So, it takes Mike Lieberthal, what, eight years to decide that maybe he should try to emulate Bobby Abreu? Quick thinking, there, Lieby.
Lieberthal, looking much like his new mentor, laced a pair of home runs, and the rest of the Phillies hitters even shot the (Randy) Messenger as they romped to a 13-7 victory at the Park last night. Pat Burrell added two very long home runs of his own, and Ryan Howard hit another blast. The key play in the game took place in the fifth with the scored tied 4-4. J-Roll walked (not a typo) and moved to third on Kenny Lofton's single. Chase Utley then managed to hit a ball that nearly bounced to the plate just over pitcher A.J. Burnett's head to the second baseman Luis Castillo. With the Fish conceding the go-ahead run, Rollins scored and Lofton moved to third, scoring later on an Abreu sac fly. This sequence gave the Phils a 6-4 lead and helped to knock out Burnett, whose replacements were downright awful. Chris Resop (read that name backwards) surrendered Lieberthal's second homer, and the aforementioned Messenger gave up Burrell's second shot. Mad Dog, Oogie and Cormier cleaned up, although only Oogie managed to not allow any runs.
Cory Lidle throws tonight against Brian Moehler. Moehler's ERA has gone from 1.97 on May 27th to his current still respectable figure of 3.27. He's won his last two games, against the Mets and Brewers, barely going the minimum required five innings each time, and relying on good run support. Lidle, meanwhile, hasn't failed to get to the 8th inning since June 6th, winning three of those six starts.
The Braves and Nats both lost, putting the Phils into third place, 6.5 out of first and four back of the wild card. The Marlins dropped into a last place tie with the Mets at 7 games out.
I'm probably going to miss tonight's game, instead opting to take in "Charlie And The Chocolate Factory" with my wife.
Oompa Loompa Doomp-a-dee Doo,
I've got a perfect question for you.
Oompa Loompa Doomp-a-dee Dee,
Charlie had better listen to me.
What do you get when you bat J-Roll first?
His on-base percentage is nearly the worst.
You've got Mister Lofton just sitting right there.
J-Roll is fast but he swings...at...air.
Let's give him forty million.
Oompa Loompa Doomp-a-dee Dah,
If you take walks then you will go far,
And you will live in happiness too,
Like the Oompa Loompa Doomp-a-dee do!
Friday, July 15, 2005
Thursday, July 14, 2005
EYES WIDE ... UH, OPEN
Day three of Phillies withdrawal.
In the AP report of Michelle Wie's match play victory over Will Claxton of Auburn University in the US Amateur Public Links Championship, they previewed her second round match today vs. C. D. Hockersmith of Richmond, IN. They mentioned that Hockersmith has a rare condition in which he "sleeps with his eyes open."
Number 1) Why does C.D. go around advertising this? Number 2) Why does the AP report it? And most importantly, number 3) WTF? He sleeps with his eyes open? (comical shaking of the head with the mouth making a bubbling sound) Huh?
In the AP report of Michelle Wie's match play victory over Will Claxton of Auburn University in the US Amateur Public Links Championship, they previewed her second round match today vs. C. D. Hockersmith of Richmond, IN. They mentioned that Hockersmith has a rare condition in which he "sleeps with his eyes open."
Number 1) Why does C.D. go around advertising this? Number 2) Why does the AP report it? And most importantly, number 3) WTF? He sleeps with his eyes open? (comical shaking of the head with the mouth making a bubbling sound) Huh?
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
I KNOW NOTHING!
Many of us in the blogosphere (How do we know it's a sphere? Maybe it's an oblate spheroid. Or a torus. Or even a Taurus. Yeah, that's it, it's an '88 Taurus SHO, with a 3.1L V6, a compass in the dash and this thing that tells time) (Please don't write me to say that the '88 Taurus didn't have an SHO model or that it didn't offer a 3.1L V6. I don't care, and get a life) (Yes that was an "A Christmas Story" reference at the end there. Maybe I should get a life, too) (Ok enough parentheticals. What was I talking about? Oh yeah) have taken the opportunity of the All-Star break to either grade the Phillies first half or preview the second half, or both.
Here's my first half grade: Incomplete. The season's half over, and nobody cares what your record is in July. I wish they had won more games, but even with the first-half they've had, they could still win it all. They'll need to either pitch better or hit better or both to do it.
