s almost like a little, sarcastic dig at the team’s oh-so sensitive brass that Cliff Lee will pitch on Wednesday night. Only instead of pitching for or against the Phillies, Lee will pitch against the not-so celebrated hitters of the San Francisco Giants at AT&T Park.
Coincidentally, the last time Lee pitched at AT&T Park he pitched a complete game, four-hitter to beat the Giants in his debut with the Phillies on July 31, 2009. They weren’t the same Giants that Lee will face on Wednesday night, but they were not too far off. If anything, Lee was different then… he walked two batters.
“It does seem like a long time ago, but I remember I went through all nine innings that was pretty good,” Lee said of his Phillies’ debut. “And I remember I almost went out of this park opposite field, too. That was fun.”
Yes, he’s still as cool as ever. Unflappable might be the best word because he never, ever changes his approach or his routine. He still runs on and off the field, still pantomimes a throw into center field from behind the mound before he begins to warm up before an inning, and still throws that low 90s-mph fastball.
Of course he throws that cut fastball exactly where he wants it to go. He throws it no matter what the situation is or if he’s behind in the count. Hey, the ball is in his hands so everyone else will have to adjust to him. Better yet, he was in charge after games, too. He didn’t treat his arm with ice like most pitchers. Even after a career-high 272 innings pitched (counting the playoffs) in ‘09, Lee never strapped his arm in an ice pack after a game. In 16 of his 39 starts Lee pitched into the eighth inning. He averaged 104 pitches per start and hardly walked anyone.
And then he got even better.
It might be that mindset that helped the Rangers through the ALDS for the first time and then to the World Series for the first time in franchise history, and yes, that includes when it started out in Washington as the Senators in 1961.
“Tremendous work ethic. You know, you see him from afar, you never see him prepare to do what he does out there,” Texas manager Ron Washington said during his media day press conference. “He has tremendous work ethic, and more than anything else, he brings influence. The way he goes about his business, the energy which he plays with, the passion he has for the game, the things he goes out there and never let affect him, those are the type of qualities that a No. 1 guy brings, and it just influences every other pitcher that follows him or that's on that pitching staff. That's what he brought to us. That's one thing I didn't know.
“I knew he was a quality pitcher, but I never got a chance to see how each day that he prepares for his starts. It's amazing the work he puts in to go out there and then accomplish what he accomplishes.”
Washington is Lee’s fourth manager since the start of the 2009 season and he is also the fourth manager to say the same thing about the lefty. The Phillies gushed over Lee a lot during the postseason, too.
Of course where Lee endeared himself the most to the fans and his teammates in Philadelphia was during the playoffs. Sure, there was a bit of the dreaded “dead-arm” phase toward the end of the regular season, but when properly rested thanks to the dark nights in the playoff schedule so the networks could regroup[1], Lee also re-gathered himself, too. All he did was put together the greatest postseason by a Phillies pitcher, ever.
Better than Cole Hamels, Steve Carlton, Robin Roberts, Tug McGraw, Jim Konstanty and maybe even better than ol’ Grover Cleveland Alexander against the Red Sox in the 1915 World Series. Lee didn’t make his playoff debut with a no-hitter like Halladay, or end his maiden postseason game with outs against Hall of Famers Babe Ruth or Harry Hooper, but Lee was a lot more consistent.
He allowed one run against the Rockies in Game 1 of the NLDS and took the lead into the eighth inning of the clinching Game 4 before errors and the bullpen cost him a win. Had Lee held on in that one he would have become just the third person in Major League Baseball history to win five games in a single postseason.
Added all up, Lee went 4-0 with a 1.56 ERA, including a masterful 10-strikeout, three-hitter in Game 3 of the NLCS and a 10-strikeout gem in Game 1 of the World Series where the best the Yankees could do was score an unearned run in the ninth.
No, there wasn’t a no-hitter in there, but Lee got the Phillies to the World Series and won both of the team’s games there.
So it makes sense that there is some sensitivity amongst guys like Ruben Amaro Jr. in regards to Lee. In fact, the 2010 season was almost a mirror image of 2009 for Lee. He was again traded in July from an American League doormat to a contender. Again he had some back and arm issues where he missed both the first month of the season and a handful of starts late in the year.
But when the playoffs started, Lee has been even better than he was last year with the Phillies. Going into his Game 1that will not be played in Philadelphia on Wednesday night, Lee is 3-0 with an 0.75 ERA with 34 strikeouts and one walk in 24 innings.
Pretty good, huh?
Now here’s the thing… give up on Lee at your peril. The Yankees couldn’t swing a deal for him and paid for it during the regular-season and the playoffs. Tampa Bay could have used him, too, but in the end he beat them twice in the postseason. Sure, the Phillies picked up Roy Oswalt and he was spectacular during the second half of the season. But if Amaro thought for a second that the offense would be outdone by the Giants’ lineup in the NLCS, do you think he would have given up on Cliff Lee?
Maybe the better question is just what was about Lee that keeps folks in Philly talking? After all, he arrived at the end of July and was gone by the second week of December. That’s not a long time at all and yet we’re still talking about the guy and paying attention whenever he pitches a big game.
Just what was it about Cliff Lee?
[1] It’s not exactly top-notch planning that the first game of the World Series will be played on the same night as the opening of the NBA season. Hey, I’d rather watch baseball over just about anything, but I understand why a person would want to watch LeBron James and the Miami Heat play the Sixers on Wednesday night. LeBron made a little news earlier this year and people love/dislike him so much that they can’t take their eyes off him. Apparently the MLB brass and the networks whiffed on this one.
Ed. Note: This story has been revised from its original form from Saturday night.
Jayson Werth didn’t think it would end this way. Not with these guys, on this team. This was supposed to be the glory stretch where he celebrated one more time with his friends and teammates in the place where it all came together for him.
But Jayson Werth is a star now. The Phillies helped make him one, of course, but in doing so it might have made re-signing him much too cost prohibitive. Baseball players put in all the hard work and lonely evenings in the weight room and batting cage for the winter where they can test the open market. Werth is no different from most ballplayers in this regard.
After this winter, with the help from super-agent Scott Boras, Werth will be set up for the rest of his life. His children will probably be set up for the rest of their lives, too. That’s the reality. That’s why Werth made sure not to waste his big chance in Philadelphia where general manager Pat Gillick picked him up from the scrap heap when the Dodgers were too impatient in waiting for his injuries to heal.
When he was cut by the Dodgers, Werth didn’t know if he would ever play again or if any team would want him.
Now he’s so good that the Phillies probably can’t afford to keep him.
"I haven't had any discussions with Scott [Boras] yet," general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. said. "I obviously will over the next 48 hours, we will make contact. I guess the following question is, do we have enough money to do it? And would we like to bring him back? I think the answer to both questions is yes. However, that will all kind of depend on what the ask is and ultimately how that will affect us with other possible moves to do it."
That was a popular sentiment in the Phillies’ clubhouse after the 3-2 loss in Game 6 to eliminate the Phillies two games short of a third straight trip to the World Series. Certainly the players know the reality of Werth’s situation and how the business of baseball works, but they also understand the dynamics of the team’s clubhouse, too. It’s not easy to do what the Phillies have done over the last few years and Werth has been a big part of that. Before the NLCS began, Werth talked about the bitterness he had from losing in the World Series to the Yankees and how “empty” he felt and how that surprised him.
In a sense, it seems as if there is some unfinished work left in Philadelphia for Werth. It’s as if he is part of a nucleus of players like Utley, Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, Shane Victorino, and the powerful pitching staff that got together to build a strong foundation on a house, only they haven’t put a roof on it.
Who would have thought that when the Phillies signed Werth before the 2007 season that it would come to this? When Gillick signed him in December of 2006, it was a move that slipped under the radar. The acquisitions of Abraham Nunez and Wes Helms made more news that winter.
Then, Werth was injured much of the 2007 season, appearing in just 94 games after missing the entire 2006 season with a wrist injury. But by the end of the 2008 season, Werth was an everyday player. He answered every question and rose to every challenge. Werth was so good during the playoffs in ’08 that the Phillies knew they could let Pat Burrell walk away because they had a capable right-handed bat to put in the lineup behind Howard and Utley.
When doubters wondered if he could handle the rigors of playing the full slate of games in 2009, he belted 36 homers, got 99 RBIs and made the All-Star team. Moreover, he’ll leave as the franchise’s all-time leader in postseason home runs with 13, including two in the NLCS.
