I'll Miss You, World Series

There's a dual meaning behind the title of this post. The more obvious meaning refers to this year's Phillies. As I tweeted last night, after the Phils managed a measly three hits in an 11-inning loss to Atlanta, the more I watch this team, the more I feel that they're not going back to the playoffs this year. And it's not solely because of the injuries they've been bombarded with this year -- including, at the moment, three of the starting eight in their lineup (and don't forget Jimmy Rollins missed a lot of time as well). Sure, they miss Chase Utley (although he hasn't put up the numbers he's capable of) and Placido Polanco and Carlos Ruiz. And they've had pitchers on the disabled list as well -- at various times including Brad Lidge, J.C. Romero, J.A. Happ, Ryan Madson and Chad Durbin.

But the offense's floundering for most of the last seven weeks isn't just because the bench players filling in for the missing Utley, Polanco and Ruiz haven't put up the same numbers. Shane Victorino, Raul Ibanez, Jayson Werth, even Ryan Howard to some extent -- they all haven't produced the way they have in the past. A lot of good starting pitching performances have gone to waste. The bullpen still has its issues but they wouldn't be nearly as magnified if the hitters weren't so lousy.


The Phils can't just depend on a late second-half surge as they have in previous years. The Braves and Mets are improved. They're going to have to pull it together a lot sooner, and probably have to make some kind of trade before the July 31st deadline.

As for the really bad news...my DVR has a dual tuner that allows me to record one channel while watching another, or record two programs simultaneously when I'm not home. It's not working any more. The last three days it hasn't recorded the shows I've set to record in advance. It only will record the channel I'm watching, which doesn't help if I'm not sitting there. I cut the power to try and reset it, and that didn't work. I called Comcast and they did their diagnostic (sending some kind of codes to the box), which didn't fix it. So a technician is coming out on Saturday and probably will replace the DVR.

This also means that anything I've got saved on the DVR now will be lost, as they can't transfer it to the new box. This includes a recording from October 29, 2008 -- the broadcast of the conclusion of Game 5 of the World Series, and something like two hours of post-game local coverage. I have watched Lidge's final pitch and the immediate aftermath so many times. Now I'll need the DVD collection of the entire Series. But the local stuff will be gone for good. Sigh...