Philadelphia Phillies Face Off Against Braves, Reds in Crucial Homestand

Finding the right words to describe the importance of the Philadelphia Phillies first half-ending home stand against the NL East leading Atlanta Braves and the NL West leading Cincinnati Reds is vexing.  

Facing off against two of the top teams in the National League right before the All-Star Break is obviously important, but how important?

To use the words “must-win” in this situation would be, for all intents and purposes, wildly inappropriate.  Forget, for the moment, the old adage that anything that can be done in the first half of the season can be undone in the second half.  And forget for the moment that this is a team playing without one of its starting pitchers and its All-Star second and third basemen.

In 2007, the Philadelphia Phillies came all the way back from being seven games behind the New York Mets with two weeks to play to win the NL East.

Thus, to say that the Phillies “must win” these two series against the Braves and Reds in order to have a chance to make the playoffs in 2010 would be a hyperbole.

On the other hand, let’s not pretend that the Phillies can easily afford to lose either or both of these series.  

The prohibitive pre-season favorites for their third straight World Series run in 2010, the Phillies are currently in third place in their own division and are not playing the best ball they’ve played during the tenure of manager Charlie Manuel.

If the Philadelphia Phillies are going to be a playoff and/or NL East contender this season—more importantly, if they are going to believe that they are a contender—then a home stand against two of the top three teams in the National League is the perfect opportunity to demonstrate that fact conclusively to the NL, to Phillies fans, and perhaps even to themselves.

At the end of the day, it is probably appropriate to say that the Phillies three-game series against the Braves and four-game series against the Reds are both crucial.

Forget for the moment about the straight-up game advantage that the Braves will gain with any win against the Phillies and lose with any loss.  This will be the Phillies’ final home stand against the Braves until the third week of September.  If the Phillies can take this series, or for that matter sweep this series, the Phillies can play the second half of the season confident that they are battling a beatable opponent in the NL East.

And then, of course, there is the game advantage.  You don’t want to be giving away home games against divisional opponents, particularly those you are locked into battle with.

As for the four game set against the Reds, that series will be all about momentum.  Enough can not be said about the momentum boost that winning a four game series would give the Phillies going into the All-Star Break.  Winning three-of-four from the Reds would be just the confidence-builder this team needs to go into the All-Star Break feeling good about the first half of the season and focused on the second.

This team needs to believe that it can play with the best teams in baseball, and there is no better way to convince itself of that then by playing good ball here at the end of the first half.

Thus, it can safely be said that this is a crucial home stand for the Philadelphia Phillies.  Not that the Phillies must win these games, but they can ill-afford to lose them.

 

Asher B. Chancey lives in Philadelphia and is a co-founder of BaseballEvolution.com.

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

2010 NL All-Star Rosters: Why the Phillies Aren’t Going to the World Series

It can now be said without a doubt that the Philadelphia Phillies will not be making their third straight trip to the World Series this October.

Or at least their manager, Charlie Manuel, seems to think they won’t.

Why else would he do such a preposterous job of selecting his All-Star pitching staff and reserves?

As we all know, the Dumbest Rule in Professional Sports mandates that the winner of the MLB All-Star Game gets home field advantage in the World Series.

Thus, it only stands to reason that Manuel, the manager of the National League’s squad and also the manager of a potential World Series participant in the Philadelphia Phillies, would want to put together the best All-Star squad available to protect the Phillies’ shot at World Series home-field advantage.

Apparently, Manuel doesn’t see the Phillies back in the Series and has thus decided to sabotage whichever team it is that will eventually get there.

That is the only explanation.

Mind you, Manuel did not simply screw up one or two picks. Manuel practically picked the wrong player at almost every opportunity; everywhere that a pick wasn’t obvious, he went with the wrong one.

Consider, for example, the selection of Tim Lincecum for the pitching staff. Lincecum is one of the best pitchers in the game and is coming off consecutive NL Cy Young Awards. But in 2010, Lincecum is not one of the best 13 pitchers in the NL.  

