Hey, look, the offense is back, most notably Pat Burrell and Bobby Abreu, who both seem to be breaking out of their slumps. Burrell was especially awesome last night, going 4-for-4 with two doubles, a walk, 3 RBIs and a pair of rally-killing defensive moves in the bottom of the fifth. Sure, it's still just the first month of the season, but already people are praising his "comeback." As always, i'm a little skeptical, but I do think that all of the signs point to him returning to his 2002 form and proving that 2003 was just a fluke. How's this for comparison?
Mike Schmidt AB HR RBI AVG OBP SLG 1977 544 38 101 .274 .393 .574 1978 513 21 78 .251 .364 .435 1979 541 45 114 .253 .386 .564
Pat Burrell AB HR RBI AVG OBP SLG 2002 586 37 116 .282 .376 .544 2003 522 21 64 .209 .309 .404 2004 ??? ?? ??? ??? ??? ???
OK, so Schmidt's 1978 wasn't quite the dip that Burrell's 2003 was, but the stats back up the opening paragraph of the afforementioned article -- "some of the best players in the game have one bad season somewhere on their baseball card."
The Phils were off yesterday, so I took the day off as well (well, the day off from writing in this thing, not from my real job of course). I never did talk about Sunday's game, although perhaps the less said about it the better.
My Dad scored some tickets to the game at home against the Diamondbacks this Sunday, so I'll be making my pilgrimage to The Cit this weekend. "The Cit" -- can I abbreviate it like that? Maybe if I don't like the park I can change that to "The Shit"? Oh wait, "The Shit" is supposed to be good, isn't it? Crazy kids and their slang these days. Anyway, yeah, I'm definitely excited. Can't wait to try out my new Nikon D70 digital SLR camera (pardon the gloating) as well. Pictures will be posted here, of course.
You know, I've barely even seen the new park on TV -- we don't get Phillies games down here in Baltimore, so the only home games I've seen were the two I watched when I was visiting my family in Pennsylvania a couple weekends ago. There was a good entry in A Citizen's Blog a few days back about rooting for an out-of-town team. It's definitely not easy -- I mean, the only access I have to the games is through my MLB Gameday Audio subscription. So I'm basically tethered to my computer if I want to listen to any of the games, which kinda sucks, but I guess it's better than nothing.
Yesterday's win was pretty much what everyone's been looking for from this club (if not more). Randy Wolf was awesome and the offense was firing on all pistons. Yeah, OK, it is the Expos, but still, a win is a win and momentum is momentum.
The only Phillies starters who didn't get hits in yesterdays game were Jim Thome and Placido Polanco. No big deal, right? Well, maybe. It seems Thome's thumb is bothering him again (scroll down to the "Extra Bases" section and read the first item). Apparently, he's "banged up," but not bad enough that he can't play (Bowa's words). So guess who isn't in today's starting lineup?
Two more games dropped to the Fish, 7-8 on Wednesday and 7-9 yesterday. I can't say I'm not surprised (look, they've even got me using double negatives!). Anyway, I'm going to link to another BP article today, this one about the Phillies' inability to beat Florida. What it comes down to, Joe Sheehan says in the article, is that the teams really aren't that unmatched, it's just that Philadelphia has been unlucky. The Phils have only been outscored by the Marlins 111-137 since the start of the 2003 season, which (according to my math), projects to a 11-14 record, much better than their actual record of 6-19. The difference?
"They're just killing the Phillies in close games the past two years. They're 7-2 in one-run games, 5-0 in two-run games. All six of the games this year fall into those two categories, and in the current nine-game winning streak over the Phils, the Marlins have outscored them by just 16 runs. They've won four one-run games, four two-run games and one four-run game."
Sheehan chalks this up to mere luck, but I disagree. I think it comes down to bad managing, and I think that just about anyone who's followed the Phillies closely during the past couple years will agree. How many times has Bowa made a mistake that's cost the Phillies a run or two? Too many to count (although Phillies Fan is doing a pretty good job of keeping tabs this season). It's frustrating, because it feels like the offense is starting to get back into the swing of things (14 runs scored in the past two games, for example), but Bowa keeps fucking things up.
Anyway, I guess we'll beat up on the Expos some more this weekend and everything will be all right again until we get our butts kicked when we face a real team again (St. Louis) next week.
And you may ask yourself,
What happened to the offense?
And you may ask yourself,
Why can't they beat the Marlins?
And you may ask yourself,
Why is Jimmy Rollins still batting leadoff?
Am I right? Am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself,
When will Larry Bowa be gone??
Same as it ever was, the Fightin' Phils looked more like the Flailing Phils against Florida tonight, losing 3-1. I only caught the end of the game on RealAudio, but from listening to the recap, things sounded pretty bad. Oh well, I'm going to bed. It's really not much fun writing about your favorite team when they're playing like this...
