Philadelphia Phillies: 3-2 Win Over Atlanta Braves Outlines Philly’s Formula

After months of toying and tinkering, they found it.

After a half-season of fumbling, they’re onto it.

The Phillies found the formula.

Not just to win, even in epic fashion against the second-place team in the National League East and consensus runners-up as baseball’s most feared club (for now).

The 3-2 win at Citizen’s Bank Park over the Atlanta Braves was fine, but it was more a road map than a destination.

This is what they need to do to contend.

Sounds sacrilege, given that another tally on the left puts the Phils at 56-33, above and beyond the best record in baseball, especially after padding the gap between Atlanta, now 3.5 games back.

But the Phillies’ woes were long documented and stacked high enough to cast a shadow.

A small one, like what afternoon suns cast over day games but awkward and intrusive enough to cause worry.

No one game can lift that. However brilliant, no nine-inning summation of singular efforts can wipe it.

But this was a start.

It started with Carlos Ruiz’ homer in the bottom of the fourth, the Phils second answer to a Braves’ score. Dan Uggla smacked an infield single in the top of the inning, as Brian McCann slipped the other way to plate Atlanta’s second run—their second test of wills in four innings.

It ended with Raul Ibanez‘s beaming line drive that skipped into the stands. The story, the game—it was the bottom of the 10th inning—the doubt about when they’d would find something to replicate.

The Ruiz and Ibanez jacks had more value, not just because they’re sexier stats or instant scores. They represented something grander. Valdez’ sacrifice fly, however commendable, that scored Ibanez to tie it at one apiece in the bottom of the second.

You appreciate the small ball, a facet of the game you’ve begged Philly to try for years.

But for figures like Ruiz and Ibanez, tenured and well-paid and underachieving with .255 and .239, to welcome moments like that was big.

Manufacturing them on-command was huge.

Remember: It won’t be pretty in the playoffs, often ugly and grueling as last night. Good to know that the Phillies can rise up on call.

“It’s definitely a good feeling,” Ibanez said of his sixth career game-winning homer. “You definitely don’t try to do that. You try to look for a pitch to drive and when you do it, there’s no better feeling as a player.”

It’s one thing to rise above when asked, what you could characterize Michael Stutes, Antonio Bastardo and Juan Perez’ clean eighth, ninth and 10th innings. The three relievers entered in consecutive, margin-for-error-less spots and met expectation.

Granted, we barely knew that Stutes had the slider that ended Alex Gonzalez’ night—thing dropped off like Ben Affleck’s career—to request it. Even though Bastardo has sent the heart of a hot lineup packing a few times now, it doesn’t get old.

You assume results from Roy Halladay, even on a night he was challenged by Atlanta starter Brandon Beachy, whose line rivaled Hallday’s, seven innings and as many strikeouts.

But not from Perez, who struck out Jason Heyward, Nate McLouth and Wilkin Ramirez and eluded the makings of a meltdown. Though you’d love to learn that habit.

“I’m excited and pumped up about my first win,” Perez said through a translator. “I worked hard to stay sharp mentally and I’m thankful for the opportunity.”

Thankful? He volunteered for it. That’s the trophy from wins like these, ones you hope last beyond the All-Star break.

Yet the consolation prizes, like Ryan Howard barreling for an infield single in the eighth, were almost as meaningful. Not as flashy or consequential. But Ibanez hustling out a sure-thing double play on after grounding a dribbler to Freddie Freeman (says something it’s taken so long to mention his name), matters.

You appreciate those nuggets and from recipients of a copious amount of Ruben Amaro Jr.’s money (Howard) and fans’ derision (Ibanez).

Question now is whether they learned. Question now is whether they’ll perfect it by October.

Questions that can answer themselves if the Phillies can repeat performances like these.

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

Philadelphia Phillies: Atlanta Braves Series Will Disappoint, Not Preview NLCS

You want to get pumped for Phillies–Braves tonight, the first of a three-game tilt before the All-Star break. But you can’t.

You tell yourself it’s replete with consequence. At least that’s what the National League East leaderboard is hinting.

But it doesn’t matter. Apathy ought to be abound.

This series couldn’t mean less.

At its simplest, these aren’t the teams you’ll see in August. Injuries shelf Phillies Placido Polanco and Shane Victorino (among Roy Oswalt and the docket of beat-up relievers), and the Braves are less their top dealer, Jair Jurrjens (12-3, 1.87 ERA).

