There are only 18 games left until the all-star break and the Phillies hold a 4.5-game lead over the Braves in the NL East. No other division leader has a lead greater than 1.5.
Hitting has shown flashes of coming around, but then stalled. We are still being carried, quite effectively, by our starting pitching and surprising bullpen.
We are 5 games ahead of last year’s pace, and 3 games ahead of any pace we had over the last 4 playoff seasons.
Yet – negativity reigns supreme on the airwaves, the local papers and some blogs. Imagine what would happen if we were actually playing poorly.
2011: 45-28
2010: 40-33
2009: 39-34
2008: 42-31
2007: 38-35
Questions for the series:
- Will other Cardinals hitters step up with Pujols out?
- Kyle Lohse can’t really be this good, right?
- Can Cliff Lee make it 4 straight dominant starts?
Series expectations:
Disappointing series loss in Seattle – we never seem to do well against the AL West on the road. The Cardinals are going to be all jazzed up to show they can win without Pujols, but we miss LHP Jaime Garcia (who would probably no-hit us) and catch 3 RHP’s. I think we take 2 of 3.
Holliday showing signs of what they paid all that money for. He and Berkman will be enough for respectability. Not enough to win. If you’re still starting Skip Schumacher, you’re not that well off.
Thought we had already heard this Lohse story 2-3 yrs ago? Remember Dave Duncan magic?
Howard returns to his hometown, where he light’s it up. Doc meets a mediocre hitting lineup off of 6 days rest. But it’s the Phils so who knows what’ll happen tonight.
There is alot of excitement over Stutes and Bastardo, well deserved. But I get a bit queazy thinking about throwing them into a 1-0 game in the 7th inning in San Fran with the phils protecting a 1-0 lead in the NL championship series, let alone the WS. In reality, we won’t know what we have in that scenario until it happens. So I am hoping RAJ can pick up an effective verteran reliever to bridge any gap from the 6th to Contreras in the 8th. This is not a young team, I don’t want to lose a WS because of young relievers. If this was 2007 I would be OK with it. But not with this team where the clock is ticking.
If we have a 1-0 lead in the 7th against San Fran in the NLCS, I am 99% sure the starter would remain in the game.
Just sayin’
I don’t feel quesy about them at all. They’ve both been better than expected and I think they’ll get better as the season goes on. But I agree with Stu, come playoff time the starter’s arms will be falling off before they’re pulled in that close a game.
I think you might be surprised how quick the starters are subject to possibly being pulled in the 7th inning of a playoff game trailing 1-0. Obviously, a number of real time factors enter into play, but at bats are at a critical premium in a close game with so much at stake, and even with a 1-0 lead, in the right circumstances (say 2 outs, men on 2nd and 3rd), Charlie might feel more confident with Cole or Cliff hitting than he might Doc, with Roy O somewhere in between, but even leading, that might be thee spot to bring Gload up.
The most improved Phillie this year, by unanimous plus if it were subject to a vote is Antonio bastardo. With roster spots so hard to secure for the All-Star team, being as he’s having his first terrific year, he has no shot at making the club, but to the extent he has pitched, he can take the 3 day break with the mindset that he has had an all-star worthy first half.
Here are some comps to Jonny Venters who is on pace to assemble one of the greatest relief seasons not only ever achieved, but even imaginable.
Batting Average against AB .120 JV .150
WHIP AB .096 JV .078
BA against on the road AB .104 JV .118
BA versus righties AB .121 JV .158
Bastardo has pitched 8.2 innings this month. He’s given up 1 hit.
Espcially with Charlie at the helm, I’d agree that is more likely that not a starter will be pulled if we’re trailing late & have guys on base. Its just what he does. Honestly though, i fell pretty darn good knowing that we have bastardo & stutes back there if something like this happens. As the number show, these guys are nasty. I can understand if people are worried about being able to score enough runs against elite pitching, or about being able to play the type of defense we need to, but the bullpen has turned out to be a real bright spot this year.
this is one sad offense we have on our hands.