“When he first came here, he came here with a lot of talent. Pat Gillick always liked him, and he definitely was the one that kind of like wanted him and kind of persuaded him to like to come with us,” manager Charlie Manuel said. “It took him a while to really, I think, adjust to our team and really kind of get things going. I think that he was like he needed to play. He hadn't played in like a year, year and a half or something. And once he got started, he earned a spot and he actually beat Geoff Jenkins out of right field. He earned a spot to play, and he definitely enjoys playing here. He’s been a solid player for us, and he's got a ton of ability.”
This past season he lead the league in doubles and posted career-highs in runs (106), batting average (.296), slugging (.532) and OPS (.921). Gone are the questions about whether Werth can play every day. Now folks wonder which team is going to break the bank and pay him.
Victorino, another player let go by the Dodgers that the Phillies snagged up, marvels at how far his friend has come.
“I remember him calling me in 2006 and telling, ‘Hey, I’m on a boat and I’m battling my wrist injury and it hasn’t gotten better and I don’t know if I’ll ever play again.’ He said that. That’s crazy,” Victorino said. “He was so frustrated with his wrist injury that he doubted it would ever get better. And now to see where he is today, I’m happy for the guy. I’m overly happy for the guy. Whatever he goes out and gets he deserves.”
The numbers are definitely there for Werth and there are a few teams that have the cash to spend that the Phillies probably won’t. The Yankees and Red Sox will probably make a presentation. So too will the Cubs and Angels.
The Phillies? They already have more than $143 million committed to 18 players, which is more than they spent for the entire roster in 2010. Joining Werth in free agency are Jose Contreras, Chad Durbin, Mike Sweeney and Jamie Moyer. Plus, Ben Francisco, Kyle Kendrick and Greg Dobbs are eligible for arbitration. Come 2012, Ryan Madson and Rollins are free agents and Cole Hamels will be eligible for arbitration.
With a handful of roster spots to fill and up-and-comers like Dom Brown ready to for their chance, Werth’s last at-bat for the Phillies was probably a strikeout against Tim Lincecum in the eighth inning, Saturday night.
“We all want what we think we should get, but sometimes you go into free agency and play somewhere I don’t want, or do you want to go somewhere like Philly?” Victorino said. “Jayson is loved here. I’m not him and I know what goes on and I was an acquisition that could have gone year-to-year and held out. But I looked at the big picture. I wanted to play in a city where I was loved and where the people are behind me.
“Jayson is in a different place than me because he hasn’t gotten anything yet. So I’m happy for him and whatever he gets he deserves.”
How much that will be seems open for debate. Amaro clearly isn't going to break the bank for Werth when the negotiations begin.
"Jayson had a good year," Amaro said. "It wasn't an extraordinary year. He had a tough time with men on in scoring position. It wasn't as productive a year as he's had in the past. But I think if he's not with us, there are players we can either acquire or are in our own organization that can help us."
Werth didn’t seem ready for it to end. When Juan Uribe’s eighth-inning home run barely cleared the right-field fence and dropped into the first row of seats, Werth stared at the spot where the ball disappeared in disbelief for what felt like hours.
It’s was as if by staring he could add another foot to the top of the fence.
When it finally ended, Werth didn’t want to leave. He was one of the last guys to walk into the clubhouse and change into a yellow t-shirt with his black cap turned backwards on his iconic hairstyle. He informed the media that he would talk later in the week and slowly made his exit, taking time to hug some of his soon-to-be ex-teammates. Ross Gload wrote down Werth’s e-mail address and as he walked through the clubhouse exit for the last time, he heard words from Gload that will make Phillies’ fans cringe…
“Don’t let those Yankees boss you around.”
If only it were that easy. There will be a lot of talking before Werth settles on his new team and understands that it probably won't be as much fun as it was with the Phillies the past four years.
So when asked if there was the one thing that would tip the scales in favor for Philly if everything else was close, the answer was easy for Werth.
"Teammates," he said.
Was Scott Boras listening?
Let’s just cut right to it…
The Phillies choked. They blew it. Worse, they choked and blew it with what might have been the best team ever assembled in franchise history—at least after Ruben Amaro Jr. traded for Roy Oswalt.
Yet the idea that the 2010 Phillies were as great as advertised doesn’t really matter anymore because the best team won’t be representing the National League in the World Series this year. Oh sure, the Giants deserve credit because they responded to every bit of gamesmanship and intimidation the Phillies threw at them. Between that phony, Pat Burrell, and Tim Lincecum shouting at Phillies’ players, and Jonathan Sanchez calling out Chase Utley, causing the benches to clear in Game 6, the Giants deserve some credit.
But let’s not give a team with Pat Burrell, Cody Ross and Aubrey Huff in the middle of the batting order too much credit. After all, the Phillies pitchers held them to a .249 average with just two different players hitting homers. The Phillies even outscored the Giants in the six games, 20-19. This was the same Giants that batted just .212 against the Braves in the NLDS. You know, the Braves that the Phillies manhandled during the regular season.
Frankly, it was a sickening display of offensive futility during the playoffs. They batted .212 against the Reds in the NLDS and .216 against the Giants. Sure, Lincecum, Sanchez and Matt Cain are solid pitchers. Lincecum is a bona fide star, in fact, and manager Bruce Bochy has enough versatility in the bullpen to match up, hitter by hitter, late in the game.
Oh yes, the Giants can pitch. In fact, they pitch very well. However, imagine how great a good pitching team will look against a bunch of hitters who were lost. How lost? Take a look at the schizophrenic postseason from Ryan Howard and compare it to his typical production.
It was just last season where Howard set the record for consecutive postseason games with an RBI and was named MVP of the NLCS. That was the postseason of, “Just get me to the plate, boys,” in Game 4 of the NLDS when the Rockies were just an out away from sending the series back to Philadelphia for a deciding Game 5. Moreover, 10 of Howard’s 15 postseason hits in 2009 went for extra-bases and the 17 RBIs in 15 games were one of the big reasons why the Phillies got back to the World Series.
This year Howard had good looking stats, batting .318, posting a .400 on-base percentage and a .500 slugging average. But Howard hit no home runs and got no RBIs. No, it’s not Howard’s fault that there were runners on base when he hit, but when there were men on base he struck out. Seven of Howard’s 12 strikeouts in the NLCS came with runners on base and five of those came with runners in scoring position.
Strikeouts only equal one out, sure, but there are productive outs where runners move up and fielders are forced to make plays. Considering that Howard had three three-strikeout games, including back-to-back triple Ks in Game 5 and 6, the heart of the Phillies’ order was punchless.
“If the production is there, you can tend to get away from strikeouts,” manager Charlie Manuel said. “But I feel especially after Ryan got hurt that he didn't find his swing. I feel like I know that he’s a better hitter than what we saw at the end of the year.”
The same goes for many of the Phillies’ hitters, especially Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley. Utley’s swing looked off most of the postseason as if it were difficult for him to complete it. The question many asked of Manuel was about the second baseman’s health, which is always an issue late in the season. However, straight answers never were offered and the assumption was Utley was properly healed from the thumb injury he suffered in June.
But the Phillies finished the season with the best record in baseball and closed the year by going 49-19. They had Halladay and Oswalt and Hamels lined up and all three lost in the playoffs. Sure, the Phillies pitched as well—maybe better—than the Giants, but that was it.
“I don't think we ever got our offense clicking,” Manuel said. “It always went up and down. We hit a hot streak, especially after Houston swept us earlier in the year. From that period on, we started winning a lot of games. But we weren't blowing people out and weren't really hitting like we can. It seemed like we never put up runs like I know we can.”
Maybe there was something to the injuries or maybe the preparedness. Even the victories in the postseason came in games where something extraordinary occurred. Halladay pitched a no-hitter in one and Hamels a five-hit shutout in another. In Game 2 of the NLDS the Phillies scored five unearned runs and in Game 2 of the NLCS, Oswalt pitched a three-hitter.
Finally, it came down to Halladay pitching six innings on a strained groin just to send the series back to Philadelphia.
But back home where the fans where waiting for hits that never came and runs that never circled the bases, all that was left was disappointment. The team with the best record in baseball fell to a team that batted Pat Burrell cleanup in a NLCS game... Pat Burrell?
When it finally came to an end it was Howard standing at the plate, watching as the third strike buzzed past just above his knees.
“Just get me to the plate, boys.”