The selection of Lincecum stands in contrast to the exclusion of Clayton Richard and Mat Latos of the San Diego Padres, both of whom have an ERA well below 3.00 (unlike Lincecum) and one of whom, Richard, is a left-hander.

Which brings up an interesting point—the American League will feature six left-handed starters out of nine, yet the National League has only one left-handed pitcher, Arthur Rhodes.  

So, to face a veritable murderer’s row of Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau, Robinson Cano, Ichiro Suzuki, Josh Hamilton, and Carl Crawford, the National League will be armed with a bevy of right-handers and Rhodes, a 40-year-old middle reliever who, while having a great year, may not even be in the game by the time those other guys have been pulled for backups.

Have a nice weekend, all you left-handed starting pitchers: Jaime Garcia, Johan Santana, Jonathan Sanchez, and Clayton Kershaw. Charlie won’t need your services.

Manuel’s outfield picks, too, are baffling. In selecting Chris Young, Marlon Byrd, Michael Bourn, and Matt Holliday, Manuel made sure that each team in the NL is being represented at the expense of actual All-Star-caliber talent. Fact is, Colby Rasmus, Josh Willingham, and the Phillies’ own Jayson Werth are, to a man, each having better seasons than Young, Bourn, and Holliday.

Look, I realize Charlie is old school and probably despises modern statistics. So here are some old school stats for you: Chris Young is batting .264. Michael Bourn is batting .260. Holliday has 11 home runs and 39 RBI, which both rank behind his own teammate Rasmus’ 16 and 40.

And it isn’t like Rasmus, Werth, and Willingham are the only viable alternatives. So too would Andrew McCutchen, Angel Pagan, and Matt Kemp have been better selections.

It is funny that Manuel would diss Werth in favor of marginally better outfielders, because he selected Ryan Howard over Joey Votto, who is enjoying a significantly better season than Howard.

Votto isn’t arguably better than Howard; he’s demonstratively better than Howard.

Perhaps the worst selection of all, and perhaps even of all time, was Manuel’s choice of Omar Infante, a utility infielder for the Atlanta Braves, over, well, just about anyone else in the league.

Infante has played just 56 games in 2010 and has appeared at five different positions. He is hitting .311 with a .721 OPS, one home run, eight doubles, three stolen bases, and 23 runs scored. He has 28 strikeouts to only nine walks and 62 total bases.

Did Charlie lose a bet with somebody?

Look, I am sure Omar Infante is a nice guy, but there are 50 hitters in the National League who are more deserving of the All-Star Game than Infante.

Meanwhile, the final roster spot will be selected by fans in a vote between Votto, Carlos Gonzalez, Ryan Zimmerman, Heath Bell, and Billy Wagner, all of whom are significantly better than Infante, and frankly, several other players on the roster.

The irony here is that the NL All-Star team would be better off if it took the five worst reserves and replaced them with all five of the players in the Final Vote.

Even if Charlie Manuel was doing the noble thing and trying to pick the players that most deserved to be at the All-Star Game—which he failed to do—one must be mindful of the fact that, thanks to the Dumbest Rule in Professional Sports, we are beyond the era when every team gets an All-Star and everyone that is there deserves to be there.

An All-Star roster should be filled with the best players in the league with position, team, and fluke season performance aside.

Alas, it is not to be.

So this is it, Philadelphia Phillies fans. On July 4, 2010, you got all the indication you needed that Phillies manager Charlie Manuel feels that his Phillies team has no shot at the World Series.

If he did, he surely would have given himself a better shot at winning the NL All-Star Game—and he has given himself none.

 

Asher B. Chancey lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and is a co-founder of BaseballEvolution.com.

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

Top 25 Career Milestone Near-Misses in Baseball History

In 2009, Trevor Hoffman fooled the Milwaukee Brewers front office, coaches, players, and fans by being nothing short of awesome. In 55 games, he put together a 0.907 WHIP, a 3.43 K:BB ratio, a 3-2 record, 37 saves, and a 1.83 ERA. It was the best season he’d had in a decade.

Hell, I’ll bet he even fooled himself.