Dom Brown doesn’t look ready to be much of a contributor. I would have to say that so far he is a disappointment since being recalled. Still as good or better than Benny, but not the spark I was hoping for at the bottom of the order.
will 1 be enough for the cards? Good news is they don’t have a great pen. Bad news is they don’t really need one.
I am so sick of Rollins’ selfishness at the top of this lineup. didn’t he just see how that Stutes walk ended up scoring?
Wow. That’s right where Utley got hit when Lannan broke his carpal bones. Them things is fragile.
What a crazy game. hope nobody went to bed & missed the eighth
When The Groundhog takes the hill tonight, it will be a little different than the last time. We’d wrapped a dramatic come from behind over the Fish, completing a sweep, and extending the win streak to 6. Last night’s win had it’s dramatic points as well, so there’s a little similarity. Uplifting is uplifting, period.
Now, from a performance level, Cliff has an extra game from which to draw confidence. Extra confidence, and even more success to learn from. After his masterpiece against Florida, Cliff said he’d had better 3 game stretches. So had Sid Finch, Paul Bunyan, and Bob Redford in The Natural. You can’t pitch any better than he has the last 3 times. Maybe it’s more noteworthy if it’s 3 staright against the 27 Yanks, 61 Yanks and 96 Yanks, but the schedulemakers do what they do, and the Dodgers, Cubs and Fish still represent big league competition. Besides, the Braves aren’t a good hitting club, and they beat Cliff to the tune of 10 hits in 3 2/3 innings earlier this year.
But the big difference is home and road. Some people get agitated by stat editing. Where you eliminate a portion to point to a more true picture of actual performance. Cliff, who no matter where home was the last few years, has always pitched a little better at home than on the road. His YTD road numbers this year are pathetic. The ERA is 5 plus, and pitching from ahead is always more confidence inspiring than trailing. But if you eliminate the lousy road starts against the aforementioned Braves, and the tight strike zone game against these same Cards, the numbers would almost certainly line up as representative of the good part of his career, just a bit less than his home work.
Nonetheless, the fact at hand is it’s a road game. And another chance for Lee to get his road work more in line with his ability. And to puch toward the regular season level that’s expected of him. Maybe even to get beyond the fringes of being discussed for the all-star team. With a 7 inning shutout tonight, Cliff would sport an ERA of 2.91. It’s a competitive field, but that’s a headliner toward discussion.
All sidebar stuff, mind you. The concentration, as always, is mixing speeds, throwing strikes but not in the heart of the plate, and as has been the case of late, spotting the curve and using it as his out pitch. He’s done it before. He’ll do it again. The question at hand is will he do it this time, and keep the good times going. You’d havge to say yes. I mean, this is Cliff Lee we’re talking about.
With a 7 inning shutout tonight, Cliff would sport an ERA of 2.91.>>
^5, and the beat goes on.
Through 7 tonight, Cliff has now pitched 1514 big league innings and has given up 1515 hits. That Berkman hit denied him evening at 1.0/9.
A fascinating headline tweet this afternoon from a name I’ve quoted info from here before, The Phrontiersman screamed of headline material that Cole Hamels is yielding a .292 OPS to opposing cleanup hitters. Jiminy Bleeping Xmas, that is imbleepingpressive. But there are multiple ways to skin a cat, so I did a bit more prying, and came up with other numbers. These reflect pitchers yields against 3 and 4 slot hitters.
versus 3 versus 4
Doc .677 .718
Cole .616 .292
Cliff .655 1.117
Verlander .944 .615
Kershaw .626 .619
The problem with the trade deadline, and it’s not necessarily unique to this year, is that multiple clubs face the same need. Usually, it’s pitching. This year, it’s offense. So the competition to create attractive packages is keen. That’s what the Phils, not exactly a model of depth on the farm, but still with some degree of trading bankroll face as they have drawn me into the they will definitely try to do something camp.
