Worrying About The Phils?

It's been a while since I've said a whole lot in depth about the Phillies, so let's do so now, in a point-counterpoint deal as my mind just goes back and forth with their issues...

Point: The Phils are 55-33, the best record in the majors.
Counterpoint: They had the best record last season, and look where it got them.

Point: The offense continues to struggle way too often. Of their 88 games going into this weekend's series with Atlanta, the last three games before the All-Star break, they've scored fewer than four runs in 46 of them. That's over half, if you're math-challenged.
Counterpoint: In those 46 games they're 18-28. That's a .391 win percentage, which is much better than most, if not all, teams. That's a testament to the performances of Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee and Cole Hamels. In their other 42 games, the ones where they've hit the magic four-run target, they're 37-5 (with two of those losses coming this week, oddly enough).

Point: That rotation is so formidable.
Counterpoint: If the offense continues to put pressure on them to be excellent instead of merely good so often, might they not weaken just enough so that, come October, they're not quite as excellent as they need to be? And with Roy Oswalt out with his back problem and Joe Blanton (remember him?) not yet ready to return, the Phils have to keep Kyle Kendrick in the rotation along with youngster Vance Worley. (By the way, with all the praise of Worley, how do we know that Worley 2011 isn't Kendrick 2007 -- promising now but ultimately not all that great?)

Point: The hitters who have been slumping so much will come around. And they'll get a big right-handed bat at the trade deadline to help protect Ryan Howard.

Quick Review: Super 8

Here's the last of my writeups on the four movies I've seen recently. I'm caught up! (Except for two weeks' worth of comic books. And the Flyers suddenly went and blew up their team. And Roy Oswalt seems to be really hurting and might be out of the Phillies' rotation for an extended period. But more on those later.) "Super 8" is set in 1979, and in a small Ohio town we have a group of kids who are making a low-budget zombie movie. One night they're filming at a train station as a freight train is passing, when it is derailed, causing a massive crash. As the U.S. Air Force moves in, ostensibly to clean up the wreckage, strange things begin happening in the town. Dogs (and a few people) begin disappearing, there are power failures, and things turn a bit more sinister. The kids, while still making their movie, end up deeply involved in these events.

The trailers, with hints of some sort of creature, gave off a bit of a "Cloverfield" vibe, but fortunately "Super 8" has nothing in common with that overrated film except for camera footage being involved. "Super 8" is basically a Steven Spielberg mashup -- a little "E.T." here, some "Goonies" there -- directed by J.J. Abrams. Really, he's paying homage to Spielberg's early successes. However, Spielberg is a producer of the film. So does that make it an officially sanctioned homage? And is that a good thing? Might it have been more interesting if there were some twists in the Spielberg formula? It's well-done, the acting from a mostly unknown cast is fine, but it felt like I'd seen it before. And I did. In "E.T." and in "The Goonies" and... My grade: B.

My 2011 Phillies/MLB Predictions

Ignoring the fact that I still have to turn on my heat, and that areas to the north of the city might get a little snow mixed in with rain tomorrow night, it's spring. And tomorrow (in some cities) and Friday (in others, including Philadelphia), the 2011 baseball season begins. Here are my predictions for the division and wild card winners. Keep in mind that I'm going basically on what little knowledge of other teams I have in my head. I used to avidly follow every little transaction and study up on the teams and their prospects. That was before there was the Internet and a zillion cable television channels and the occasional real-life event to dilute all of the information I may try to gather. I can speak in some detail about the Phillies (and will do so below), but not much about other teams. So these are nothing more than very slightly educated guesses...

American League East: Boston
American League Central: Minnesota
American League West: Oakland
American League Wild Card: New York Yankees

And in reverse order...

National League Wild Card: Atlanta
National League West: Colorado
National League Central: Cincinnati
National League East:
5. New York Mets
4. Florida
3. Washington
2. Atlanta
...and the Phillies to win the division for the 5th year in a row.

That, of course, will take some things going the right way. While I'm amused that, from what I've heard, a lot of the so-called "experts" are picking against the Phils, I'm not surprised.

Phils Sign Some Guy. Something Lee. Sounds Familiar...

