Balls, Sticks, & Stuff | Phillies, Eagles, golf and other matters of great importance...

Not Above Bribery

Of the 160+ entries we received for the Guess the Date Contest, only 11 picked July 15th correctly, and of those 11, only two correctly guessed 12 total runs in the game would be scored.  Per the rules, Tugger will be drawing one of those two names out of a battered Phillies hat this evening.

If you are one of those two people, you should know that Tugger has never turned up his nose at a treat.  Peanut butter will make you his friend forever.  He asked me to nonchalantly throw that out there.

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Update: After some indifference, Tug finally pulled a name out of a hat -- Matt P. of Manayunk is the winner of the Guess the Date Contest!

10,000

Tonight, the Phillies lost the 10,000 game in the organization's history.  The glass half-full point of view:

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." 
          ~ Thomas A. Edison

Lyon Chimes In

Who better than Bill Lyon to describe what it's like to be a Phillie fan as we approach the milestone of 10,000 losses?

Link: Bill Lyon | Faithful to a fault | Inquirer | 07/15/2007.

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Incidentally, speaking of the frustration of sports and the inability to walk away, my home course's club championship was this weekend, want to know how I fared? Click here.

Let's be Realistic

A contingent of Phillies fans has been upset about the fact that Ryan Madson was seen playing frisbee with Brett Myers and J.D. Durbin prior to Friday night's loss to the Rockies where the bullpen was handed the task of getting nine outs in order to preserve a 3-run lead, yet failed.  The fact that he was playing frisbee wasn't a concern, but the fact that Madson said he was unavailable to pitch that night due to fatigue.

To those who see Madson's extra-curricular activities as an issue, I ask this question: After watching this team for the last three months, do you really think it would have mattered in the outcome?

The Dubee Effect

America's birthday finds me checking the mailbag way too early [lots of Guinness last night, not brilliant!] and naturally, the only email there is from an avid reader (who prefers to remain anonymous) of the Phlogosphere that resides multiple time-zones away.  He did some leg-work and discovered something I've suspected for some time now -- the Phillies situation almost always deteriorates after a coaching visit to the mound.

Here's what he found for the first two games of the series in Houston:

Monday's game: 

5th inning - 1 on, 1 out. Visit. Next batter - HBP. 

6th inning - 1 on, 1 out. Visit. Next batter - Single (after baserunner picked off trying to steal 3B). 

7th inning - 2 on, 1 out. Visit. Next batter - Pop up. 

7th inning - 3 on, 2 out. Visit. Next batter - Walk (RBI) 

Tuesday's game: 

2nd inning - 3 on, 1 out. Visit. Next batter - Walk (RBI) 

8th inning - none on, 1 out. Visit. Next batter - Walk. 

9th inning - 3 on, 1 out. Visit. Next batter - Fielder's choice (RBI) 

10th inning - 2 on, 2 out. Visit. Next batter - Walk. 

So, when our fearless coaches went out there to 'settle things down', we were treated to 1 good out, 1 run-scoring out, and 6 times that the batter got on base by a hit, 4 walks (none intentional) and a hit batter. Thank you, messrs Manuel and Dubee. And please stay in the dugout from now on! Either you don't know what you're talking about, the pitchers are ignoring you, or they are so bad that talking to them doesn't matter anyway.

My guess is it is a combination of the three.

To be fair, this is a small sample size and my guess is that no pitchers on any team do well after a coaching visit, but at the same time, it's safe to say that Rich Dubee will never be confused with Leo Mazzone.

Bullpen Contest

Any Phillies reliever to throw a baseball within the yellow circle in the image below will receive a lengthy standing ovation:

A Common Theme

This morning's Daily News sports a column by Sam Donnellon, who points out that in the end, big picture, bottom line, it's likely that history will view the Charlie Manuel Era and the Larry F. Bowa Era similarly -- always close, but never a cigar.

Donnellon cites the common thread we've seen year in, year out since the turn of the century, ad pukem, a team with win-totals in the mid-80's, falling just short of the Wild Card slot for the playoffs.  Looking back, with all of these teams, the disease was mediocrity, but the etiology was almost always poor pitching, regardless of the home ballpark, the Vet or the Bank, the manager, the coaching staff, or the front office.

Somewhere along the line, someone once said, "pitching wins championships."  In another profound moment, a statistician once said, "correlation is not causation."  Obviously, this statistician didn't know what the Phillies' ERA would be from 1981 on.