I scream less, maybe significantly so than most about the offensive frustrations. But David Hale reports tonight that Charlie has had conversations with the front office about wanting some right handed punch, and was warned they might not be able to afford better than he has now. I take that as a pledge of attempt to deal.
Raul, a defensive liability, even according to the lesser students at the Braille University of the Blind has parked these offensive numbers this year.
4/1-5/2: .154/.238/.209
5/3-5/26: .353/.371/.635
5/27-6/21: .218/.271/.356
This translates to exactly what those warning of his being finished spoke of when convictions of his being through were expressed during 0-35. June has reehnacted credibility of his contract being too long amongst voices dating back to no later than the end of 2009, and in some cases, as early as before the ink was dried on his deal. Not that a fair amount of his spurts didn’t make them excessively loud, but they go down as certainly no more wrong than right.
It breaks down like this. Raul isn’t playing tonight against the righty. A few weeks ago, 2-3 or so, can’t remember where, but Charlie didn’t mention names, but took a moment from positive mentality forever and spoke to signs of inconsistency maybe suggesting a player was finished. Naive me lwas left wondering who he was talking about. What a fool believes.
It ain’t Dom Brown that they will replace. I have no glorious stories about the youngster’s play, but maintain that he will be a player, and detect zero counter opinion from anywhere within the ballclub. Doesn’t make it accurate, but that’s my sense.
What it comes down to is this. I feel the club will shop, and shop hard. Maybe even try to move Raul, and eat some contract. Or at least try to platoon him, softening the effects of his defense, and inconsistency. The problem is outraing the competiton, but that’s all that stands in the way now. But it’s still a lot considering how much demand for outfielders there is. And intra division, no less.
At least we know where the bottom of Cliff Lee’s skill set is. Man. Hopefully settle down from there. First 6 pitches for balls, and none looked like bad calls.
That’s some big time pitching. Stop the bleeding after the Lohse double. Theriot’s base hit puts him on the “brink”, and he gets Jay rather than facing berkman and risking a bigger inning since Berkman has good success against Cliff, and looked to see the ball well the first time.
let’s see if Cliff can get some killer instinct now with the lead and have his best inning yet. After Molina, this lineup is a relative piece of cake. The worst offensive lineup in baseball history dating back to 2 months ago when the Phils had that horrific bottom of the lineup going. Nice, smooth 15 pitch inning.
too fast an inning (5 pitches?) including Cliff as the last hitter. Would think it wise for Cliff to take his time starting next inning. Not his forte, but the man knows his rhythm.
Four Phillie outs on the last 5-6 pitches now. If you’re gonna swing, get on base at least.
The Nats are 3 outs and a Drew Storen save away from .500 at 37-37. Glad to see JW experience some winning times.
By my very unofficial projection, Cliff’s next start is Tuesday against the Red Sox. So the extra day off negates too careful a pitch count tonight. We’ll see if that extra day effects his rhythm negatively, or provides beneficial rest. The game’s at home, so that’s a plus. 21 straight scoreless innings, and counting.
pitch number 103 (?) puts The Groundhog 1 out from a career H/9 of 1.0 at 1515 innings, and for the low grade mathematicians in the readership, 1515 hits.
didn’t get it, and w/ Teriot up, and Holliday and berkman close by, it’s still a game.
from the wandering minds department, I can’t help but wonder. If we are going up 19 games on .500 in another inning with raul having played LF the first half, how bad would it be to try to get Vlad who can’t be as bad defensively as he showed in the WS. The guy is 8-17 against the Red Sox, with a 1.200 plus OPS. I’d guess he cost about 4 mil, maybe 3 between acquisition, and season’s end. I haven’t seen him bat this year, so clueless on the bat speed, but the numbers against the Red Sox are intruiging.
Cliff’s ERA after the Washington demolition (5/31, 10-2 loss was at 3.94. It’s now at 2.87 after tonight’s complete game shutout. 126 pitches.
