Hold your head up
With the Phillies down 0-2 in the five game NLDS against the Rockies, lets get this out of the way first: No one argued with me when I wrote this after the miraculous September ending to the regular season:
Now, it's on to the postseason, and, lets just say that the Phillies lose the first two games of the divisional series. Will you count them out? After what we've just seen, you'd be a fool to do so.
To combine Lenny Dykstra and Tug McGraw quotes, "Dude, ya gotta believe."
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No time to go all LaRussa on us
Any idea who the guy was wearing a Charlie Manuel suit in the Phillies dugout on Thursday afternoon?
For most of the season, Manuel avoided his middle relief corps the way little kids avoid eating peas. He wanted nothing to do with it, and did everything he could to get any of his starting pitchers not named Adam Eaton through the sixth inning, then turning the game over to J.C. Romero, Tom Gordon, and Brett Myers.
For some reason however, he decided Game 2 was a time to micro-manage. In the fourth inning, he pulled Kyle Kendrick who was in a bit of a tight spot with the bases loaded. He gave up a double, got a couple outs, then issued a walk and a little dribbler in the direction of third baseman Wes Helms -- who's easily mistaken for The Thinker over there -- which loaded the bases.
Now, the argument can be made that Kendrick needed to come out, I can see the reasoning, but here is the problem with it: You are removing a kid who's done nothing but get ground balls in tight spots all season for Kyle Lohse, who is typically a starter and isn't used to entering a game with the bases loaded. Plus, if Lohse can't get the third out, then you are left with Clay Condrey and Jose Mesa to get you to your late-inning trio, and lo and behold, that's just what happened.
Those moves were not Manuel's style. Perhaps he got talked into it by one of his coaches, but if he did, he shouldn't have let them.
There's no doubt in my mind that Charlie Manuel was instrumental in getting the Phillies to the playoffs, but by the same token, I can't help but think he was a big part of the loss on Tuesday.
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Gatorade makes the ball go 'round
Josh Kalk is a blogger who has been doing a lot of analysis on pitches using MLB.com's pitch f/x data. After the Manny Corpas Incident in Game 1 [story; video], I asked Kalk if he was able to run the numbers and see if Corpas' pitches had any funky movement.
Interestingly, he wasn't able to find much of a wrinkle, but, I would contend that just because his ball wasn't moving funny doesn't mean he wasn't trying to cheat.
We're watching you, Corpas.