That makes for forgettable pitching matchups—Roy Halladay (11-3, 2.44) vs. Brandon Beachy (3-1, 3.23), Cliff Lee (9-6, 2.92) vs. Tommy Hanson (9-4, 2.62), Cole Hamels (10-4, 2.40) vs. Derek Lowe (5-6, 4.21)—and lopsided, yet empty, Phils wins.

These won’t be the teams you see come October, either, given how contenders are reshaped by time.

Like whether the bats can transcend mediocrity when the pitching proves substandard. And whether they can maintain it.

Like whether the arms can hang tough on nights they’re rattled. Gamesmanship during a 0-0 ninth inning is easy to conjure. What about in a 5-4 lead with two on and nobody out in the seventh after serving two home runs earlier?

That will prove this team’s telling moment(s). Not a snap shot, but a collage.

This team can change in an instant, if Ruben Amaro addresses their foremost issues: health, depth and hitting. That’s the real plot here—the undercurrent flowing beneath Citizens Bank Park—far more than the theatrics above.

Figuring that out might take three phone calls. But not three clips of nine innings.

As for how those go…

If the Phils blow it—three games, a lead in the division, an upswing they hoped to ride, if not pad, beyond the break—they still haven’t really lost anything. There’s more than ample time to recover, whatever that means.

Should the Phils get hosed tonight, it’s explainable, between Atlanta’s nine-of-10 games hot streak and their unfamiliarity with a scouting report phantom like Beachy. But that won’t be the first 15 minutes of Troy. No demoralization. No lingering effects.

Just one loss of seven on Halladay’s season.

Had this been September 26-28, the Phils last three regular-season games, all at Turner Field, it’d be a different story.

But it’s not. Antsy as you might be, it’s July, making this as much a summer hit as June’s slew of box-office flops.

That’s typical with baseball’s regular season, overdrawn and underwhelming. But not for a series like this—at least what it should have been, as hyped as the Red Sox series was.

Wasn’t exactly the World Series preview we wanted. Nor will tonight be an NLCS teaser.

Worst case scenario: the Phils fall to a half-game back, Atlanta’s lead if it sweeps, and thumb-twiddle until July 15 to make it up against the Mets, the perfect time for inflating youngsters’ confidence.

That might be the series’ only losable commodity: momentum from Vance Worley, Antonio Bastardo, Michael Stutes, Michael Martinez and John Mayberry Jr., all of whom the Phils lean heavily on. If Worley gets shellacked on another May 29 or Mayberry face-plants on a crucial play in the outfield or Bastardo and Stutes get buried, that could be costly.

But they’ve already shown resilience. Cue Worley’s bounce-back as evidence.

And Charlie Manuel has shown rationality as recently as Wednesday, when he didn’t pitch Stutes or Bastardo longer than an inning each, mindful of the situation: the setting (the road), their age (delicate) and the goal (lasting). They might stumble, but it won’t be because Manuel pushes them.

Plus, few of life’s pleasures rival whupping on the Mets, let alone a Jose Reyes- and David Wright- and Ike Davis-less Mets, let alone ones overachieving by way of 10 wins in their last 15. Nothing like kicking Frank Wilpon when he’s down. (Or up, to his ears in debt and legal filings and his own ill-fated commentary.)

At least that will be something to talk (or laugh) about, unlike tonight. Unlike tomorrow.

Unlike anything before September.

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

Philadelphia Phillies: Worley, Bastardo, Stutes and Brown a Much-Needed Re-Up

Antonio Bastardo, Domonic Brown, Michael Stutes and Vance Worley are more couples than cargo. The Phillies youngsters aren’t the train cars screaming around this first half of track, careening to a 54-32 record, far and away the best record in baseball.

That’s on the shoulders (and elbows and wrists) of Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee and Cole Hamels.

But these four offer what even those three can’t.

They’re something extra, to help the Phillies best their best.

They’re connective tissue, between now and the fall.

The Phillies have been better than expected, but they needed more.

That’s why these summer months light up the trading block. That’s why front-office phone bills soar, and players fly across SportsCenter bottom lines.

It’s because this is when teams need surges. It’s when Opening Day rosters start to stale. Things start to fall into place (or apart) and teams adjust accordingly.

The Phillies don’t look like they need that right now. Not because of logic, however brilliant its delivery. Not because of stubbornness—Charlie Manuel said Friday, “We could definitely use a solid right-handed hitter,” and “our odds get better if we have one.” Not because of tight-lipped GMs misdirecting with old excuses about lean finances.