Somewhere in the switch from back in the day to 5 man rotations and pitch counts, maybe I missed something, but I still don’t see it. The usual Charlie burns them out personnel have voiced their opinions on Cliff should have been pulled last night. Stubbornly, I’ll say nonsense to that, and stand by that convictional word.
Admittedly, there is some risk to being penny wise and dollar foolish to enjoying the thrill of Cliff record a 2nd straight complete game shutout. But there was risk in crossing Old York Road before age 21, too.
Cliff does have the extra day off now. Secondly, not that he couldn’t have pitched Herndon or Baez in the 9th, but it’s still nice to have a fully rested pen going into starts on back to back days by Roy O and Worley.
Doc is now nicely lined up to draw the 7/1 game at Toronto. That oughta be massively festive, being Old Dominion Day and all. Between the A’s returning to Philly, entertaining the Red Sox, and then that 7/1 game, lots of good stuff to look forward to.
I’m posting this just as a point of interest. I doubt there’s anything to it.
Mathieson is taking the DLd Oswalt’s roster spot.
You’d think for the time being, Kendrick and Worley get the 4 and 5 spots, pending Roy O’s MRI, and then pending fairly safe to say likely replacement.
I don’t know that I could attach significance to this hunch, or wonder, but Scott started last Sunday, maybe with the thought of stretching him out, maybe management suspecting Roy O was near the end for now, and they’d need to replace Kendrick.
There’s something in all this I’m totally missing. They did it with Blanton, they probably did it with Oswalt. A guy’s hurt, where is the point where you accept it and go to Plan B instead of running him further in the ground. Letting starters throw a lot of innings when healthy is one thing. Letting seemingly injured pitchers throw any pitches, well, let’s just say it hasn’t worked out.
Nice game from brown. 3 full counts, 2 walks, & a single. His swing still makes me wonder sometimes, but if he keeps having good AB’s like that, you’d think he’ll eventually find a nice groove.
We’ve talked a lot about Stutes & bastardo this year, but something that I don’t think comes up often is that they’re both guys who can give you two innings when needed. Not all relievers can do that…
Great contributions by Worley, Stutes, Vic, brown, & Ben to get er done tonite
And Howard & polly with some fine defense
It’s becoming clearer to me as the season progresses that of the pre season senses/predictions I made, the biggest misread (well, I had the Cubs 3rd, that looks stupid) was this Oakland club. The good pitching was obvious, the lousy offense was overstated to think they’d manufacture enough runs to win the division, and possibly ride that good pitching, if hot at the right time to a win over the Red Sox, who, like any right thinking person was my anticipated WS rep on the AL side.
Lastnight’s game pretty much reflected the A’s sad state of offensive affairs. So much so that cheap as no hitter senses and predictions are, you can’t help but think Cole might do that tonight. The scarcity of live familiarity on both sides offers intruige, but one familiar face, Hideki Matsui, has seen Cole before. When you think of Cole’s mediocore 09, and Godzilla’s MVP performance in that year’s Fall Classic, it’s with somke trepedation that you open the stat books, but find Cole got him all 3 at bats. Matsui sits on 499 professional baseball home runs as Cole tries to take his June ERA sub 1, and seasonal BAA down below .200. Nice little peripherals to shoot for.
This guy Oakland offers up is a pretty good pitcher. One Trevor Cahill. You’d never know it from his 2nd most recent appearance. 7 walks, 0 strikeouts. Strangely, a similar type ratio happened this week again in the bigs (forget who), and according to the Phrontiersman, has surprisingly happened a few times this season.
Yup – I’m guilty of this too. Had the A’s winning the division. But their offense is soooooooooo bad. The injured Josh Willingham led their team with a .718 OPS. .718!!!
Thought Matsui, Barton, DeJesus and Suzuki would all be considerably better.
Didn’t help that Dallas Braden got hurt either.
Also – are they doing a game in this series where the A’s wear the Philadelphia A’s unis? If not, that’s a missed opportunity. Should have done throwbacks for both teams the entire series.
no, and what a terrific missed opportunity that is to enhance the awareness of Philly baseball tradition.