Chase Utley is referred to several times in the column, one such instance:

It was interesting, though, to see what seemed to be a quick but stern tongue-lashing of Geoff Geary by Utley as the former nibbled around again on the mound last weekend, shortly before being sent down.

Similarly, it was last season during a meeting of minds on the mound that the television cameras caught a perturbed Utley voicing his displeasure to Gavin Floyd.  The audio was absent but unnecessary as you could clearly see Utley articulate, "Throw f---ing strikes."

In another column in the Daily News, Paul Hagen quotes Charlie Manuel on the time when he was with the Cleveland Indians he forgot a pitcher's name when he went to the mound to take him out:

I went to the mound to take him out and I called him Bill. He said, 'My name is Mike.' I said, 'It doesn't really matter. That ball landed in the second deck, and I'll remember that home run.'

One has to wonder, how many times over the course of Utley's next six plus seasons with the Phillies will he forcefully plead with a forgettable pitcher/interchangeable part on the mound to throw some strikes.

Mets/Phillies: Weekend Wrap-Up

...With each passing day, it becomes more clear that the Phillies just do not have the pitching to get over the hump and become one of the elite teams in baseball.  But, of the ten home runs the Mets hit against the Phillies, many of them came off of some damn good pitches down in the strike zone, if not out of it.  Yes, the Phils need more horses, but the Mets would have made a lot of good pitchers look bad at times this weekend.

...Chase Utley, along with Aaron Rowand and Cole Hamels, was named to the National League All-Star team.  What you might not have noticed is that Utley is on pace for a truly historic season.  Prorating his performance to this point over 162 games, Utley will end up with 62 doubles and 30 home runs for the season.  If my math is correct, in the history of baseball, no player has reached the 60/30 mark before.  Coincidentally, it was another Phillie, Chuck Klein, that came the closest with 59 doubles and 40 home runs in 1930.

...Why was pitching coach Rich Dubee not one of the coaches given a pink slip in the off-season?  What has he done for the Phillies?  Brett Myers is one of the few pitchers that has improved under Dubee, but most have either held status quo or regressed, and Myers has fallen to injury (if you don't think a degree of injury-prevention is part of a pitching coach's job, you are mistaken).  Ryan Madson has regressed, Geoff Geary has been up and down, Gavin Floyd never could make the jump from AAA and now that he is out of the organization has a 3.10 ERA... the list goes on and on.  To be fair, Dubee has never had anything like the staff of the 1970's Orioles or 1990's Braves to work with and Kyle Kendrick's starts this season have been a pleasant surprise, but at the same time, its interesting to look across the field to Rick Peterson and marvel at the work he's done with the Mets starting staff, which wasn't exactly expected to be as solid as they are this year.

...We've given a lot of attention to what the loss of Freddy Garcia means to the Phillies chances in 2007, but we tend to forget the cost his injury could have on the future of the Phillies.  David Cameron at USS Mariner examined the effect of letting free-agents walk at the end of a season, and there's a good chance that the Phillies will miss out on some prospects they may have had if Garcia had been able to pitch a full schedule.

...Finally, it was great to see Chris Coste return to the big league roster [where he should be all along... I can understand the Phillies keeping a twelfth pitcher on the roster if they were 12 good ones, but there is always at least one that Charlie Manuel pitches barely once a week... wouldn't it be more valuable to have Coste around instead?] and hit a home run in his first at-bat.  By the way, faithful BS&S.com reader Tony unearthed a video of Coste talking about the first time he got the call to come to the major leagues last season:

Way Overexposed

BS&S.com and yours truly has been getting some pub as of late.  First, a blurb of mine appeared in the current issue of Philadelphia Weekly about the Phillies and their rapid approach to 10,000 losses, then, I was chosen as Golfer of the Week at Oobgolf.com.

But here's how I know I've hit it big time: the makers of a performance enhancing drug have elected to take out an ad on BS&S.com.  When the Big V chooses you in their marketing campaign, you know you have a ton of pull in the sports world.

Rest assured, it won't all go to my head... A certain someone is still quite unimpressed:

Forty Good Single-Path Swings a Year

If the current trend of playing time holds, then by August, any Pat Burrell sighting will indicate two additional weeks of winter.  Burrell, who had one of the best college hitting careers of all-time, which garnered him the moniker "Pat the Bat" and enticed the Phillies to choose him as the very first pick in the 1998 amateur draft, has become a $13 million bench player.