“It's kind of a sucky way to end the game, a sucky way to end the year, you know, being that guy,” Howard said. “But I'll have to try and take that and use it as motivation and come back next year.
"I can't say what I want to say.”
No, he can’t, but there will be plenty of talk this winter about that last at-bat and the last series. Plain and simple, the Phillies blew it. Choked. The Phillies were the big bullies on the school yard and they got punched back and didn’t know what to do.
“I just don’t think any of us saw this happening,” closer Brad Lidge said. “I felt like we had the best team in baseball this year. It doesn’t always work out. Unfortunately, we just caught a team that seems to be doing everything right. They got the last hook in there. We just didn’t get our best game out there tonight. So shocked is a good word.”
Shocked like the rest of us that a team with hitters like the Giants could deliver more than the Phillies. Then again, the old, injured sage Jamie Moyer once played for a Seattle club that won 116 games, but lasted just six in the ALCS, To this day Seattle is only one of two franchises never to make it to the World Series.
“We had the best record in baseball, but when you get to the playoffs it really doesn’t mean anything,” Moyer said. “Everything starts just like it did in April. Everyone starts at zero. Now it’s about who is going to play the best, who is going to get the key hits and we fell short. …”
Cliff Lee will pitch in Game 1 of the World Series. Roy Halladay will not.
SAN FRANCISCO — The signals will be evident quickly.
A breaking ball will bounce in the dirt in front of the plate. The fastball will be missing a few ticks on the radar gun without the typical bite. Worse, misses will be large both in and out of the strike zone.
In other words, adjustments will need to be made.
These are the warning signs to look for when Roy Oswalt takes the ball in Game 6 of the NLCS, just two days after his noble relief appearance in Game 4. Oswalt took a peek down at the Phillies’ bullpen as the game progressed into the late innings, saw manager Charlie Manuel’s options and went to put on his spikes. An inning after volunteering his services to the cause, Oswalt was pitching in the ninth inning of the tie game.
Though it didn’t end well for Oswalt or the Phillies, it was easy to admire the pitcher’s moxy. Sure, two days after his start in Game 2 is the day starting pitchers workout with a bullpen session, but Oswalt had already thrown for 20 minutes, iced down and settled in to watch the ballgame.
So that’s the backdrop for Game 6 where Oswalt will be working off two days rest again and the Giants’ lefty Jonathan Sanchez is pitching to avenge his loss in Game 2 where the Phillies scored three runs off him in six innings. Sanchez, the lefty who turned in a 1.01 ERA in six starts in September and whiffed 11 in seven innings against the Braves in the NLDS, will work on his normal rest.
It is with Oswalt, the pitcher who tried to be the hero in Game 4, where the story of Game 6 will unfold.
And just how worried are the Phillies that Oswalt could be slightly spent? Actually, not much. In fact, manager Charlie Manuel says Oswalt should be as ready as ever.
“I think he’s got a rubber arm, he’s kind of different in his style and he’s got a loose arm. That’s why he gets his rise on his fastball,” Manuel said. “He’s one of those guys that goes out there start playing catch and a guy picks up a ball you go out there, watch him, guy picks up the ball and he slowly starts working his way in playing long toss or catch. And Oswalt is one of these guys. He goes out there, gets a ball and starts gunning it right away. Like he’s throwing his warm ups are a guy throwing more than 50 or 60 percent at a time. So I look at that and I see all those things. I don't think it's going to hurt him at all. I think when he tells you he's ready, I think he's ready. He's also one of those guys that if he's got if he's got some kind of problem or something, he's hurt or something like that, I think he'll be the first he'll tell you.”
Oswalt said his bullpen work was just like a bullpen session and he felt no after affects. No, Oswalt isn’t quite like Cliff Lee or Pedro Martinez in eschewing the post-workout ice down, but there is something noble about Oswalt’s desire to help the team. The same goes for Roy Halladay, too, who pitched six innings with less than his best stuff and what turned out to be a strained right groin muscle.
Could Halladay come out of the bullpen in Game 7? That’s tough to know now, but Manuel hasn’t ruled it out.
Of course, October is where baseball legends are created. It’s one thing to take a normal turn and pitch on the assigned day, but it’s the times when pitchers go out there on short rest or in strange roles. Oswalt has jumped in to pitch between starts twice during his playoff career while pitching for the Astros. He was also getting loose during the epic, 18-inning game of the 2005 NLDS where Roger Clemens came in for the Astros and pitched the final three innings to get the win despite pitching two days prior.
Oswalt also pitched the clinching Game 6 of the NLCS where his three-hitter earned him the NLCS MVP and a new bulldozer from Astros’ owner, Drayton McLane.
The difference now from five years ago is that Oswalt understands how tough it is to get to the postseason. So if he’s in it he doesn’t want to go out easily. If he can pitch between starts, pinch run or, shoot, play left field like he did in an extra-inning game in August, he’ll put on the spikes and go to work.
“Once you get to the postseason and get to the World Series like we did in '05 and not get back, and five years later you realize how difficult it is to get back to the situation. So you try to treat it as it's maybe the last time,” Oswalt said. “You never are guaranteed anything. Doesn't matter how good a team you have. You may not ever get back in this situation. So when you are here you try to do everything possible when you're here.”
Which means his approach to Game 6 won’t change from any other game—be it a relief appearance with two days rest in the playoffs or a routine starting assignment.
“I try to pitch every game like the last one,” Oswalt said. “You never know, you're never guaranteed the next day. So it's going to be no different. Trying to attack hitters and make them beat me, not trying to put guys on. No different than any other game. It's a must win game but I treat every one of them like a must win.”
Then again, it’s simpler to just give the maximum effort every time.
And don’t be surprised if Halladay makes another appearance in the series. After all, that’s what the big aces do. There was Curt Schilling and his bloody sock, Randy Johnson pitching a complete game only to come back the next day to get the win in relief in Game 7 of the World Series…
Are we ready for the Phillies’ two Roys to join that list working with a strained groin and short rest?
“It depends on where we're at in the situation,” Manuel said. “Do I want to? No. But at the same time I'm not ruling it out. So don't be surprised and jump on me if I don't use him.”
Hard to fault anyone for trying to be the hero. After all, this is the best time of the year for them.
Baby boomers selling you rumors of their history
Forcing youth away from the truth of what's real today
The kids of today should defend themselves against the ‘70s
- Mike Watt, “Against the ‘70s”
CINCINNATI — We’re getting closer to a definitive answer. If we are led to believe anything after three games of the NLDS, it’s that the Phillies have the pitching to win the World Series. In fact, the Phillies pitching is so good it doesn’t even matter if they don’t hit a lick.
The Phillies didn’t hit a little bit in the NLDS and cruised to the sweep, but does that tell us how good they are? If there is one question we came looking for during the first round of the playoffs it was that one.
Really, how good are the Phillies?
OK, that’s a loaded question because, obviously the team is good enough to win it all. However, because we are at the point in this era of the Phillies’ Golden Age that nothing less than a World Series title will suffice, we have to think of the question in the historical sense. In that regard there are two measuring sticks for National League teams—the 1940s St. Louis Cardinals and the Big Red Machine of the 1970s.
The Cardinals were the last National League team to go to the World Series three seasons in a row. From 1942 to 1944, the Cardinals won the World Series twice and added a third title in 1946. With Stan Musial, perhaps the greatest hitter in history[1], the Cardinals are the benchmark for which all National League teams should be measured. Sure, the Dodgers of the 1950s and 1960 were juggernauts, as were the Braves teams that won 14 straight division titles. But the Cardinals won three titles in five seasons.
The Phillies should equal the Cardinals three straight trips to the World Series this season, but the team they are most compared to are the Reds.
The Big Red Machine sprang to life in 1970 when they lost the World Series to the Orioles. They lost it again in 1972 to the Oakland A’s, fell short in the NLCS in 1973 and 1979, but came through with back-to-back titles in 1975 and 1976. No National League team has won back-to-back titles since and only the 1921-22 New York Giants and 1907-08 Chicago Cubs have won two World Series in a row from the senior circuit.
So, are the Phillies as good as The Big Red Machine? It probably won’t be a question that truly gets answered with some authority until after the World Series, but make no mistake that folks are talking about it. In fact, resident team baseball historian Jimmy Rollins had called his group The Little Red Machine as a homage to the Reds and gave a nod to both team’s power hitters and speed games. Both teams also had strong bullpens and played great defense with multiple Gold Glovers on both clubs.