Truth is, Hoffman hadn’t been a truly effective Hoffman-esque reliever in a couple of seasons, and his 2009 performance was likely a mirage. Nevertheless, there were reasons for optimism in Milwaukee going into this season.

Well, it has been a disaster. Hoffman has doubled last season’s earned run numbers in 30 fewer games, and has blown five saves.

More importantly, Hoffman entered the year just nine saves from becoming the first player ever to get 600 saves in his career, and now—even despite solid pitching in non-save situations—Hoffman looks perilously far from attaining that goal.

Hoffman’s failure to reach 600 career saves would almost certain make the Top 25 Career Milestone Near Misses in MLB History.

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Ten Worst NL Pitchers With Better Records Than Roy Halladay in 2010

On Wednesday, the last day of June in the 2010 Major League Baseball season, Roy Halladay of the Philadelphia Phillies pitched a complete game in which he allowed 13 hits but also struck out 10 batters while walking none.

He gave up four earned runs and took the loss.

In one sense, Halladay bears the blame for the loss.

He took the ball in the eighth inning up 3-2, and gave up a Jay Bruce two-run home run to seal the win.

In reality though, the blame falls to Roy’s supporting cast: the Phillies hitters for their terrible run support and the Phillies bullpen for their terrible everything.

One day after closer Brad Lidge blew a three-run lead in the bottom of the ninth, Halladay was the only option going into the eighth where another team would have turned over the one-run leader to trusted relievers.

And so July 1st will come tomorrow and Roy Halladay, one of the best pitchers in baseball and the pitcher with the now-sixth best ERA in the National League at 2.42, has six complete games, three shutouts, a perfect game, and a 9-7 record.

To put that 9-7 record in perspective, here’s a list of 10 far-inferior National League pitchers with better records, winning percentage-wise.

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Top 10 Philadelphia Phillies Prospects to Get Excited About

There can be no doubt about it: the cream of the Philadelphia Phillies minor league crop is none other than Domonic Brown. A potential five-tool star at the major league level, Brown was recently promoted from Double-A to Triple-A and will probably get a September call-up with an eye towards making the Big Club in 2011.

But Brown isn’t the only reason to get excited about the Phillies’ minor league system.

Let’s have a look.

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MLB Trade Rumors: Matthew Rizzotti Heating Up at the Right Time

In a season in which the Philadelphia Phillies have made Ryan Howard one of the richest first basemen in major league history, the unexpected has happened in the minor leagues: left-handed hitting first baseman Matthew Rizzotti has turned into a legitimate major league prospect.

Phillies fans will recall that Rizzotti was Philadelphia’s fourth round pick in the 2007 draft.  He is a lumbering giant of a player, standing 6’5″ and weighing 235 pounds.

For whatever reason, the Phillies have brought Rizzotti along very slowly since drafting him.  Rizzotti signed relatively immediately in 2007, and managed to play 63 games in low A-ball with Williamsport the year he was drafted.  Rizzotti started 2008 in rookie ball before being quickly promoted to Single-A Lakewood, where he hit .268 with 10 home runs, but also posted an impressive .380 on-base percentage.

In 2009, the now 23 year-old Rizzotti spent an entire season at High-A Clearwater, where he hit only .263 with 13 home runs and 58 RBI in 101 games.  His .806 OPS and 159 total bases were unimpressive, and landed him an encore performance in Clearwater in 2010.

And that, perhaps, has made all the difference.

In his first 31 games this season at Clearwater, Rizzotti hit .358 with a .903 OPS, numbers that came seemingly out of no where.  He raised his slugging percentage over 20 points despite hitting only one home run, which indicated that he had become a more patient and versatile hitter.

But the real excitement, and the reason Matthew Rizzotti is suddenly on everyone’s radar, has developed since he was promoted to Double-A Reading.  In just 41 games, Rizzotti is hitting .385 with a shocking 1.132 OPS, 10 home runs, and 14 doubles.  All of this was good enough for Rizzotti to be named Minor League Player of the Month for the month of May.

One year after putting up modest numbers against High-A ball pitchers, Rizzotti is dominating Double-A pitchers.

So what is the meaning of all of this?