Burrell's lack of playing time isn't due to injury like many other Phillies, no, it's due to good ole fashioned poor performance.  He's hitting just .204, his .745 OPS (97 OPS+) at a tolerable level only because he can draw a walk, certainly not because of his anemic .374 slugging percentage.

Burrell's troubles this season are well-documented here and in other places.  What is more interesting to analyze is, what went wrong?  Given such a glowing resume coming out of college, and given such a promising start to his career (149 OPS+ in 2002), where did the Phillies lose him?

Baseball is a game of adjustments, and the likely answer to these questions is that Pat has failed to adjust to the adjustments pitchers have made towards him.  Consider the following two quotes, which speak volumes about how opposing teams and pitchers think about Barrel:

"He takes 40 good swings a year." ~ Anonymous major league scout

"He's got a one-path swing..." ~ Billy Wagner, Mets closer/Barrel's nemesis

In other words, pitchers, catchers, pitching coaches and managers have decided that Burrell shouldn't be given anything good to hit (nothing in said path) and let him either take a walk if he avoids the slop coming his way, or, get himself out if he is too tempted.

Scouting data supports this theory as Burrell's batting average on balls right down the heart of the plate, belt-high is .481, just above the knees in the middle of the plate is .349, and on the outside half, belt high is .344.  All other portions of the strike zone range from .162 to .269.

Further evidence is Burrell's walk rate, a measure typically indicative of hitting prowess.  From the time Burrell first saw major league action in 2000 to the present, his walk rate has steadily increased, particularly in the last year or two, to the point that he ranks as one of the best in baseball.  As a matter of fact, his 20.8 % walk rate in 2007 is better than that of David Ortiz, Kevin Youkilis ("The Greek God of Walks"), Manny Ramirez, Gary Sheffield and Justin Morneau.  Only Barry Bonds' 29.4% ranks higher.  However, even though Pat has such a high tendency to take a walk, his .745 OPS is easily the lowest among the top 15 walkers in baseball, so it's not as if he is using this batting eye to his advantage.

Burrell's walk rate might not be so much a function of his exceptional batting eye, but more a function of the location of the pitches he sees.  Despite a high walk rate, Burrell will also swing at 45% of the pitches he sees high above the strike zone and over 27% below the strike zone.

The Phillies score runs in bunches without contributions from Burrell, and to make any significant headway in the National League, they are going to have to improve their pitching.  What's at stake for Burrell is actually his career because if he wants to become more than a part-time player, then he is going to have to alter his approach at the plate.

Believe it or not, Burrelll has to become more patient.  He has to swing at even fewer pitches outside the strike zone and if that means an absurd OBP of .500, fine.  Once that happens, teams will decide that they have to pitch to him, and that is when Burrell will start regularly seeing pitches that he can drive for power.

Until he makes that adjustment, the Phillies are probably better off batting him at the top of the order and immediately pinch-running with Michael Bourn, even if it is the first inning.  His current approach isn't doing anyone any good, especially himself.

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References and resources: Fangraphs.com, ESPN.com, Yahoo News (image)

Stitch & Bitch (and Moan)

The Phillies are running a promotion for tonight's game against the Reds, "Stitch and Pitch":

Whether its finishing an old project or starting a new one, fans are invited to knit, crochet, embroider, cross-stitch and needlepoint while the Phillies take on the Reds at 7:05 p.m.

Yours truly will be accompanying The Missus and a few friends to the game, and it got me to thinking about some knitting projects to suggest to those knitters in attendance...

...A sling for Brett Myers.

...A sling for Tom Gordon.

...Several extra arm slings for players to be named later.

...Any number of things for Pat Burrell, maybe a contact lens case cozy, maybe a bench cushion, maybe a bat warmer -- because his sure has gone cold.

...A very thick garment, several inches with plenty of padding for protection, to be worn by a frame, oh say, 6'3'' and 175 lbs, on off days.

...While we are on the subject of protective garments, something for Aaron Rowand's nose might be nice.

...Something for Charlie Manuel to carry around his copy of "Baseball for Brain Surgeons" by Tim McCarver in.

...Something for Pat Gillick to carry around his copy of "Moneyball" in.

...Finally, and this might be more of a group project, knit something that can stand on the pitcher's mound for 6 to seven innings and throw strikes.  Is that too much to ask?

Lieber Phinished?