But because they have that in-house. The solution is already here, in vibrant youth and fearlessness.

It’s here in Vance Worley, who wrapped a 4-1 midseason stretch with yesterday’s 1-0 win over the Marlins, effectively wiping the hard drive of that 11-run shellacking by the Mets in May. It was announced after that he’s headed to the warming bulbs in Lehigh Valley, to hedge against another dormant two weeks catching up to him, what beget the New York meltdown.

When he’s back—Worley’s informally penned in for Game 2 in the next Mets series—Worley will be back to weed-whacking his 2.20 ERA like did in June, when he dealt a 0.64.

The Phils need that like they needed closing help, in lieu of a scroll-looking injury reports for both. Worley can putty the rotation while Roy Oswalt and Joe Blanton inch back toward contribution, just like Antonio Bastardo has spackled the game-sealing duties while Ryan Madson and Brad Lidge get right.

If there’s one bloc the Phillies need unabated reliability from, it’s those last three outs. Hard to justify $40 million—the sum of Halladay, Lee and Hamels earnings—if relief pitching blows it like they’ve been known to around here.

Bastardo has taught us different. Like Madson (15 saves in 16 opportunities), Bastardo wraps what others start, like Worley’s fourth win yesterday, also Bastardo’s fifth save in as many tries. In 31 innings this season, the Dominican has allowed just three total (all earned) runs, two on home runs.

In other words: save for two pitches, he’s been almost perfect.

Bastardo’s revisionist history—maybe Phillies ninth innings don’t have to be white-knucklers—is the kind of reassurance that gets you through the night (and summer).

What gets you through to Bastardo has been Michael Stutes, the bail-out from off-nights of starting pitching every skipper covets. No matter how you slice it—only 8 runs in 27.1 innings, with a 3-0 record in decisions—Stutes has been a sure-thing.

Stutes is surer on the road, where he’s working a 1.59 ERA in 11.1 innings, compared to his 3.38 at Citizens Bank Park. If you ever wanted a swing to follow your pitching on bus trips, that would be its direction.

And even Dom Brown shows inklings of improvement, exorcising a forgettable June—he batted .165 with only 8 RBI in 79 at-bats on the month—with a .333 last-seven games, a small sample size, but foundation plenty primed for building off of. It’s also what he’s erected since falling to a season trough of .200 on June 23.

You’ll take that like you did yesterday’s not-so-safe slide (dude’s leg was blatantly above home) to plate the game’s one-and-only, and decisive, run yesterday.

Now Brown just has to make that flash longer before it fizzles.

The best part: Worley and Brown are 23 years old, Bastardo 25 and Stutes 24. Those figures read like a weekender’s goals for golf—the lower the better.

Don’t underscore their contribution. This matters, for a team skittish about its foothold on the division, health and chops up-and-down the order.

Without reinforcements, this goes one of two ways.

It could have stayed even, a keel that ran well into the postseason. Maybe the Phils status quo today—first in the NL East and in Lane 1 toward a pennant—would’ve stood up through September. Maybe Game 150-something would’ve caped a 20-win season for Hamels, a few games after Halladay and Lee did.

Maybe somewhere between,

Maybe—really cranking out imagery here—Ryan Howard would earn his third-highest first baseman salary (behind Mark Teixeira and Adrian Gonzalez).

But it could’ve soured, too. Maybe injuries would’ve struck them where they were down, in the bullpen or starting rotation—maybe (gasp!) even one of the three dealers. Maybe the bug would’ve made headway where it hadn’t yet, the batting order. Hard to imagine how Phillies hitters would flop if one of their core went lame.

Maybe you bounce back. Maybe you don’t.

Maybe you add a piece. Maybe you can’t (or won’t).

But these four remove the moving parts. They simplify the machine. They reduce the equation to bite-size, with fewer letters (variables) than numbers (results)—the mix everybody can enjoy and be easy over.

In other words: you don’t have to make a move, whether it be a transaction or peaking over your shoulder.

Because know what you’ll find. And you know you’ll like it.

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

Philadelphia Phillies: Most human team in baseball, pro sports

The outfield walls inside Citizen’s Bank Park must seem imaginary. That’s how close, how real, how human, this Phillies team feels.

On most teams, you wonder what would happen if you pricked players’ fingers. Would they even bleed?

Shane Victorino bled, sharing his struggle with attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) yesterday on The Herd with Colin Cowherd. It’s rare that athletes own their baggage, behaviors and choices and consequences within their control. It’s another entirely when they advertise congenital deficiencies.