There is simply no room at the major league level for Matthew Rizzotti with the Phillies.  Ryan Howard is the Phillies’ first baseman of the past, present, and future, and Rizzotti doesn’t have the athleticism to move to the outfield.  If anything, he needs to move from first base to designated hitter, as he has done for 38 of his 72 total games this season.

That means he is trade bait.  And he may be peaking at just the right time.

Could the Phillies get some pitching help in exchange for the new hottest bat in Double-A?  Rizzotti is a prototypical American League first baseman/DH, the kind that Billy Beane loves to snag cheaply for the Oakland A’s (see Jack Cust, Scott Hatteberg, Daric Barton, Jake Fox).  Rizzotti is also the type of player that might be a good fit for Theo Epstein’s Boston Red Sox, Peter Angelos’ Baltimore Orioles, or Kenny Williams’ Chicago White Sox.

And, there is a certain offense-starved team in Seattle that has a certain pitcher that all of Philadelphia loves, and that could use a high-average, high-on-base masher at the DH-spot.

The Philadelphia Phillies have a legitimate major league prospect in Matthew Rizzotti.  Hopefully, someday, we’ll all remember him as a guy we traded as part of the package to get the pitcher we needed to get back to the World Series for the third year in a row.

 

Asher B. Chancey lives in Philadelphia and is a co-founder of BaseballEvolution.com .

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

With Their Shortstop Back, the Philadelphia Phillies Are On a (J-)Roll.

The mystery is over.  No need to even have a vote.  We now know who the Most Valuable Player in the National League is.

It isn’t Albert Pujols, Adrian Gonzalez, or Ubaldo Jimenez.  He plays in the National League East, but he isn’t Hanley Ramirez, David Wright, Jason Heyward, or Ryan Zimmerman.  

The 2010 NL MVP plays for the Philadelphia Phillies, but he isn’t Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, or Roy Halladay.

The 2010 National League Most Valuable Player is none other than Jimmy Rollins.

Not on board with that idea yet?  No matter–I would not have been either if I had not seen it with my own eyes.  But the evidence is overwhelming.

The Phillies started the 2010 season with six wins in their first seven games, and frankly they were not close wins.  Only a 2-1 victory over the Houston Astros in the sixth game was decided by less than three runs.

Then Jimmy got hurt.  During the one month that Rollins was out–from April 12th through May 16–the Phillies went 17-12 and briefly fell out of first place in the NL East.

Jimmy returned on May 17th, with the Phillies getting the win in his first game back by a score of 12-2.  But J-Roll’s return was brief, as he went back on the disabled list after only five games back.

And that’s when things got bad.

The Phillies were without Rollins from May 22nd to June 21st–exactly one month’s worth of games–and history will remember it as the most brutal streak that the current incarnation of the Phillies has endured.

For the record: The Phillies went 9-17 during the time that Jimmy was out.  They were shut out six times, and scored only one run in four other games.  Out of nine total series during the time that Rollins was out, the Phillies won only two of them.  And, they went from 5.0 games up in the division to 5.5 games out of the lead in the division.

That ain’t the stuff that World Series teams are made of.

J-Roll returned to the Phillies lineup on June 22nd, and the Phillies have yet to lose.  More importantly, they are scoring again–after a 2-1 victory on Tuesday, the Phillies scored seven runs on Wednesday, 12 runs on Thursday, and (as of this writing) have nine runs in the eighth inning against Toronto.

Perhaps the most important statistic is this:

Assuming tonight’s game against the Blue Jays holds up, the Phillies will move to 12-3 with Rollins in the lineup, and 27-29 without.

At the end of the day, the picture these stats paint is too clear to ignore: with Jimmy Rollins in the lineup, the Phillies are a World Series team.  Without him, they struggle to stay about .500.

I don’t know who is going to come out on top in the NL MVP voting at the end of the year, but I can tell you right now who the Most Valuable Player in the National League is.

He plays shortstop for the Phillies, and he’s got them back on a roll.

A J-Roll.

 

Asher B. Chancey lives in Philadelphia and is a co-founder of BaseballEvolution.com .

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

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