My second-half preview: I have no idea what's going to happen. None whatsoever. Actually, that's not true. Here's what will happen: based on the last 13 years, you'd have to expect the Braves to win the division. However, they could be beset by injuries, or John Smoltz could decide to start working as an architect at HOK, or Andruw Jones could become the military dictator of Curacao, or any number of things could happen, and there's always the wild card. The Angels, Marlins and Red Sox won the World Series the last three years. Hands up who saw that coming? Another thing that will happen: we'll analyze and handicap this thing until we've wrung nearly all the fun out of it, and some crazy shit will happen that nobody expected and we'll all say, "That's baseball!" It could happen to the Phillies as well as anyone else. And no matter what happens, I'll be sitting my sorry ass in front of the tube for the first televised Spring Training game in Clearwater again next March. Until then, I'll whine, complain, give Ed Wade and Dave Montgomery unsolicited suggestions that they won't even read let alone consider, delight at every win and be depressed with every loss until the Phils are either mathematically eliminated or are parading down Broad Street.
If you were looking for insightful analysis, well, you got what you paid for.
Now, let's play some ball!
Here's my first half grade: Incomplete. The season's half over, and nobody cares what your record is in July. I wish they had won more games, but even with the first-half they've had, they could still win it all. They'll need to either pitch better or hit better or both to do it.
My second-half preview: I have no idea what's going to happen. None whatsoever. Actually, that's not true. Here's what will happen: based on the last 13 years, you'd have to expect the Braves to win the division. However, they could be beset by injuries, or John Smoltz could decide to start working as an architect at HOK, or Andruw Jones could become the military dictator of Curacao, or any number of things could happen, and there's always the wild card. The Angels, Marlins and Red Sox won the World Series the last three years. Hands up who saw that coming? Another thing that will happen: we'll analyze and handicap this thing until we've wrung nearly all the fun out of it, and some crazy shit will happen that nobody expected and we'll all say, "That's baseball!" It could happen to the Phillies as well as anyone else. And no matter what happens, I'll be sitting my sorry ass in front of the tube for the first televised Spring Training game in Clearwater again next March. Until then, I'll whine, complain, give Ed Wade and Dave Montgomery unsolicited suggestions that they won't even read let alone consider, delight at every win and be depressed with every loss until the Phils are either mathematically eliminated or are parading down Broad Street.
If you were looking for insightful analysis, well, you got what you paid for.
Now, let's play some ball!
Monday, July 11, 2005
NO NATIONAL DISGRACE (WELL, MAYBE FRANK WAS)
For what it's worth, the Phils took two of three from the stubbornly front-running Washington Nationals. All three games were decided by one run, the type of game in which the Nats had heretofore excelled and in which the Phillies had been struggling, which may mean something but probably doesn't.
I missed most of Friday night's game indulging my wife in a night out at the Brandywine Regal GooglePlex watching "Mr. and Mrs. Smith". This film reminds me of the Phillies: beautiful on the surface, but awash in mediocrity at every other level. In any case, the Nats sprinted out to a 5-0 lead before the Phils bats awoke, scoring three in the fifth, two of those on a Ryan Howard two-out double. Howard is emerging as the hitter we've all hoped. More on him later. Aaron Fultz then let has-been Carlos Baerga take him deep in the top of the sixth for a three-run homer, extending the Washington lead to 8-3. The Phils roared back in the bottom of the inning against Joey Eischen and Luis Ayala, scoring four and nearly tying the game on another Howard two-out double. This time, Pat Burrell was thrown out trying to score. As if one tying run being cut down at the plate wasn't enough, the Nats did it again in the seventh when David Bell was nabbed trying to score on a grounder by Jason Michaels with nobody out. Wheels explained it on the radio by saying that you have the contact play on there because if Vinny Castilla grabs the ball and tags out Bell, he can get a double play. I didn't see the location of the grounder, but I'm still skeptical. It seems to me if you have runners on second and third and nobody out, you play it pretty conservative and make sure the ball goes to at least one of the middle infielders, who I believe were playing back at the time, before heading home. If it's hit to Castilla and he makes the play at first, you still have only one out, and you definitely do the contact play at that point. The end result was, as has been typical, no runs for the Phillies in the seventh, a 1-2-3 eighth and Chad Cordero coming on in the ninth to record his league-leading 31st save.
I'll have to confess I thought Saturday's game was a night game. I spent the afternoon sorting through about a million DVR recordings after our vacation. I didn't miss much action at the Park. Both Cory Lidle and Nats starter John Patterson threw scoreless gems through seven innings, with Lidle extending his to the top of the eighth. Frank Robinson inexplicably let Patterson hit for himself in the eighth, but then sent in Hector Carrasco to pitch the bottom of the inning. I think Frank simply changed his mind about the pitching change after Patterson's at-bat, and then said, "aw, the hell with it, I'm bringing in Hector anyway." Daddy Wags negotiated the top of the ninth with no trouble, and the Phillies quickly loaded the bases off Carrasco in the bottom of the ninth around another Pat Burrell strikeout. David Bell then stepped up and got the job done with a medium deep fly to left, scoring Bobby Abreu for a 1-0 final. This game was the very first 1-0 in the history of Citizens Bank Park, and it came on the same day as the Rockies had their first 1-0 game ever at Coors Field. I think it had something to do with the vortex of voodoo that surrounds Vinny Castilla (how else can you explain why anyone throws him a fastball ever?), but I'm not sure.