It’s unheard of.

With most clubs, you wonder why jerseys aren’t sprinkled with dollar-sign insignia, little patches on green-hued uniforms, worn by consumerism personified.

Item No. 1 on Cliff Lee‘s wish list wasn’t mega bucks last winter. It wasn’t even geographics. There were other non-baseball factors, like Yankee fans badgering someone they didn’t realize was Kristen Lee, his wife. That, and his familiarity with a locker room of mostly former teammates.

But at the top was access to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), among the nation’s best research facilities for treating rare child illnesses, like the leukemia that struck Lee’s son, Jaxon, when he was five months old, boding a 30 percent chance of survival.

Granted, Lee got his, and inked a six-year, $120 million deal with his formerly-former club. But with the offers held under his nose—the Yankees threw a seventh year and at least $20 million on top—you realize this wasn’t a hometown discount.

It was a human discount.

It was exactly what former-Phil Jayson Werth wouldn’t take. Seven years and $126 million was too much to walk away from, even if it meant willingly filing into to baseball’s glue factory, where pennant hopes, hot Junes and, in Werth’s case, above-average talent go to wilt. All you need to know: Manager John Riggleman retired yesterday after the Nationals won their 11th of 12 games, because management wouldn’t pick up his option.

That’s a trade-off 99 percent of this roster doesn’t go for.

This are real people, with real problems and considerations and impulses. When a tornado tore through his hometown in Chotcaw County, Miss., Roy Oswalt flung the chalk bag and contractual obligations on the mound, tending to his scared-stiff wife and kids.

“Baseball is a gift…but this comes third or fourth on my list,” he said. “I could walk away from the game today and be happy. As long as you have your family, they’re going to be there a lot longer than the game will be. A lot of people don’t look it that way, a lot of people think this is who you are as a person. It’s not….Baseball doesn’t mean more than my family for sure.”

 

That quote was what happens when life gets too heavy to lift (At least for the few more authentic than a Beverly Hills bust line). If there is an exception, a model for how anyone might act—like the New Orleans Saints in the Katrina aftermath; or Haitian first, Indianapolis Colt second, Pierre Garçon—that’s it. 

But even Oswalt’s known for being somewhat homey. His player card makes you wonder whether he kicks up dirt after balls, or lets an “aw, shucks,” slip after walks. He just seems that outstandingly regular.

If you want a reason feels easier to get into President Obama’s laptop than Citizen’s Bank—couldn’t even find out how many consecutive sellouts it’s had—that’s why. Or why a Facebook poll tapped the Fightins as baseball’s most endeared franchise.

It’s because Philadephians can relate. I’m not about to go all “American Dream” on you, but for a franchise so hapless for so long to take off, it makes us wonder what’s in store for our lives. What’s unexpected. What’s immeasurable. What’s invaluable.

Bluest-collar hand of all the major cities, meet your (baseball) glove. That’s how this team fits.

Granted, Philly hammers who it dubs underachievers. When Ryan Howard’s bat took a nap on his shoulder on the last pitch of Game 6 of the NLCS, he got killed for buckling in the clutch. For a city who labors and scraps and bleeds for its money, it expects the same of stars who bank five-year, $125 million extensions on top of three-year, $54 million deals.

 

In other words: It likens stars to streetwalkers.

For some, it’s space-shuttle-touching-down-to-earth coolness, like Chase Utley’s humility that spews quotes like these:

“I know it sounds stupid and cliche, but I just want to get better,” he said, well after he was Chase Utley. “I want to keep improving.”

For others, it’s simpler, maybe even more superficial. Cole Hamels can deal—he’s 9-3 and tied for third in the National League with a 2.51 ERA—but that’s not what makes a certain demographic fall over themselves.

And for every heartthrob, there’s a machine, the Phillies’ being Roy Halladay, tied with Hamels in both wins and ERA and self-prided for pulling into the stadium at 4:30 a.m. most mornings.

But no one, not even the Nikon focused Halladay, gets too big for his red pinstripes. Not at the top, with a Jimmy Rollins who opened contract talks with a more reasonable three-year, $39 million ask than Derek Jeter did for his twilight deal. Not on the bottom-most rung, either. Dom Brown knows that until he hits, he’s just hype.

Not anywhere.

There’s just no room for it. Or fillers. Or pomp. Or pretense.

Not with so much that’s so real.

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

« Previous Page