I was going to write a "MixBlog" post touching on a few different things. I may still do that tomorrow. The following paragraph is something I planned to mention...

So there are these rumors going around that the Phillies are still in the running to sign Cliff Lee. It's ridiculous that people are actually getting their hopes up. How can the Phillies sign Lee if they couldn't sign Jayson Werth, whose pricey new deal still isn't going to earn him as much as Lee? The Phillies traded Lee a year ago because they didn't think they'd be able to sign him to a long-term deal. The Yankees have already made their typical big-money offer, and the Rangers are really trying to keep him in Texas. If the Phils didn't want to give Werth more than four years, and they definitely don't want to give pitchers such long-term deals, and Lee has been angling for five or more years, why anyone is getting excited about this "news" is beyond my comprehension.

Oops.

They got the back page online before 2 a.m. Impressive.

Phillies: The U Word Resurfaces

The end of the Phillies' season played out very much like most of the season itself: with a lack of offense. So often the team's bats went south this year that it shouldn't have been a surprise when it happened in the playoffs, especially against the solid pitching of the San Francisco Giants. And yet, somehow, it was. Because they told us all year long that when it really mattered, they'd be fine. After the three consecutive shutout losses against the Mets at Taxpayer Bailout Field. After losing three of four to the lowly Pittsburgh Pirates (the worst franchise despite the best ballpark). After losing 6 of 7 coming out of the All-Star break. After falling 7 games behind Atlanta in the NL East. After the four-game sweep at home against the also-ran Houston Astros. They always told us they'd turn it around.

And they did, for a while. The Phils roared to their 4th straight NL East title and the best record in the major leagues. And you couldn't ask for a better beginning to the postseason than Roy Halladay pitching a no-hitter in his first-ever playoff start. But during the entire postseason the team struggled to score, often needing subpar fielding from the Reds and Giants in order to get some runs. Their lack of hitting with runners in scoring position was excruciating, especially in NLCS Game 6, in which the Phils scored twice in the first, and Giants' starter Jonathan Sanchez was so shaky that he was removed before getting an out in the third inning. But they never scored again. They were 2-for-11 with RISP and both of those hits came in the first. Making things worse, the Phils' own fielding let them down at times.

And so I feel the need to use a word to describe this team that hasn't applied in a few years now:

Phillies, Yankees Still Alive

The hopes of those people who wanted to see a rematch of the 2009 World Series (not to mention my predictions for the League Championship Series) took a pair of deep hits this week, but both the Phillies and Yankees are still alive. I'll deal with the Phillies in a moment.

I didn't really expect, after their hideous collapse late in Game 1, blowing a 5-0 lead after 6 and losing 6-5, that the Texas Rangers would bounce back so well. They scored early in Game 2, rolling to a 7-2 win. Then the series shifted to Yankee Stadium, and the Rangers took Games 3 (8-0) and 4 (10-3), with Cliff Lee again displaying his mastery of the Yankee hitters in Game 3. The Yankees rebounded in Game 5 with a 7-2 win despite the Rangers picking up 13 hits -- 11 off CC Sabathia in 6 innings. What disturbed me was a quote I read in today's paper, from Rangers manager Ron Washington after Game 4: "We are not thinking about how we are going to close anyone out. If it happens, it happens. And if it don't, it doesn't happen."

That just sounds a little too casual for my tastes. The experience of the Yankees over the years means that they weren't just going to roll over and die. If you have a team like that down, you have to keep them down. Sure enough, now the series goes back to Texas. The advantage the Rangers have, on paper, is that even if they lose Game 6, they'll have Yankee-killer and postseason stud Lee pitching Game 7. Then again, too often in sports such advantages aren't worth

Phillies: Same Old, Same Old, Sort Of

I sensed a bit of panic after the Phillies lost the first game of the NL Championship Series on Saturday night. I didn't actually see any online comments that were pessimistic and I didn't hear anything on WIP. Well, I actually didn't listen to the station at all. I just had a feeling that there was a little bit of worry setting in.