Sunday's game was one of the most pleasing in recent memory. The Nats took a 1-0 lead in the third on a Matt Cepicky RBI single scoring Brad Wilkerson. They extended their lead to 3-0 on a Jose Guillen two-run blast in the fourth off the gopheriffic Jon Lieber. The Phils dented the board in the bottom of the fourth with another Howard RBI, this time a single scoring Abreu to make it 3-1. The Phils then loaded the bases with one out off starter Esteban Loaiza in the fifth, and looked poised to blow the game open when Jimmy Rollins alertly raced home on a wild pitch that barely eluded catcher Brian Schneider. Burrell, however, added to his mounting strikeout total, and Chase Utley followed with a hapless at-bat where he swung at several bad pitches and eventually struck out as well, stranding runners at second and third. To top off that disappointment, Ryan Madson surrendered the wild pitch run right back in the seventh, uncorking one to score Jamey Carroll with two outs, giving the Nats a 4-2 lead. Then, Frank Robinson and his unerring sense of how not to handle a bullpen struck again. With one out in the eighth, Utley and Howard due up, and lefty reliever Joey Eischen ready to go, Frank stuck with righty Gary Majewski, who was probably as surprised as anyone. Majewski walked Utley, and then, still in there to face Howard, left a breaking ball in Howard's down-and-in joy zone, which Ryan hit like a Phil Mickelson 2-iron into the shrubbery over the 401 sign in center to tie the game. Un-freaking-believeable. David Bell followed with a double, and then, as if waking up from an afternoon nap, which he may have been, Robbie finally inserted Eischen, who intentionally walked Tomas Perez before immediately heading to the showers. I didn't watch any post-game interviews with Robinson, and far as the Philly and Washington papers are concerned he offered no explanation. Again, I think he just blew it.
The next three innings were a brilliant display of relief work by Chad Cordero and Sunny Kim of the Nats and for the Phils, Oogie Urbina, Daddy Wags, and surprise or surprise, Frenchie Cormier. Neither team got a man to third, until Todd Pratt singled David Bell there in the bottom of the twelfth with one out. Jason Michaels nearly ended the game with a fly to left, but it wasn't quite deep enough to send the slow-footed Bell. Charlie Manuel then went to end of the bench for Ramon Martinez, the spare part acquired from Detroit in the Polanco deal. Martinez took a strike and a ball, and then drove a fastball past the hobbling Vinny Castilla into left field for the game-winner and a joyous All-Star break Phillies clubhouse.
What does it all mean? We slayed the current first-place dragons at their own game, and they may be toppling down the standings in rapid fashion after the break. Or maybe the break is just what the Nats needed to recharge. Or maybe we're starting another roll. Or maybe we would have started a roll if the All-Star break hadn't intervened. Or maybe the Braves will stop toying with us all and win 30 of the next 35. I guess it doesn't mean anything. But it sure was nice to see that ball go into left field.
The standings at the break have the Nats in first by 2.5 over Atlanta (who has the wild card), 7 over Florida, 7.5 over us, and 8 over the Mets. We start up again on Thursday with a critical four-game set at home against Florida, and then three games apiece against the injury-riddled but still dangerous Dodgers and the NL West leading Padres. We need to win at least seven of ten to move up, and at least six (two vs. Florida) to stay where we are. Until then, ¡Viva Abreu!, ¡Viva Venezuela!
I missed most of Friday night's game indulging my wife in a night out at the Brandywine Regal GooglePlex watching "Mr. and Mrs. Smith". This film reminds me of the Phillies: beautiful on the surface, but awash in mediocrity at every other level. In any case, the Nats sprinted out to a 5-0 lead before the Phils bats awoke, scoring three in the fifth, two of those on a Ryan Howard two-out double. Howard is emerging as the hitter we've all hoped. More on him later. Aaron Fultz then let has-been Carlos Baerga take him deep in the top of the sixth for a three-run homer, extending the Washington lead to 8-3. The Phils roared back in the bottom of the inning against Joey Eischen and Luis Ayala, scoring four and nearly tying the game on another Howard two-out double. This time, Pat Burrell was thrown out trying to score. As if one tying run being cut down at the plate wasn't enough, the Nats did it again in the seventh when David Bell was nabbed trying to score on a grounder by Jason Michaels with nobody out. Wheels explained it on the radio by saying that you have the contact play on there because if Vinny Castilla grabs the ball and tags out Bell, he can get a double play. I didn't see the location of the grounder, but I'm still skeptical. It seems to me if you have runners on second and third and nobody out, you play it pretty conservative and make sure the ball goes to at least one of the middle infielders, who I believe were playing back at the time, before heading home. If it's hit to Castilla and he makes the play at first, you still have only one out, and you definitely do the contact play at that point. The end result was, as has been typical, no runs for the Phillies in the seventh, a 1-2-3 eighth and Chad Cordero coming on in the ninth to record his league-leading 31st save.
