A couple of years ago, on a warm spring afternoon and right after work, I hopped in the VW Jetta I owned at the time and headed to the golf course. Interstate 64 was my path of choice and as I tuned in the Dan Patrick Show, I began to feel a little shake in the vehicle that I had never noticed before. "That's interesting," I thought, and checked my watch. Noticing I was running a tad late to meet my friend for our tee time, I pressed down on the gas peddle a fraction of an inch.
As I continued to drive, the shake got a bit more forceful and rapid, with a thump, thump, thump getting louder and louder. "What the hell happened to this road?" Then, I began to lose control of the vehicle a bit, as well as speed. By now I had the sense that this wasn't a lousy stretch of road and that I had to get off. I hit an off-ramp and pulled over. As I got out of the car and looked around, I noticed that my passenger-side rear tire was in shreds. I immediately thought to myself, "Damn, the wheel almost came right off!"
At this point in the Phillies season, I am beginning to feel a bit like I did as I cruised down I-64. "Are these bumps something I should be worried about? Are the wheels coming off? Is their inconsistency a sign of tension and stress of the chase?"
As of late, the team is falling back into a maddening pattern that we've seen over the course of the season: scoring runs in bunches one night, and then failing to score more than one or two the following night. The pitching staff has been fairly consistent, keeping the team in the game, night after night, but it is the offense that seems to let the Phillies down in a loss.
Over the past twenty games, the Phillies have a record of 10-10 and have scored 7 runs or over 5 times. Over that same span, the Phils have also 3 runs or less eight times.
Had the Phillies scored 5 hypothetical runs in each and every one of those twenty games, they would have gone 12-5 and sent three others to extra innings. Had they scored just 4 hypothetical runs in each of the last twenty games, the Phils would have had a record of 10-8 with two games going into extra innings.
Like any sport, baseball is a game of highs and lows, and so to expect exactly 5 runs every night would be ludicrous. But the roller coaster of run totals the Phillies have displayed in the last three weeks or so is clearly hurting them in their quest to make the playoffs. And with their third loss in a row last night, the Phils are no longer in first place in the Wild Card hunt. To make the playoffs, they will now need to come from behind with a pitching staff that is beginning to wear thin.
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In case you were wondering, the story above ends with a friend stopping to pitch in. We got a temporary tire on the car, drove it to my tire guy, and while the car was in the shop, we ran out and played nine holes. Nice day all in all.
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Just what was Endy Chavez doing as the pinch-hitter in the bottom of the ninth with two outs in last night's game? Chavez makes Jimmy Rollins look like the most disciplined hitter of all time. Facing Brad Lidge with the game on the line, he actually swung at -- and hit foul -- a pitch after it bounced.
After the game, Charlie Manuel was asked why Chavez was used when Ramon Martinez and Todd Pratt were still available to drive in the runners on second and third, runners that would have won the game had they crossed the plate. Manuel's reply was that Chavez usually puts the ball in play.
Fook is actually right. According to statistics on The Hardball Times, Chavez has struck out only 12 times in 113 plate appearances with the Phillies. However, he has only a .244 batting average on balls in play, whereas Martinez has just a slightly higher strikeout rate with a considerably higher batting average on balls in play.
I tend to believe that Manuel does a great job with the team off the field and behind the scenes, getting their minds in the right place to play, but as a tactician, he is simply awful.