It's not looking good for Jon Lieber.  As it turns out, Lieber's ankle injury is probably much more serious than anyone realized -- a ruptured tendon was seen on an MRI -- and he may not have enough time to heal and rehabilitate before the end of the season.

I always chuckle when I think of the discussion my brother and I had when it was announced that Lieber had signed with the Phillies prior to the 2005 season.  My brother argued that it was a bad signing as it would block Gavin Floyd from the rotation, while I argued it was a good signing since Lieber had looked so good with the Yankees at the end of 2004.  In hindsight, we were both quite wrong.  Floyd couldn't get any sort of confidence to pitch in the bigs and Lieber has given the Phils just 464 innings of below average pitching over three seasons.

In the end, if you had to pick a winner between us, my brother comes out on top because at least Floyd wouldn't have cost the Phillies $21 million.

For all of you preferring that Charlie Manuel be replaced as manager, and I was one, you have to ask, could any manager win consistently with extended trips to the disabled list for Lieber, Brett Myers, Freddy Garcia and Tom Gordon?

It may be time for us to resume use of the bubble for Cole Hamels. 

Links:

• Lieber Could Be Out for Season (The Zo Zone)

• Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Tendons of the Ankle and Foot.(UPenn Dept. of Radiology)

Pancho's Ponch

This seems to me to be the type of story that gets embellished just a little bit more every year, but at the same time, Bill Conlin's anecdote of the worst Phillies' second baseman ever certainly seems plausible, after all, it is the Phillies we are talking about...

Pancho Herrera (1958, '60-'61): OK, Mauch's mad experiment to make the very large first baseman a middle infielder lasted just 17 games. Pancho made only one error and helped turn 11 doubleplays, but he had the range of the Great Pyramid. While planning the move in spring training, Mauch ordered trainer Joe Liscio to put Pancho on a diet. Joe gave him a month's supply of Metrecal, the popular diet drink of the day. Liscio was shocked to discover that Pancho had gained more than 10 pounds. Mauch asked why. "I do what I am told," Pancho shrugged. "I drink the Metrecal before each meal." And? "Then I eat the meal."

Its stories like this that make you realize we have to embrace 10,000 losses.  If not, we run the risk of becoming bitter and jaded.  Oh, wait...

Upping the Ante

9,997
  9,998
   9,999
   10,000

As you may recall, BS&S.com started a pool to guess the correct date that the Phillies would experience -- along with their phans -- their 10,000th loss.

Recently, we've teamed up with Celebrate 10,000 to up the ante so to speak.  Essentially, the rules are the same, but the prizes have increased.

If you've already entered your prediction, not to worry, your entry still counts.  If you haven't entered, what are you waiting for?

Click here for details.

Everybody Into the Pool

9,997
  9,998
   9,999
   10,000

Update:  We've upped the ante by teaming up with the folks from Celebrate 10000 dot com.  Click here for details.

When it comes to celebrating New Year's Eve, the place that comes to mind first is Times Square in New York City.  Similarly, when it comes to properly memorializing the Phillies' 10,000th loss as a franchise, the first place that should come to mind is Celebrate 10,000, because really, no one is doing it bigger or better.

But, just as on New Year's Eve Times Square isn't the only place to ring in the new year, there are other avenues to participate and revel in the accomplishment that is 10,000 losses.

Here at BS&S.com, we are going to run a pool to guess what game on the Phillies schedule this season will be the 10,000th loss.  The details -- rules and prizes -- are as follows:

1. As of now, the Phillies have lost 9,974 games, so the earliest the 10,000th loss can occur is the game scheduled for June 6th in New York against the Mets.

2. The prize for correctly guessing the day of the 10,000th loss will be two tickets to a game of your choice in any stadium on any date [don't get too excited, I'm only going to spring for cheap seats] and a copy of "Pouring Six Beers at a Time" by Bill Giles [because without him, we wouldn't be celebrating this monumental event for another couple of years!].

3. In the event that no one correctly guesses the day of the 10,000th loss, the person with the closest guess will be awarded the prize.

4. In the event that several people choose the correct date, all ties will be broken by whoever correctly guesses the total score of the game (the number of runs the Phillies score plus the number of runs their opponent scores).  In the event that two or more people are still tied, names will be chosen by Tugger out of a faded red Phillies cap that has seen better days.

5. To enter, send an email to L10K@ballssticksstuff.com.  In the body of the email, chose a date, a prediction of the total number of runs in the game, and the email address that you would prefer to correspond with us.