I'll have to confess I thought Saturday's game was a night game. I spent the afternoon sorting through about a million DVR recordings after our vacation. I didn't miss much action at the Park. Both Cory Lidle and Nats starter John Patterson threw scoreless gems through seven innings, with Lidle extending his to the top of the eighth. Frank Robinson inexplicably let Patterson hit for himself in the eighth, but then sent in Hector Carrasco to pitch the bottom of the inning. I think Frank simply changed his mind about the pitching change after Patterson's at-bat, and then said, "aw, the hell with it, I'm bringing in Hector anyway." Daddy Wags negotiated the top of the ninth with no trouble, and the Phillies quickly loaded the bases off Carrasco in the bottom of the ninth around another Pat Burrell strikeout. David Bell then stepped up and got the job done with a medium deep fly to left, scoring Bobby Abreu for a 1-0 final. This game was the very first 1-0 in the history of Citizens Bank Park, and it came on the same day as the Rockies had their first 1-0 game ever at Coors Field. I think it had something to do with the vortex of voodoo that surrounds Vinny Castilla (how else can you explain why anyone throws him a fastball ever?), but I'm not sure.
Sunday's game was one of the most pleasing in recent memory. The Nats took a 1-0 lead in the third on a Matt Cepicky RBI single scoring Brad Wilkerson. They extended their lead to 3-0 on a Jose Guillen two-run blast in the fourth off the gopheriffic Jon Lieber. The Phils dented the board in the bottom of the fourth with another Howard RBI, this time a single scoring Abreu to make it 3-1. The Phils then loaded the bases with one out off starter Esteban Loaiza in the fifth, and looked poised to blow the game open when Jimmy Rollins alertly raced home on a wild pitch that barely eluded catcher Brian Schneider. Burrell, however, added to his mounting strikeout total, and Chase Utley followed with a hapless at-bat where he swung at several bad pitches and eventually struck out as well, stranding runners at second and third. To top off that disappointment, Ryan Madson surrendered the wild pitch run right back in the seventh, uncorking one to score Jamey Carroll with two outs, giving the Nats a 4-2 lead. Then, Frank Robinson and his unerring sense of how not to handle a bullpen struck again. With one out in the eighth, Utley and Howard due up, and lefty reliever Joey Eischen ready to go, Frank stuck with righty Gary Majewski, who was probably as surprised as anyone. Majewski walked Utley, and then, still in there to face Howard, left a breaking ball in Howard's down-and-in joy zone, which Ryan hit like a Phil Mickelson 2-iron into the shrubbery over the 401 sign in center to tie the game. Un-freaking-believeable. David Bell followed with a double, and then, as if waking up from an afternoon nap, which he may have been, Robbie finally inserted Eischen, who intentionally walked Tomas Perez before immediately heading to the showers. I didn't watch any post-game interviews with Robinson, and far as the Philly and Washington papers are concerned he offered no explanation. Again, I think he just blew it.
The next three innings were a brilliant display of relief work by Chad Cordero and Sunny Kim of the Nats and for the Phils, Oogie Urbina, Daddy Wags, and surprise or surprise, Frenchie Cormier. Neither team got a man to third, until Todd Pratt singled David Bell there in the bottom of the twelfth with one out. Jason Michaels nearly ended the game with a fly to left, but it wasn't quite deep enough to send the slow-footed Bell. Charlie Manuel then went to end of the bench for Ramon Martinez, the spare part acquired from Detroit in the Polanco deal. Martinez took a strike and a ball, and then drove a fastball past the hobbling Vinny Castilla into left field for the game-winner and a joyous All-Star break Phillies clubhouse.
What does it all mean? We slayed the current first-place dragons at their own game, and they may be toppling down the standings in rapid fashion after the break. Or maybe the break is just what the Nats needed to recharge. Or maybe we're starting another roll. Or maybe we would have started a roll if the All-Star break hadn't intervened. Or maybe the Braves will stop toying with us all and win 30 of the next 35. I guess it doesn't mean anything. But it sure was nice to see that ball go into left field.
The standings at the break have the Nats in first by 2.5 over Atlanta (who has the wild card), 7 over Florida, 7.5 over us, and 8 over the Mets. We start up again on Thursday with a critical four-game set at home against Florida, and then three games apiece against the injury-riddled but still dangerous Dodgers and the NL West leading Padres. We need to win at least seven of ten to move up, and at least six (two vs. Florida) to stay where we are. Until then, ¡Viva Abreu!, ¡Viva Venezuela!
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