Philadelphia Phillies’ Feet Not Helping Them To NL Three-Peat

Although it may seem strange, this year the Phillies feet have played a big role in their season.  Whether it be injuries, or balks, or just plain mess-ups, the Phillies have had some eventful things happen to them that involved feet.  Here is a list of some of them:

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The Road To October: Analyzing the Phillies Competition

The Phillies have had a good year this year.  They may not be first in their division or the Wild Card, but they are close to the leaders in both.In this article, I am going to talk about all of the teams that the Phillies are close to in the division and Wild Card races.  Let’s start out by looking at the Phillies themselves:

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The 2008 Philadelphia Phillies: What It Will Take To Get Them Back

The Phillies have had some games in which their offense was not as good as it could have been, games in which they were held to very few runs, and games in which they had many base runners but just couldn’t seem to get hits in important situations.  Even some of those games were against pitchers who were not all that great.

When I looked at the score from one of those games, my initial thought was that maybe the reason they couldn’t knock in the runners was that their lineup wasn’t very good.

But in a moment, I realized that I was wrong.  The problem was not in their lineup.  The problem was in their players. The lineup had holes.

The Phillies have a very solid team.  They have great pitching, great offense, a good manager, and good coaches. They are just a plain, good, old team.

Because of that they have, unlike many other teams, the potential to do good.  They have a World Series winning lineup.  They have a starting rotation that is one of the best in the league.  They have all that it takes to win.

Those players who created the holes had the potential to do great.  If they were playing as good as they had at their best, they would have knocked in those runs. 

The Phillies won the World Series in 2008, and they won the National League title in 2009.  Both of those years, the key to their success was that all of their players were playing as good as they could.

For a lot of teams, the only reason they lose is because their players aren’t very good, and the only reason they win is because their players surprise everyone by doing good.

But not the Phillies.

Almost every single one of the Phillies players is good.  There are no surprises when Ryan Howard hits a home run.  There are no surprises when Jimmy Rollins steals a base. 

Because those players are good.  The Phillies are good.

The Phillies win when all of the players in their lineup play as good as they have, as good as they could, as good as they should.  That is the key to the team of the Philadelphia Phillies.  They just have to get all their players playing on the top of their game.

The Phillies have the potential to win.  They have the ability to win.  They have the skill to win.  They have the players to win.  All they have to do is to get it to fit.

That’s what they did when they won the World Series.  And that’s what they have to do to win it again.

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The 10 Best Wins for the Phillies this Year

We all know that the Phillies have had some great games this year.  We also know that a lot of the games were very important to the season.

  Some of the games kept them in the division race or the Wild Card race, some of the games started streaks, and some of the games were just plain good games. Here are some of the best games the Phillies played this year.

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How The Phillies Grew Stronger Through All Their Injuries

It seems to many that it is obvious that teams get weaker when their players get injured.  And of course that would seem logical.

But not with the Phillies.

When the Phillies had injury after injury, did they become a weaker team?

No.  They became a better team.

And the reason is obvious if you think about it.  Let me explain why I think it is true.

As I said in my article Injury Deja Vu: A Situation That Happens Again and Again, when some of the Phillies players got injured, other players stepped up and carried the team.

In that way, the Phillies team stayed as good as they had been without injuries.

Or did they?

It seems to me that during the time when the players were injured, and after they came back, the team played better than they had before with those players.  So how could that be?

Well, it could have been because they played against different teams or faced different pitchers or something like that.  But I don’t think that’s right.  And there are a few reasons why.

First of all, if you look at the players statistics before most of them got injured, it seemed that they were in a slump before their injury.

For instance, Chase Utley was having a good season before he got injured.  But a little while before he got injured, he went into a slump.

Ryan Howard was also having a good season before he got injured, but, like Utley, a little before he got injured he went into a slump.

Shane Victorino was also slumping before he got injured.  And Carlos Ruiz was having a good season, but his batting average dropped just a little while before he got injured.

Joe Blanton was injured, and when he came back, he showed that the Phillies were probably better off with Kyle Kendrick and Nelson Figueroa.

If this is true, that means that the backups ended up helping the team better than the injured players would have, because most of the injured players were in a slump.

And also, when the players came off the disabled List, some of them played a lot better than before, like Ruiz, Victorino, and Utley.

That is one of the possible answers to why I think they did better, and there are a couple more.

After Chase Utley got injured, Jayson Werth got hot.  As you may have heard, the Phillies were talking a lot about the fact that they had a lot of left-handed batters, which made their lineup vulnerable to left-handed pitchers.  But when Utley, a left handed hitter, got injured and Werth, a right handed hitter, started playing as good as Utley, the Phillies basically switched one of their left handed hitters to a right handed hitter. And Wilson Valdez, the backup for Utley, was right handed, and he hit about as good as Werth had been hitting before.

The last reason is mostly based of the fact that others heated up when good players got injured.

For example, when Chase Utley got injured, Jayson Werth got hot.  And now that Chase Utley is back, Jayson Werth is still hot.

So the Phillies have a team with Utley playing like before, but they also have Jayson Werth playing much better than before.

Or maybe it was just that the injuries brought the the team back to reality and gave them a message like, “Man, you’ve got to get better quick or you’re season’s going to be over.”

I don’t know.

But I do think that the Phillies, like the players, were slumping before the injuries, and once the injuries started, they began to heat up.  And after the return of their injured players, they are doing better than before.

And we hope that they continue to do well.

 

 

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