Fortunately there are a lot of guys around from the days who both covered and played for The Big Red Machine. In fact, 1976 MVP Joe Morgan attended all three games of the NLDS with Reds’ GM Walt Jocketty and said that the comparisons are fair.
“If you're a good team, you’re a good team,” Morgan said. “You’re supposed to win. That’s the way you look at it. The experience doesn’t really factor into it. When I was with the Reds, we saw ourselves as the best team, so we felt like we were supposed to win.”
Listening to their words and watching the body language at Great America Ball Park for Game 3 on Sunday night, it was clear that the Phillies believe they are the best team in the league. It’s a cliché, but the Phillies have an aura and an intimidation factor that often overwhelms teams. During pregame stretch before the Reds finished up their BP rounds, Phillies’ players stood along the baseline and watched the opponents go through their paces. Typically, teams tend to quietly go about their business and ignore the other team, but the Phillies seem to be staring them down like a basketball team settling on the half court line while the opposition goes through its lay-up line.
Maybe the intent isn’t to intimidate, but these Phillies have a definite swagger. Sure, they are pretty good guys who enjoy being together, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have some cockiness when they step on the field.
“With our pitching and our lineup, we match up well against anybody,” Jayson Werth said. “We feel confident whoever we face the rest of the way. Don't get me wrong—we still have to play the games and win them, but we are where we need to be.”
Listening to Morgan speak about the Reds of his day, the sentiment is exactly the same.
“If you think you have the best team, then you have blinders on and you just go play,” Morgan said. “You don’t care who you’re playing. Now, if you’re the 1927 Yankees, and you know [as the opponent] that they have the best team, then you have to have a different approach.”
The consensus amongst some of the old-timers who watched the Reds play and were at the ballpark to cover the series break it down this way… The Big Red Machine had better hitters, but the 2010 Phillies have better pitching.
And pitching wins, right?
Then again, the Reds lineup had Hall-of-Famers Johnny Bench, arguably the greatest catcher ever; Morgan, arguably the greatest second baseman ever; and Tony Perez, a veritable RBI machine and the leader of the club.
But don’t forget Pete Rose, the all-time hit king and bona fide Hall-of-Famer if his lifetime suspension hadn’t fouled things up. Don’t forget guys like Davey Concepcion, the best shortstop in the National League before Ozzie Smith’s emergence; Ken Griffey Sr., a three-time All-Star; slugger George Foster, the one-time owner of the record for most homers in a season by a National League player; and Cesar Geronimo, a four-time Gold Glove Award winner and a .306 hitter in 1976.
Obviously it’s tough to counter a starting pitching staff made up of Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels, and the Reds didn’t have a standout ace until they traded for Tom Seaver in 1978. However, in winning 102 games in 1976, the Reds had seven guys win at least 11 games and a team-wide 3.51 ERA. Meanwhile, the bullpen saved 45 games and turned in a 3.15 ERA. The Phillies’ strength, obviously, is in the rotation, which is the nexus of that swagger.
But whether the Phillies get to the status of The Big Red Machine is still to be determined. There are two more rounds of playoffs to get through, which is something the Reds never had to contend with. In the meantime, the Little Red Machine moniker works… for now.
Needless to say, the Phillies are working to get into that rarified plateau of greatness.
“We’re a veteran group of guys,” Werth said. “We weren’t always that way. As much time as we spend together and the type of guys we have on this team, I would say that’s what you can expect from us, you know?”
[1] Here it is… Stan Musial was the most underrated player in Major League Baseball history. That’s right. Sure, it’s tough to slip under the radar with 3,630 hits, 475 homers and a .331 lifetime batting average, but Musial hardly gets the due as his contemporaries Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams. Unlike Williams, Musial’s teams won championships, and frankly, winning matters. Of course Williams lost years of his prime to military service and there is no telling what could have happened in those seasons—reasonably, Williams could have hit 700 homers and got 4,000 hits. However, the sense from the scores of books and stories written about Williams indicates he was more concerned with his own stats instead of what was good for the Red Sox. Williams’ notable moments were when he hit a home run to win the All-Star Game and went 6-for-8 on the last day of the 1941 season to bat .406. Musial’s best days were all the times he showed up at the ballpark. To this day Musial is known by everyone in St. Louis and regarded as one of the nicest men ever to grace a uniform. Maybe it has something to do with playing in St. Louis instead of Boston, but the point remains… if I was putting together a team and had to choose between Williams and Musial, give me Stan the Man.
WASHINGTON — Although the Phillies have done nothing more than guarantee three more games on the schedule, there is already a buzz whether the 2010 team is the best in club history. With 94 wins and a chance to be the first National League team since the 1942-44 Cardinals to make it to the World Series three years in a row, the Phillies aren’t flirting with just franchise greatness… this is all-time stuff.
Of course the hyperbole alarm sounds whenever anyone puts out the “best ever” line, and even in this case the players are leery of celebrating anything more than what has already been accomplished. In fact, Jimmy Rollins said for this Phillies team to be considered great they have to win the World Series.
However, in the same breath Rollins says the 2010 team is the best he’s ever played on.
“Definitely. We’re better all around—less question marks. Not that question marks ever bothered us because we like to prove skeptics wrong, but coming into this year there were only one or two things people were iffy about,” Rollins said. “Then we had a great acquisition in little Roy [Oswalt] and that took the pressure off of Cole [Hamels], and then Roy [Halladay] took the pressure off of everybody. He just came in and shut the door. Lights out.”
The weird part is general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. says there were internal discussions with the team’s brass over whether or not it was time to cut bait. Struggling to score runs during an extended stretch in July where the Phillies lost three out of four in Pittsburgh and Chicago, Amaro said the idea of trading some of the integral pieces to the fourth straight NL East title had been broached.
“There was some concern that maybe guys were getting older, less productive,” Amaro said. “If you look up and down our lineup, I don’t know if there is any guy, other than maybe Carlos Ruiz, who is having a career year. We talked about this internally and yet we still are creeping up on 95 wins, which is amazing to me. I would have been the first to be able to tell you that I didn’t think we were going to get to 90 wins when we were right around the middle of July. So for us to kind of turn on the way we’ve turned it on, is even surprising to me.
“What’s great about this is that, one, we really haven’t had the kind of production that we typically would have from even the guys in the middle [of the lineup]. Chase Utley hasn’t had his typical year. Ryan Howard hasn’t had his typical year. Jimmy Rollins obviously hasn’t had a great year, he’s had injury issues and such. We’ve got a lot of down production from a lot of guys and hopefully they can turn it on and come up with some offensive production as we get into the postseason.”
So call it the great break up that wasn’t. Following the team’s fourth straight loss and sixth in seven games to send its record to 48-46, the Phillies won eight in a row and 13 out of the next 15 games. They also made a deal to add Roy Oswalt to the rotation and became even more fearsome.
From that low point of 48-46 and seven games out in the NL East, the Phillies have gone 46-17 and six games up and winning games at a .730 clip. There was a game after a Friday afternoon loss in Chicago where Manuel sat at his desk in the cramped office and went over the math in his head while wondering aloud if his team could get it together. Less than a week later, hitting coach Milt Thompson was fired then, for whatever reason, the Phillies began winning at a rate that exceeded the more modest numbers Manuel charted in his head.
Yet paced by pitching with the hitters beginning to find their way, the Phillies are peaking at the right time. Still, the team knows that none of it matters unless they go the whole way. The great lesson learned during the current run is winning has a way of changing the way people look at things.
For history to judge the Phillies most favorably, they have to win.
After all, does anyone remember much about the Oakland teams that went to the postseason in four straight seasons but never made it past the ALDS? How about the Indians of the 1990s that made it the playoffs for five seasons in a row and the World Series twice, but never wore the ring?
Of course there are also the Braves that dominated divisional play for 14 years in a row, but have just one title—against the Indians in ’95—to show for it.
Going back a bit, the Orioles made it to the World Series three years in a row (1969, 1970, 1971), but won it once. The same thing happened with Oakland in 1988, 1989 and 1990. Those teams are remembered as dynasties that might have been had it been able to finish the deal.
Are the Phillies worried about how history might judge them?
“You play this game to try and win championships and that’s our focus,” Howard said. “We stay focused on the task at hand and let you guys tell us where it fits into the history books. That will sort itself out.”
Like Howard, Rollins isn’t ready for reflection. Just winning.