There's an interesting article over at Baseball Prospectus on Citizen's Bank Park and its place in the whole convince-your-city-to-build-you-a-new-retro-ballpark trend that's all the rage these days. Let's just say it's not exactly a positive piece:
" This is cookie-cutter retro, and in a way, the non-descriptness is nice: Unlike, say, Safeco Field, CB Park doesn't call attention to itself, so you can sit back and watch the game, not the spectacle... Still, it's not a place you'd associate with "charm" or "character" or "grandeur" or any of the things that launch pilgrimages to Fenway or Wrigley or Yankee Stadium--or even Camden Yards, for those who dig the warehouse and the view of the Bromo-Seltzer tower and don't mind a bit of vertigo in the bargain."
Yeah, and that's the good part.
"On a gorgeous spring day, only the second daylight game in the park's young history, the near-sellout crowd included a large smattering of fans disguised as empty seats... This can't be heartening to the city of Philadelphia and state of Pennsylvania, which spent $231 million in the hopes that the new stadium would spur tourism; while economic impact projections are always horribly inflated (hint: Philadelphia's was done by Arthur Andersen), the results are only going to be worse if the expected flood of new fans turns into a trickle after a year or two."
Ouch. Anyway, the article is only available to BP Premium subscribers, so hopefully they won't hunt me down and kill me for posting excerpts. They do run a great website and the Premium content is worth the $40/year, imo.
Anyway, the Fish come to town this week for a 3 game series. Something tells me they may be a little harder to beat than Les Expos. Still, I think that the pounding they gave Montreal this weekend was probably good for everyone's egos and maybe that's all they needed to get out of their slump. I guess we'll see against Dontrelle tonight.
"Swing and a LONG DRIVE"... You know how that call ends. Wow. Doug Glanville, I'm sorry. For today, you're forgiven.
3 in a row? Damn, looks like we've got ourselves a little winning streak going here. The offense is showing signs of life, finally, too. It was definitely nice to hear that bell start ringing at the new park.
I was up at my parents' house in Pennsylvania this weekend, so I finally got to watch a couple of home games on TV and get my first looks at Citizens Bank park in action. Very nice. I had a hard time convincing myself that I was watching a Phillies home game, though. I'm so used to seeing those hideous dark green walls and faded astroturf, I guess. Anyway, I'm hoping to make it up for a home game or two this season so I can see how it stacks up against Camden Yards, which is my favorite of the new retro-style stadiums. If you've stumbled upon the rest of my website, you probably noticed that i'm somewhat of a photography buff, so rest assured that plenty of pictures will be taken when I do get a chance to visit the new park.
The good news: the Phillies finally won again today, rallying in the bottom of the 8th. And tomorrow the Expos come to town. They're probably the only team with a more hapless offense than the Phils this season -- .190/.249/.261 for the team vs. .220/.300/.306 for the Phils (stats are through Wednesday, so our numbers are probably a smidgen better after today).
The bad news: Jimmy Rollins, he of the .316 career on-base percentage, is back in the leadoff spot, replacing Marlon Byrd, who'd been batting there since last July. Bowa says he's "Just trying to get something started." OK, the Phillies did win today, but Rollins sure didn't have anything to do with it, going 0-for-4. And Byrd? 2-3. Hmm.
AB AVG OBP SLG Byrd 350 .311 .370 .437 Rollins 986 .265 .321 .410
Those are the two players' career stats as a leadoff hitter. Sure, it's a small sample size for Byrd, but if you look at his translated stats from Reading and Scranton, you'll see more of the same. He's not exactly the prototypical leadoff hitter, but he's the best option the team has (except for possibly Bobby Abreu, but he's never really taken to the role).
Anyway, if Rollins doesn't work out as a leadoff hitter, there's always Doug Glanville, right? Heh.
Hey, another day without a Phillies loss. Not bad.
Anyway, with the game called today, I'm taking tonight off. Good night.
Thanks to a plug from The Philling Station, I should see a nice little spike in my website traffic today. I agree that it's hard to keep writing about the Phils while they're doing so horribly. At least I can swear about it, though. Profanity always helps -- even Larry Bowa knows that.
Pardon my French, but what a fucking mess. 1-6 with only 16 runs scored total. Apparently, the boo-birds were out in full force during today's loss to the Reds, as they should have been. An appropriate opening for the new ballpark, eh?
The only positive thing that I can possibly see coming out of this dreadful start is Larry Bowa getting fired, although I'm not sure that's going to happen anytime soon. Under normal circumstances, I don't think a 1-6 start justifies firing a manager -- in fact, I usually think it's stupid when the first scapegoat for a team's bad start becomes the manager. Of course, when the guy should have been canned months ago and he happens to be the manager of your favorite team, it's different.
Oh well, at lest the Phils won't lose again tomorrow -- they have off.
Well, it looks like we're back where we started. I only caught the last couple innings of the game, but judging from the box score, it doesn't look like I missed much. I did get to hear Mesa get his second save, though. Ugh. I'm going to bed.
Now that's more like it (and it looks like Shallow Center feels the same way). It wasn't pretty, but the offense came through when it needed to. That said, they did leave 10 runners on base (including 4 in scoring position) and the team is still homer-less, so we're not quite there yet. Anyway, chances are if you wanted to read a game recap, you already have, so I'm not going to go over everything again here.