I see Modell’s is involved in a couple promotions. Far be it from me to spend Mitchell and Ness’s advertsing dollars, but tonight/this weekend would have been a golden opportunity to promote their outstanding collection of attire by getting involved in this weekend with some reference to the throwback jersesy.
Today marks the 25th anniversary of the Phils waiving Steve Carlton. It began a 2 year vagabond adventure of a guy who played out til they take the uniform off my back plot to the max. Lefty was replaced on the roster by Bruce Ruffin. Not the sort of anniversary you celebrate of course, but for those remembering Lefty’s heyday, the long time frame of 25 years since his bottoming really puts in perspective how long ago it was that he was so awesome. It’s nice to have a great lefthander going tonight to kinda connect to Lefty in his prime so the time span makes us feel less old.
The headliner Tuesday night of Cliff Lee and Josh Beckett kinda grabs at ya, but here’s a take on Josh’s rest of the season that warns of a likely downward trend. For what it’s worth, he’s coming off about a 10 day flu symptom layoff, so probably won’t be especially strong.
http://www.rotohardball.com/2011/6/16/2224616/how-low-can-josh-beckett-go
<<Would love to see a stat to identify those Phils/culprits that don’t work the count that could be causing their offensive woes.>>
Charlie said recently, “If you’re gonna chase balls 2-0, sinkers down and away, balls over your head…” (full quote available Boston Globe, Nick Cafardo 6/26 page 2).
So a 2-0 counts is a pretty ideal count from which to judge who is effectively working counts after working it to the point of excellent positioning, and seeinjg it through. Here are some numbers simplified to base hit ratio, let alone degree of power off the advantageous count
Player On 2-0 pitch After 2-0 pitch
Jimmy 2-7 7-38
Plac 2-8 6-24
Shane 1-7 10-38
RyHo 5-14 11-43
Raul 10-12 13-39
Chooch 2-5 3-17
Chase 0-4 4-13
Now for comparison’s sake, take a look at Jayson Werth last year with full season numbers
6/14 25-73
and if you want to compare maybe the best immitation of Barry Bonds since his heyday, look at what Jose Bautista has recorded in his YTD
0-1 14-29
If I were to conclude some things out of this, it’s that even when the club as a whole is working counts to 2-0, they largely are not following through. Admittedly, this merely measures base hits, not ensuing walks, or effective degree of contact, but small samplings that they are, Jimmy (.332), and Plac (.283 in June) in particular are not taking advantage of good hitters counts, and particularly in Plac’s case of late should be sporting much higher OBPs by either more hits, or working 2-0 counts more effectively for walks. It’s entirely possible that BAPIP spells of bad luck in these instances, but I’ve gone as far as I’m going on this issue.
The Raul 10-12 and Bautista 0-1 YTD on 2-0 counts are NOT typos.
Ryan Howard through the years against left yhanded pitching
Year At Bats Doubles Triples Homers OBP
2011 93 7 1 0 .324
2010 193 8 0 12 .333
2009 222 13 1 6 .298
2008 237 6 3 14 .294
2007 209 8 0 16 .333
2006 197 5 1 16 .364
conclusion: Ryho has essentially (word suggests range) been consistent this year with his career OBP. Pretty much the same with extra base hits as far as doubles and triples go. But the slippage, droppage, whatever the strongest word is of homers against lefties doesn’t bode well for playoff matchups where quality lefties aren’t as likely to give up extra base hits, let alone homers which would add an extra run (Howard, plus any runners on). So you need supportr behind him, for sure. Public opinion is it has to be a righty bat. Not untrue. But a bat period would improve the situation. So if internal roster can’t get it done, and a better lefty bat is available, it wouldn’t be as nuts as it might seem to get a lefty. If RyHo can’t hit homers off lefties, have to adjust. Somehow, someway. maybe this is a cycle. I frankly dount it.