“I haven’t thought about it like that, but it’s something I’ll go through when it’s all said and done,” Rollins said. “It’s hard to do. Everything has to go your way, you have to have a good team, you have to have great pitching, you have to have timely hitting, you have to have guys who are having career years who are coming together where things are going your way. You don’t think too far into the future. You just try and blaze your own trail right now. And when the light is out, then you look back.”
WASHINGTON — Sometimes life’s moments are fleeting. They pass by without pausing ever-so slightly to allow someone to run out to the car to get the camera or go to the Men’s Wearhouse for the proper costume.
Of course if a person has to abide by a dress code to properly commemorate anything, it probably isn’t worth it.
Nevertheless, with folks in the regular, old square world, certain passages of time are celebrated. Only instead of reveling when the moment actually occurs, we plan parties, send out invitations, order a cake and drinks, establish a dress code and then allow everyone to come over and treat their space like it’s a hotel room.
But major league baseball players don’t live like the rank-and-file. No, they live in the moment, take them on day at a time and don’t go planning for big events down the road when games remain on the schedule. They don’t dance if there is no music and don’t party if there is nothing to celebrate. More than keeping it real, ballplayers simply do not sweat the small stuff.
Isn’t that a good way to be? Sure, baseball players are blissfully ignorant and live life inside an insulated cocoon, shielded from such scary things like the news or weather reports and ushered from city to city via a cortege of busses, shuttles and chartered flights where only suckers stand in line or can’t get after-hours room service.
Hey, that $81 per diem isn’t going to spend itself.
But there is something pure about living in the moment. It’s a lot like baseball before the American League instituted the designated hitter and Tony La Russa began batting his pitcher in the No. 8 spot. It’s very real and in the workaday world where we’re continually told what we’re supposed to like and what we have to consume in our diets—media or otherwise—it’s refreshing to know that ballplayers still no how to party.
Sure, the Phillies’ goal is to sew up the NL East as quickly and efficiently as possible. However, the team’s Amtrak train was probably just outside of Baltimore on Sunday night when they learned they were eligible to advance to the postseason. Seeing as the iPad has rightly surpassed the Bluetooth ear piece as the must-have bit of uncommon man, geek couture in the Phillies’ clubhouse, the ballplayers likely knew instantly when the Reds sealed the deal by beating the Padres and secure a spot for the local nine in the playoffs. As such, Brad Lidge said he and his teammates thought about adjourning to the club car for a tall, cold one and raise a glass to leaping over the first hurdle, but once the moment came it was a little too anticlimactic.
“We didn’t do anything,” Lidge said with a shrug. “I suppose another team would be doing back flips, after all, you want to just get in the dance.”
But?
“You know…”
It’s not quite a been-there-done-that jawn for Lidge and some of the team’s veterans, but at the same time, it is. This ain’t the first rodeo for most of these guys so if they are going to dance, there better be some music. Besides, it’s important to take the time and celebrate manager Charlie Manuel says.
“If you go all season and you win your division you should celebrate,” Manuel said. “I think the team should have some free time—cocktails, a little drink or whatever else you want to throw in there. I think it’s a time to celebrate and rejoice. You did something and it’s been a long year. You’re fighting to get to the World Series, but I call it the first step. There are four steps to it and the first one is to get in.”
But what about the guys who haven’t been there before? Every season there are a few new guys who are integral to the success of the team, but haven’t danced the dance before. This year it’s Roy Halladay and Mike Sweeeney ready to make their first ever playoff appearances. Only the interesting thing with Halladay and Sweeney is they have played a combined 29 seasons without so much as a sniff at the postseason.
Needless to say, after 16 years in the big leagues to finally sew up a playoff spot while riding an Amtrak train to Washington, was a bit anticlimactic to say the least.
But no worries there, says Sweeney.
“It was a bit anticlimactic, but over the past few months my goal has changed,” Sweeney explained. “It went from, ‘Golly, I’d really like the chance to play in the postseason.’ And now that it’s becoming a reality, my goal has changed because of my teammates in this locker room. It’s no longer, ‘I just want to play in a playoff game.’ It’s, ‘I want to win the whole darn thing.’”
With Halladay pitching on Monday night with the chance to seal it, Manuel expects him to amp it up a notch. Oh, he won’t let on that anything is different, but Manuel knows better and it appeared as if Halladay and his catcher Chooch Ruiz spent some extra time going over the Nationals’ hitters before the game.
Hadn’t they already seen the Nats plenty of times this year?
No way… Halladay isn’t leaving anything to chance.
Neither is Sweeney, who is solely focused on the task at hand.
“It hasn’t sunk in yet, so hopefully we win tonight and get to splash some champagne and it feels like a reality,” said Sweeney, nothing that he and his high school teammates sprayed apple cider after a schoolboy championship. “I hope we can get the win tonight so I can really embrace that emotion.”
NEW YORK — To call Roy Oswalt quiet is a disservice to the word. Tranquil might be a better description. Maybe understated, unflashy, unpretentious fit in there, too. After all, when Oswalt speaks with his soft, Mississippi drawl, it’s best to move in close or risk a chance at not hearing anything.
His body language is the same way, too. When Oswalt walks on (or off) the mound, it’s placid, efficient and light. It’s almost as if his feet glide over the grass on his way to the dugout and he shows no emotion with eyes focused and posture as straight as a country mile.
But don’t mistake Oswalt’s quietness for shyness and don’t think that because he’s a kind sort that he is soft. Considering that his goal is to make hitters look dumb whenever he throws a baseball, Oswalt has a sadistic side. Affable off the mound, Oswalt is nasty on it and if there is one pitcher opponents have struggled with lately, it’s been the quiet kid from Weir, Mississippi.
There were 32 kids in Oswalt’s high school class where he was a pitcher for the baseball team and a defensive back on the state championship football team at Weir. His dad, Billy, is a logger and served in Vietnam, and his grandfather, Houston, was a logger, too. Logging is tough work and a hard way to make a dollar with injuries, and worse, a regular occurrence. But as the story is told, when Astros owner Drayton McLane asked Oswalt what his goal was in baseball it was related to a life spent on the stark and austere land near the gulf coast of Mississippi.
“I want to own a bulldozer,” is what Oswalt reportedly told McLane.
So maybe that’s why Oswalt carries himself the way he does. Knowing how harsh the land can be he chooses to show respect until he has to go to work. Then, like logging and pitching, he attempts to decimate wood. Perhaps that’s also where the rumors indicating that Oswalt preferred not to play for Philadelphia came from, too. Long since denied, those reports about a pitcher from a town with a population of 553 not wanting to pitch in Philadelphia are missing the point. Philly is a blue-collar city only different from Weir, Mississippi as it relates to population, area and types of industry.
In both places they appreciate people who have a strong work ethic and they really like to win.
“I feel like I got a new life coming over here,” Oswalt said with his soft, Mississippi drawl. “I’d been out of playoff contention for five years and now we’re trying to get back into the playoffs. (Most of the guys) got a ring. I don't. Hopefully I can push them to get another one.”
And since joining the Phillies at the end of July, Oswalt has had an impact not just in the game he’s pitched, but on the entire rotation as well. In nine starts since the trade from the Astros, Oswalt is 6-1 with a 1.98 ERA. Take away his debut against the Nationals that came not even 24 hours after the trade went down, and Oswalt is 6-0 with a 1.56 ERA.
More importantly, he has been the catalyst of a friendly competition between fellow aces Roy Halladay and Cole Hamels, as well. Since arriving in Philadelphia, Halladay solidified his Cy Young Award credentials by going 6-2 with a 3.12 ERA to boost his wins total to 18. But of The Big Three, Halladay is actually the worst of the trio, statistically speaking. Over the same span, Hamels is 3-3 with a 2.09 ERA and 60 strikeouts in 56 innings. The lefty is also riding a scoreless innings streak of 25.
It’s the damndest group of pitchers, according to manager Charlie Manuel. Not only are they at the top of their games, but not one of them has an ounce of hubris.
“[Oswalt is] quiet. Between those three, Cole talks the most, but he’s not what anyone would call [talkative],” Manuel said. “All of them work hard. You don’t see [Halladay] around much because he’s always doing something. He’s always working or looking at videos or something. All three of them have the same work ethic and they sit there together a lot. I’m sure they’re talking about pitching.”
Nevertheless, Oswalt’s arrival begs the question… if all three pitchers are rested and ready to go in a Game 7 elimination game, which one gets the ball?