This site was recently added to baseballblogs.org, so I guess I should give them a plug. I also updated my syndication feeds to include both flavors of RSS and also Atom, so if you read your weblogs that way, enjoy (although you should be aware that you're missing out on all the style).
Speaking of style, should I stick with the maroon-and-pale blue retro look? I originally just had the redesign up to commemorate the Vet implosion, but it's starting to grow on me. I dunno. Opinions welcome.
No post yesterday, but there wasn't a game yesterday, so I'm excused, right? And I wasn't feeling well. I've got a doctor's note. Really.
Being able to watch Monday's game was somewhat of a luxury for me -- I'm living in Baltimore, so the only games I get down here are the ones that are nationally televised, plus occasional games against the two Superstation teams (the Braves and Cubs on TBS and WGN, respectively). Now that I'm gainfully employed, I was thinking about plunking down the $129 or whatever for the digital cable Extra Innings package, but unfortunately (from what I understand) Comcast Philadelphia doesn't participate in Extra Innings, so I'd only be getting the occasional away game on the opposing team's Fox Sports Net feed. Blah. The kicker in all of this? My cable company down here is Comcast (although it's the Baltimore flavor).
So instead I've purchased MLB Gameday Audio so that I can at least listen to the radio broadcasts via RealAudio. I debated getting the MLB.tv package for about 5 seconds until I thought about how much fun it would be to watch baseball games on a small window on my computer day in and day out.
Kendall scores on a blown rundown play. Ouch. Maybe it's best I'm not watching.
Remember how when you played baseball when you were little, there was always that one kid who would just sort of stand around and look up at the sky, completely unaware of the fact that there was a baseball game unfolding around him? I think Doug Glanville is the Major League-equivalent of that kid. Smart, funny guy but really not much of a ballplayer.
Is it just me, or does the "new" Jimmy Rollins look a lot like the "old" Jimmy Rollins? During the broadcast on ESPN2, Jeff Brantley (who I find quite irritating, by the way) was talking about how Rollins wouldn't be hitting in the 7 slot for long, given that he's a leadoff type and all. Well, if he keeps swinging at bad pitches like he did today, he deserves to stay at the bottom of the order.
Pat Burrell, on the other hand, looked great -- 3 for 4 with a run scored. All 3 hits were singles, which doesn't sound too impressive until you consider he only hit 53 singles all of last year. As long as he can keep getting on base, I think everything else will fall into place for him.
Anyway, sort of an underwhelming game overall, especially on the offensive side (save for Burrell and Placido Polanco, who managed to go 2-4 with a walk). The added sting of Mesa getting the save at the end for the Bucs didn't help either.
Oh man, nothing like coming home from work early and having (real) baseball on TV again. I'd love to write more, but I'm going to go lay down on the couch, put on a game and relax. I've been waiting a long time for this.
Ready or not, Citizen's Bank Park is here. It still sounds like it's a bit unpolished, but they have another week to work on it before the Phils' first home game on the 12th. The other park opening this year, PETCO Park in San Diego, looks pretty nice as well. You know, as horrible as Citizens Bank Park sounds, at least our stadium isn't named after a freaking pet food store.
Anyway, the article linked above is a less-than-glowing review of the new park -- sort of a welcome change from all of the glossy PR and whatnot. I like the quote about the decor looking like something out of a 12 year-old's bedroom. Isn't that true about most of the new parks, though? Anyway, it beats the hell out of the anitseptic look that the Vet had. Think about the target audience, too -- is Average Joe Fan really going to be drawn to something that looks like it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright? Actually, I think I'd like to see that...
Oops. Been awhile, hasn't it? Sorry about that. Of course, I haven't published the URL for this thing yet, so it's not like anyone noticed.
Anyway, the season starts in a matter of days (actually, it already did start if you count those two Yankees/D-Rays games in Japan this week, but the season doesn't really start until that Monday afternoon game in Cincy, right?), so I should probably get back in the habit of updating this thing...
There are a bunch of new Phillies-oriented weblogs out there -- I've added them to the links sidebar thing. We'll see how many of these are still around at the end of the season, mine included. I mean, not to dis any of their respective writers or anything (heck, I hope they're all still around in October), but there is a definite tendency for people to lose interest in the whole weblog writing thing (I am not going to call it "blogging" -- I hate that word), especially when a weblog is created as a spur-of-the-moment thing ("Hey, it's almost Opening Day, why not start a weblog? Yeah, that's the ticket!").
So what makes my weblog different from all the others? Uhh, how about my sparkling personality? Or these cool retro-80s colors? Or how about the fact that I've hardly even mentioned about baseball in this entry?
Damn. OK, so I guess what makes this weblog different is that it's a more personal thing. Opinionated if you will. I mean, you can get a bunch of links and analysis anywhere (not that there won't be links and analysis here, because there will be), right? To paraphrase the John Kruk quote that this weblog gets its title from -- I'm not a journalist, I'm a weblogger.