That's almost understandable considering our city's pro sports history. But anyone who's watched this Phillies team the last four seasons has to realize that they aren't beaten until they're actually beaten, and to panic prematurely is just silly. And after Sunday's 6-1 win, the series is tied at 1-1. Just like last year's NLCS. So they lost the first one instead of the second. Big deal.

Saturday night was actually hyped somewhere as the greatest pitching matchup in postseason history, with the Phils' Roy Halladay and the Giants' Tim Lincecum. But the final score was 4-3, not 1-0 with a no-hitter. Halladay gave up a pair of solo homers to Cody Ross, and those would've been the only runs he allowed, except that with two outs and a runner on first in the 6th, Raul Ibanez misplayed a deep fly by Pat Burrell into a double that made the score 3-1, with another hit right after making it 4-1. And while Lincecum was good enough to get the win, the Phils had some opportunities to score but didn't take advantage. So when Halladay pitches again, I'm sure he'll be fine.

Game 2 was dominated by Roy Oswalt, who (despite also giving up a home run to Ross) outdid both of the Game 1 starters on the mound and, with the Phils holding on to a 2-1 lead in the 7th, on the bases. He led off the 7th with a single, moved to second on a Shane Victorino bunt and scored on a Placido Polanco single, running right through the stop sign of third-base coach Sam Perlozzo. Unlike the first game, where the Phils' 3 runs all scored on homers, their 6 runs Sunday came without the benefit of the home run. That is a good sign for the next 3 games in San Francisco's AT&T Park.

The Phils need to stop giving up home runs to Cody Ross. If they do that, they'll be fine.

Phillies Causing Mood Swings

Maybe it's the age we live in, where information is constant and reaction is instant and both pour in from  multiple sources -- 24-hour sports on TV and radio, websites, blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds. But the 2010 Phillies have turned into even more of a roller-coaster ride. The slump followed by the 8-game win streak is nothing compared to the daily developments since Thursday: the trade for Roy Oswalt, Oswalt losing his first Phils start, Brad Lidge blowing another save, a comeback win with a Lidge 1-2-3 save, Ryan Howard hurting his ankle and being put on the 15-day disabled list. The ups and downs are tough enough to take for well-adjusted people, but for rabid fans? Insanity.

Once again the Phils have three members of their starting lineup currently on the DL -- Chase Utley, Shane Victorino and now Howard. And Howard has probably been the most consistent hitter of the three, and probably the most important. Besides those three, Jimmy Rollins, Placido Polanco, Carlos Ruiz, Brian Schneider, Joe Blanton, J.A. Happ (traded in the Oswalt deal), Jamie Moyer, J.C. Romero, Ryan Madson, Chad Durbin, Antonio Bastardo and Lidge have all spent time on the DL.With all the inconsistency and underachieving and slumps and these injuries, after tonight's win at Florida (behind Roy Halladay) the Phils are just 2 games out of first place. How is that possible?

The thing I like about tonight's game: of their 13 hits, nine came from Ben Francisco, Carlos Ruiz and Wilson Valdez. They still need Jimmy Rollins to get back to his form of the opening week of the season and for Raul Ibanez to keep up his recent resurgence. But they need as much offense as they can get from these other guys as well, especially with Howard out.

A Phillies Question

This started as a little "random musings" post, but I've decided to limit it to just one question...well, two, counting the follow-up:

Are the Phillies back on track? And if so, for how long? They've now won 6 in a row, cutting a 7-game deficit in the NL East in half, but they still have uncertainty on a number of fronts. The rumors keep flying about trades: getting Roy Oswalt, giving Jayson Werth, some combination of the two, or something entirely different. The Oswalt stuff swings back and forth hourly, it seems. The Astros won't trade him to St. Louis because they're in the same division! St. Louis is the frontrunner to get him! Oswalt's 2012 option for $16.5 million isn't a problem! He won't agree to any trade unless the team picks up the 2012 option! Oswalt doesn't want to play for the Phillies! The Phillies are the frontrunner to get him now! Thank heavens the trade deadline is Saturday because this is getting tiresome.

Meanwhile, they fired their hitting coach and the offense is still not consistent, although it seems to be picking up. Then there are injuries.