(You hesitated before answering, didn’t you?)
“Halladay and Cole are tremendous pitchers,” Oswalt said. “They go out there and compete every day. It’s a friendly competition with each other—at least I try to treat it that way because it pushes me even more, makes me try to go deeper into games. And I'm trying to push them a little bit, too.”
It’s worked. In fact, it’s worked in a manner similar to how it was in Houston when Oswalt was the third wheel in the bulldozer driven by Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte. Not exactly the most demure guy on the planet, it would seem as if there would be some personality conflicts in the Astros’ trio that went to Game 7 of the 2004 NLCS and the World Series in 2005. However, to see Oswalt tell the stories it seems as if he enjoyed the wildness and the antics from his better-known teammates.
“Roger was kind of standoffish. He had something written into his deal that he didn’t have to be there every day because of his family, but when he was there you couldn’t ask for a better teammate,” Oswalt said with a smile that seemed to indicate that there were stories he couldn’t tell in polite company. “He still keeps up with me and will probably send me a text today. He has a great presence and pushes guys.
“Pettitte was the same way. He had a demeanor where he didn’t think he ever should lose. These guys are the same way. When Halladay gives up a hit he looks like it’s the end of the world. So you have to have to have that competitiveness.”
Oswalt’s demeanor always stays the same. He doesn’t fluster easily, not even when a tornado touched down in Weir last April and destroyed his boyhood home where his parents live, barely a mile away from Oswalt’s current home. But having acquired that bulldozer long ago, Oswalt simply had the house rebuilt. His parents moved back in just last week.
The anticipation had been building for weeks during the summer of 1985 and as the new school year started, 44-year-old player-manager Pete Rose had chipped away at Ty Cobb’s all-time hit record. Maybe Pete got there a little slower than our young minds thought, but with a pair of hits on a Sunday afternoon game at Wrigley Field, Rose and Cobb were tied with 4,191 hits.
Clearly at this point of his career Rose was just hanging on for the record. We saw it when he was winding his way through his last season with the Phillies in 1983. A staple at first base for a full 162 games in his first four seasons with the Phillies, Rose often split time with Tony Perez and an aging prospect named Len Matuszek, who hit 27 homers in Triple-A in ’83. As a result, Rose was the Phillies opening day right fielder that season and did not regularly play first base until the end of June.
When the World Series shifted to Philadelphia for Game 3, manager Paul Owens kept Rose on the bench a pinch-hitter. In Game 5, Rose went 2-for-4 as the right fielder. Three days later, the Phillies released him, just 10 hits short of 4,000.
There was nothing as odd as seeing Rose at age 43 with his hair graying, dressed in the gaudy Montreal Expos uniform. Fortunately for the fashion police, Rose was traded from the Expos to the Reds where the Cincinnati kid returned to be a first baseman and manager, all at once.
Rose will be in Cincinnati tonight for a ceremony to commemorate the 25th anniversary of his 4,192nd hit. After all, it was Sept. 11, 1985 at Riverfront Stadium, now leveled and turned into a parking lot, where Rose had his last moment in the sun. Despite all those hits, all those records and a burgeoning managerial career that resulted in a World Series title for the Reds 13 months after his suspension, Rose likely will never stand in front of the masses at Cooperstown and be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
His reward was a bad movie produced by ESPN where Tom Sizemore stumbled through his depiction of Rose. It might have been better to get Ted Sizemore.
Nevertheless, Rose broke Cobb’s record on a school night, but I can remember being out in front of the house when word filtered out that hit No. 4,192 had fallen. There were no cut-ins to the regularly-scheduled programming, no big national celebrations and no buzz outside of folks who followed baseball religiously. For Rose, though, it was the culmination of a life’s work and the definition of his legacy. In fact, he has trademarked the phrase, “Hit King,” which along with his career hit total (4,256), he writes onto every autograph he signs at the memorabilia shop in Las Vegas. Sorry, the “Charlie Hustle” inscription costs extra.
Coincidentally, Cobb played his final game on Sept. 11, 1928, though he was the Hit King since 1923 when he passed Cap Anson with his 3,436th hit[1]. So Cobb held the record for 63 years—24 years after his death—before Rose grabbed a hold of it. And with his 70th birthday coming up next April, Rose could hang onto the record for the rest of his life, and maybe even as long as Cobb.
Couldn’t he?
A couple of years ago I met with Rose in Las Vegas and I asked him if he thought anyone could break his record. The answer, of course, was a blunt and resounding, “No.”
But I pressed on anyway, ticking off names as if we were a couple of baseball fans talking about the game in a bar or wherever. Only in this case it was Rose, me and the workers at a memorabilia shop in Caesar’s Palace where the all-time hit king was signing autographs and posing for pictures.
“Alex Rodriguez?”
“No.”
Even though A-Rod averages 190 hits per 162 games, his tendency to hit homers and standing in the middle of the Yankees’ offense might make it difficult for him to get beyond 3,800 hits.
“Ichiro?”
“If he would have started out playing in the U.S., maybe. But he lost all those years.”
Yes, that’s true. Ichiro would have the best chance if he hadn’t spent the first half of his career playing in Japan. He is 36 and has nearly 3,500 hits between both Japan and the U.S. and needs just 16 more hits this season to break Rose’s record of 10 seasons with at least 200 hits.
Regardless, Ichiro’s nine “lost” seasons in Japan cost him.
However, the way Rose so quickly dismissed the next name was kind of surprising.
“Derek Jeter,” I said.
“No,” said Pete.
“Really? Why not? He gets 200-hits a season and hits at the top of a lineup that needs his to get hits. Ten years worth of 200 hits or close to it is nearly 2,000 hits. That adds up.”
“Yeah, but he’s 35,” Pete said.
Actually, Jeter is 36 now and in the throes of his worst season in the big leagues, batting just .260 with 152 hits in 138 games. Heading into this season, Jeter averaged 208 hits per 162 games. At that rate, he would need to play seven more seasons to end up with nearly 4,200 hits.
Sure, Jeter plays a demanding position, but he will be younger than Rose was when he gets his 3,000th hit next year. This is all some rudimentary and basic math and it’s probably not likely that Jeter will be pounding out 200 hits when he is 40, especially considering his contract is up at the end of the season. However, maybe Jeter will move to first base or DH a few games a week instead of playing 150-plus at shortstop every year?
Besides, when Rose was 40 he led the National League in hits, and the first four seasons he played first base when he joined the Phillies, Rose got 705 hits. Make that 705 hits in 594 games from the ages 38 to 41. That comes to an average of 193 hits per 162 games.
Not bad for an old guy.
So could Jeter get close to Rose’s record? Perhaps we should save this for 2017 if Jeter is still around. That will give Rose 32 years with the record and 28 years into his banishment from the game. In the meantime, Rose gets a special dispensation on Sept. 11, 2010 to celebrate what he did 25 years before in an actual, major league ballpark. Yes, Major League Baseball will allow Rose into Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati tonight. Whether or not he’ll get another visit remains to be seen, but what is definite is that Rose should be able to last as long as humanly possible.
Rose’s career and his record took durability. So too does his banishment from baseball. He played for 24 years and he’s been banned for 21.
What’s going to give first, the record or the ban?
[1] Cobb broke Anson’s record with a four-hit game on Sept. 22, 1923 at Fenway Park while playing for the Tigers. Interestingly, the Tigers were wrapping a stretch where they played 12 games in six days… yes, six straight doubleheaders against the Philadelphia A’s and Red Sox. He had a chance to set the record at Shibe Park in Philadelphia, but got just four hits in six games against the second-division A’s. He fared much better in Boston, going for 11 hits in the first five games and tied the record with a homer in the sixth inning.
The silly, old adage with Major League Baseball is, “it’s a marathon,” and as a veteran of 14 competitive marathons (not bragging or anything), I would call the 162-game baseball season with its spring training and month long playoffs, the much more grueling sport to play and cover. For a good marathon a person is investing three to four months of focused training and then two-and-a-half to three hours of running on race day.
Plus, when broken down, running is just moving forward… one foot after the other. It's kind of simple when looked at that way.
Baseball is like that, too, only the training period never really ends. Sure, a lot of ballplayers will try to rest up during the month of November, but typically start working out for spring training and the season around Thanksgiving. Not including all the games, the travel, the sitting around and waiting and all of the late nights and early mornings, the self-respecting ballplayer and ballscribe look as if they have been put through a meat grinder when the playoffs roll around. Considering all the bad flights, bad food, lousy sleep patterns and no true semblance of a “real” life while friends and family are off enjoying the summer and vacations, the baseball lifers earn all those Marriott points they rack up during the season.
Respect? Well, someday… someday.
Nevertheless, over a 162-game season it often gets tough digging up a story idea. Sure, the news of the day always prevails, but with so much competition and so many different people disseminating it, a fresh angle is always the goal. So the search for an obtuse or acute angle brought us to the second game of Monday’s day-night doubleheader[1] led a lot of us to the same spot…
The race for the NL East is going to come down to that last weekend of the season in Atlanta.
Hey, it was a long day. Besides, sometimes the best story is the most obvious one. Other times it’s best to give credit to the schedule makers. After all, the past few years the Phillies had a way of wrapping up the season at home against Washington or Florida with a few days to rest the team’s big guns. In fact, last year, the Phillies had things sewn up with four games remaining in the season to reinforce the accepted fact that there is nothing worse than meaningless September baseball.
Obviously, the converse of that is also fact. There is nothing in sports more exciting than meaningful September and October baseball and it appears as if the Phillies and Braves are headed for a collision course.
“If I had my way we’d get a lead and be four up with three to play before we went in there,” manager Charlie Manuel said. “I don’t know, but it’s kind of traveling that way. It’s like a hurricane they’re predicting to go up the coast with the track it’s going to take.”
Yes, two hurricanes headed for the same spot at the same time. Meteorologists say this can’t happen in nature, but it seems as if the Phillies are resigned to let it happen. At least that’s the conventional wisdom. Publically, however, the ballplayers are still in the play-them-one-game-at-a-time mode. That makes sense considering the Phillies are at the most crucial stage of the marathon, well past the point where glycogen stores are depleted and the dreaded “wall” is staring them right in the face.
With a clubhouse full of seasoned, playoff veterans, the Phillies aren’t sizing up the Braves and calculating how it will go down during the final weekend of the season.
“Let’s not look too far ahead,” Shane Victorino said. “We’ll just keep playing. We worry about ourselves. We’re not worried about what [the Braves] are doing. We control our own destiny. We’ve got to go out there and play our baseball.”
Logically, Victorino is correct. If the Phillies keep winning ballgames a trip to the playoffs for a fourth season in a row is a virtual lock. The numbers crunchers at Baseball Prospectus put the odds for the Phillies to win the east at 29 percent, the wild card at 40 percent and a berth at the playoffs at 68 percent. Interestingly, the BP formula has the Phillies going 11-12 the rest of the way and a match up against the Cincinnati Reds in the NLDS with the Braves pared with the winner of the NL West.
Still, like in any marathon a mile in the beginning of the race logically carries the same importance as the last miles. But we know better. So too do they Phillies and every other ballclub in Major League Baseball. The example I like to cite is the end of the 1982 season where the Milwaukee Brewers went to Baltimore for four games in the final three days of the season. The Brewers needed one win to clinch the division, while the Orioles had to sweep all four to complete the improbable comeback to win the AL East.
The Orioles cruised in Friday night’s opener, 8-3, highlighted by a three-hit game from Rich Dauer and 2 2/3 of one-hit relief from closer Tippy Martinez. Storm Davis tossed a gem in Saturday’s first game as the Orioles rolled 7-1 and swept the doubleheader with 18 hits in an 11-3 laugher.
So with the season coming down to one final game on the last Sunday of the regular season, and aces Jim Palmer and Don Sutton on the mound, the Brewers regrouped to clinch the East with a 10-3 victory. Not only did the Brewers save themselves from the indignity of blowing a three-game lead with four to play, but the last game served as a signature game for 1982 AL MVP, Robin Yount, who led his team with two homers, a triple and scored four runs.
Not a bad afternoon, for Yount or the Brewers. For the Orioles, the one game proved to be the lasting image of the 1982 season.
And that’s what the Phillies (and every other team) is up against.
“I think our team will be remembered by how we finish,” Manuel said, astutely. “We’ve hung in there. Our starting pitching has kept us in there. We’re sitting in a good place, and now is a good time for us to pick it up and start putting some runs on the board consistently.”
As it shapes up now, Cole Hamels, Roy Halladay and Roy Oswalt (in that order) will pitch in the final series. The Braves will have Derek Lowe, Jair Jurrgens and Tim Hudson ready to go, too.
How can it not come down to that last weekend?
[1] The doubleheader, especially the day-night doubleheader, is a phenomenon foreign to every pro sport aside from baseball. Yes, the physical tolls of the games on its participants aren’t as foreboding in baseball, but think about the scribes. Most folks got to the ballpark for Monday’s day-nighter before 10 a.m. and did not leave the park until after 11 p.m. That’s a long day no matter what the task.
I haven’t counted, but I’m willing to bet that the player I wrote the most about during the first half of the baseball season was Cliff Lee. Some of the reasoning behind this deduction is obvious because for about seven months after Lee was traded to Seattle on a whirlwind December day in which the Phillies got Roy Halladay, he was the lightning rod we all fired strikes at.
The Phillies would have been better with Cliff Lee, we reasoned, not wrongly. Worse, general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. never offered a reason for dealing away Lee that we would accept. Oh sure, we got it, but we didn’t like it.
The constant harping about Lee always got back to a couple of main points. For one, there was the money thing. It wasn’t our money and as a public trust that has sold out 108 straight games in the relatively brand-new park, the team ought to spend, spend, spend. Then, there was the idea of the Phillies going down the stretch with a starting rotation that featured two guys who won Cy Young awards, and another who was MVP of the NLCS and World Series. Would any team want face a team that went Halladay, Lee and Hamels in three straight games of a playoff series?
No. No way.
But a quick perusal of the archives of this little site shows that Lee’s name hasn’t been mentioned since July 29. That date—two days before the annual trading deadline—not only is the anniversary of Lee’s arrival in Philadelphia where he wore the Phillies’ pinstripes for approximately three months covering just 17 starts, including the postseason, but also it’s the date of Roy Oswalt’s arrival to Philly. It kind of makes sense now why Lee hasn’t been mentioned all that much anymore.
In his first seven outings for the Phils, Oswalt is 4-1 with a 1.89 ERA with 41 strikeouts in 47 2/3 innings. No, Oswalt hasn’t won the Cy Young Award like Lee, but he has won the MVP in the 2005 NLCS with the Astros. Better yet, Oswalt says he pushed through the usual “dead arm” stage of the season that seems to strike high-innings pitchers late in the summer and certainly will see his workload increase the rest of the way. Manager Charlie Manuel hinted as much on Friday afternoon when he alluded to the experience Roys Halladay and Oswalt have with pitching on short rest. If that’s not planting a seed of thought, nothing is.
Regardless, Oswalt’s arrival has made us stash Lee’s name away into the attic of happy memories after he posted the greatest statistical postseason by a Phillies pitcher since Grover Cleveland Alexander in 1915, which only makes sense. Still, after pining for Lee into July, some have gone into a full-out sprint in the other direction by wondering if all the carrying on was wrong. Maybe trading Lee away wasn’t such a bad idea after all, went the reasoning, especially when one considers that Lee missed the first month of the season, got traded to Texas, slumped a bit and now is struggling with some back discomfort. Since being traded to the Rangers, Lee has gone 0-3 with an 8.26 ERA during the past month and just got an anti-inflammatory injection for his back this week.
That’s a far cry from what Oswalt has done in his seven starts with the Phillies, or even what Lee did in his first seven outings with the Phillies last year at this time. Lee had a 3.37 ERA and 47 strikeouts in 48 innings when he first joined the club last year.
So yes, statistically Oswalt has been better. Moreover, because Lee might be injured Oswalt is clearly the more valuable pitcher right now.
See, trading Lee wasn’t such a bad idea after all… right?
Well, yes and no. The yes should be obvious because Oswalt is healthy, happy and pitching well. Before he was traded to Philadelphia there was concern that Oswalt, a quiet and private man from Weir, Mississippi (population 553), might not fit in well in a hardscrabble northeast city. Sometimes, athletes in Philadelphia are judged more by emotion and personality than talent or results. Not exactly the most demonstrative man on the mound and straightforward and soft spoken with the press, it’s understandable if Oswalt was apprehensive.
Yet by all accounts, Oswalt, like Lee, has fit in quite well in Philadelphia. Of course the excitement of a pennant race has something to do with that, but that’s kind of the whole point… right?
“I can tell he’s happy here,” said Brad Lidge, Oswalt’s teammate from their days in Houston. “You can see that extra pep in his step. I think he feels the change in energy and he’s enjoying being part of this as opposed to just another season going by. You can see him thinking about trying to achieve that ultimate goal.
“And he’s throwing great.”
Conversely, the move to get Oswalt before the deadline is an admission that the Phillies needed a pitcher of high caliber. Lee’s contract status might have spooked Amaro into trading him, but that never changed the desire to have three horses at the top of the rotation.
And now that he has them, Manuel hopes they are ready to run for the next month-plus.
“The best part about that is Halladay and Oswalt have pitched on short rest,” Manuel said. “They have that experience and that becomes very big.”
That’s down the road, of course, but for now the best part about Halladay and Oswalt is that they made folks forget about Cliff Lee for a little while. Besides, Oswalt has a no-trade clause and a contract for 2011. Looks like the Phillies are stuck with him.
So the Phillies nearly were no-hit again on Monday night at Dodger Stadium. This time it was Hiroki Kuroda who flirted with blanking the Phillies until Shane Victorino came through with a solid single to right field with one out in the eighth inning.
For those scoring at home, there have been 19 one-hitters in the big leagues this season and the Phillies were involved in four of them. There also have been five no-hitters—excluding the no-so perfect game from Armando Galarraga—the most since 1991 when there were seven no-hitters, which was the dawn of the so-called steroid era.
Can the level field between pitching and hitting be as simple as improved drug testing?
That's a question that will be answered in time. For now, however, we have to figure what can we make of this and why the pitching has caught up to hitting.
Either way, there is a rebirth of extraordinary well-pitched games. Of the 20 perfect games (21 if you count Galarraga), three of them (four if you count… you know) have come since July of 2009. That’s 15 percent of all the perfect games in history happening within a 10-month span.
It also means that after being one-hit three times this season, the Phillies are about due for the ol’ no-no…
Doesn’t it?
Well, yes and no. Historically, no-hitters have existed in a vacuum. There were no hints or warnings that they were going to happen. For instance, before the White Sox’s Mark Buehrle threw a perfect game against the Rays in July of 2009, there was no event that gave off a warning sign that it was about to happen. In fact, before the perfect game, the Rays had won four of six and were 5 games off the pace in the AL East. If there were candidates of teams to be no-hit, the Rays were hardly at the top of the list.
But since that perfect game, the Rays have been involved in three no-hitters. One of those was a perfect game by Dallas Braden in Oakland, followed by an eight-walk, 149-pitch no-no in Arizona by Edwin Jackson.
Despite the fact that the Rays (81-50) are tied for the best record in baseball with the Yankees, they also have been one-hit twice and two-hit twice this season. In fact, the Rays have been two-hit, one-hit or no-hit at least once every month this season. With September to start on Wednesday, the Rays are due again.
It appears as if the Phillies are in the same boat as the Rays only without the perfect game out in front. Since April 16, 1978 when the Cardinals’ Bob Forsch threw a no-hitter against the Phillies, the team has not been beaten by an official no-hitter. Yes, there was the rain-shortened, five-inning no-no by the Expos’ Pascual Perez in late 1988, but that doesn’t count in the official records.
Better yet, the Phillies have been so resistant to extraordinary pitching that since Forsch threw his no-hitter, they had been victims of a one-hitter just 11 times heading into this season. Yes, that’s just 11 one-hitters in 31 seasons.
So clearly the Phillies are making up for lost time. This season they have been one-hit three times (Daisuke Matsusaka, R.A. Dickey, Kuroda) which is the exact number of times the Phillies had been one-hit since 1994. Plus, if we figure that the Rays were coming off a season in which they got to the World Series and had only been one-hit or no-hit four times in their entire existence (going back to 1998), the Phillies are ripe for the taking.
Then again, who knows with these things. Before 1978 it seemed like the Phillies were the easiest team to throw a no-hitter against. From 1960 to 1972, the Phillies came up on the zero end of things in the hits category eight times, including two in the same season (1960) to the Milwaukee Braves. Meanwhile, in the World Series era, Philadelphia pitchers have tossed just 13 no-hitters, with eight of those coming from Phillies pitchers.
Perhaps the only thing we’ve been able to determine through all of this is no-hitters and Philadelphia don’t go together all that well. Adding in the fact that the New York Mets have not had a single no-hitter in their history and the Dodgers have had 20, these are events that occur totally at random.
And with a lot of luck.
If we’re ranking the off-season deals around baseball, the one that brought Roy Halladay to the Phillies just might be the best one. The truth is Halladay has been everything as advertised for the Phillies and maybe more. Of course the final analysis cannot be completed until Halladay pitches in the playoffs (IF he pitches in the playoffs), but so far there isn’t anything to complain about.
As a result of his performance, Halladay is right in the mix to win his second Cy Young Award along with Tim Hudson of the Braves, Adam Wainwright from the Cardinals, Ubaldo Jimenez from the Rockies, and the Marlins’ Josh Johnson.
Interestingly, four of the top 10 pitchers in wins, ERA and strikeouts come from the NL East, which shows how well pitch Halladay has to pitch in every game. Moreover, since the Phillies play the Braves and Marlins 13 times in September, Halladay will have to dial it up for his final half-dozen starts.
But that shouldn’t be a problem. After all, this season Halladay leads the league in ERA (2.22), innings (207), complete games (8), shutouts (3) and strikeouts (186). He also leads the league in WAR, walks per nine innings (1.1) and could move into a tie for the league leadership with 17 wins if he beats the Dodgers on Monday night.
The Phillies have not had anyone win the pitching triple crown (wins, ERA and strikeouts) since Steve Carlton in 1972, a 20-game winner since 1982 (Carlton) or a Cy Young Award winner since 1987 (Steve Bedrosian). In fact, the Phillies haven’t had a right-hander win 20 games since Robin Roberts did it in 1955.
With those milestones also comes the perfect game in Miami where Halladay retired all 27 Marlins in a 1-0 victory against Johnson. So yeah, as far as resume fodder goes, Halladay likely will have it all.
“I think he should definitely be in there,” manager Charlie Manuel said a couple of weeks ago. “There are some guys having some big years, but he’s definitely right in there with complete games and our team has definitely been in contention, so I don’t see any reason why he shouldn’t be there. He has a chance to pull that off if you guys vote for him.”
Yeah, there it is. Will the voters go for Halladay if he has a bad, relatively speaking, September? Halladay is just outside of the top 10 in losses, which is hardly his fault given the Phillies’ streaky offense this season. Though Halladay has a 4.87 ERA in his nine losses and has allowed 13 of his 16 homers in those games, the Phillies have scored three runs or fewer in eight of those games and zero or one in four of them. Even in his no-decisions the Phillies didn’t give him much support, either. One of those resulted in a 1-0 victory for the team and the other turned into a 4-3 defeat.
In fact, in six of Halladay’s 16 wins he received either one or two runs of support.
Sure, these superlatives are fantastic, but they don’t really answer the question…
Can Halladay win the Cy Young Award?
Well, that all depends. Counting Monday night’s start at Dodger Stadium, Halladay will make seven more starts this season. But even if he wins them all and the Phillies fall out of the playoffs, he could have a tough time winning the Cy Young. See, BBWAA voters are a fickle bunch and they seem to put a lot of stock in winning. Even still, it will be very difficult to deny Halladay.
Better yet, considering Halladay has never gone into September with his team within 10 games, this should be an exciting time for him. Actually, the reason why he wanted to join the Phillies was to get a chance to pitch in meaningful, late-season games. It also didn’t hurt that he would not have to move from his Florida home since the Blue Jays and Phillies train next to each other in Dunedin and Clearwater.
Nevertheless, Halladay said he wanted to pitch in some big games and it looks like he got his wish. Starting on Monday night and going to the last regular-season game in Atlanta on Oct. 2, every start will be a big deal.
“Obviously it’s been a while since I’ve gotten to this part of the season and been on a team that’s been knocking on the door, so yeah, I’m definitely looking forward to it,” Halladay said a couple of weeks back. “We have a couple of guys coming back and it’s going to be fun. This is the biggest reason why I wanted to come here and to give ourselves a chance is pretty important.”
So if Halladay comes through in September not only will he probably get a cool looking plaque, but also it should put the Phillies into the playoffs.