I'm Not An Athlete

leading off and finishing up

OK, I don't want this to turn into the "I Hate Doug Glanville Weblog" -- I mean, he's not a bad person or anything, he's just not a very good ballplayer anymore. Despite his anemic stats this year (.214/.250/.286), Larry Bowa batted him leadoff last night and the Phils paid the consequences. Take a look at Glanville's stats this season as a leadoff hitter, along with the two possible alternatives:

           AB  AVG  OBP  SLG
Glanville  27 .185 .241 .185
Rollins    19 .105 .227 .211
Byrd      155 .226 .306 .323

OK, Marlon Byrd isn't exactly the next Rickey Henderson, but he is head and shoulders above Jimmy Rollins and our man Glanville. So, yeah, with a big hole in the leadoff spot and not much better luck in the #2 slot (which has been occupied by Rollins for the most part), the Phils have been having trouble scoring runs lately -- 14 in their last 5 games (half of which came in Wednesday's 7-4 defeat of the Mets). Kinda negates the fact that the next 3 batters in their order (Abreu, Thome, Burrell) are #12, #9 and #8 in the league in OBP, respectively.

Of course, the fact that Roberto Hernandez is channeling the spirits of Phillies bullpens past doesn't help. According to Baseball Prospectus' Relevier Evaluation Tools, Hernandez is the 6th worst pitcher in the majors at preventing inherited runners from scoring (and Rheal Cormier is right behind him at #9). Amaury Telemaco, on the other hand, is 3rd best in that stat. The Phils' bullpen is, according to BP, the 3rd best in the league, so maybe I shouldn't complain too much. Someone just needs to teach Larry Bowa how to use his relievers properly. And how to fill out a line-up card.

(insert twilight zone theme music)

While watching the Phils' loss to Atlanta last night, one of the commentators mentioned how much (eventual) losing pitcher Kevin Millwood had struggled against the Braves since he came to Philadelphia last year. Millwood's not the only one -- Tom Glavine has been similarly ineffective for the Mets against his former team. Almost too similar:

           IP  H HR BB  K  ERA
Glavine  26.0 37  9 13  5 8.65
Millwood 26.0 41  5 14 14 8.65

Wow. Millwood's walked more batters while Glavine's had more trouble with the long ball, but other than that, their lines are just about as close as you can get. So why have they both struggled? My guess is that it's because both of these pitchers spent their formidable years (and, in the case of Glavine, nearly his entire career) under the tutelage of Braves pitching coach Leo Mazzone, who's got quite a reputation for developing pitchers. If anyone knows these guys' strengths and weaknesses, it's Mazzone, right?

excuses, excuses...

Apologies for the lack of updates the past couple days, but it's been a busy week. I totally missed Tuesday night's shutout, which is probably a good thing, but I did manage to listen to the win last night. I wish I had more time to write, but I'm late for work as is and I've still got a bunch of stuff to get done this morning. Updates should return to normal this weekend.

Oh, wait, Doug Glanville started in center and led off last night -- I can't let that go by without bitching about it. So, yeah, what's up with that? Argh.

saving chase

Yesterday, I mentioned a dilemma currently facing the Phils concerning that pesky Chase Utley and what to do with him when Placido Polanco comes off the DL. Last night, Utley didn't make things any easier, hitting a homer (his 3rd in the last 3 games) and a double to bump up his numbers to .310/.326/.714 in 42 at-bats. Yes, I know we're still talking about small sample sizes here, but with can you really send this kid back to the minors when you've got dead weight like Doug Glanville (.219/.265/.313 in 32 AB) on the roster? Luckily, it looks like Polanco will be spending more time on the DL, at least according to an article in today's Inquirer:

"Polanco, who strained his left quadriceps May 7, felt his injury running the bases... If Polanco had run without any problems yesterday, manager Larry Bowa said, he would have been in the lineup today. Polanco, who missed time last season with a left quadriceps bruise, said he expected to test it again Tuesday."

So it looks like we might get a couple more days out of Utley before some tough decisions have to be made. As Bill over at Phillies Fan points out, a possible solution would be to let Utley sub for Thome at 1B when his hand is bothering him (and, I assume, fill in at 2B occasionally as well). Then again, this is a young player we're talking about here so would a PT job with the big-league team really be better for him, long-term, than playing full-time down at AAA? We shall see...

dilemmas

Dilemma #1: What to do with Chase Utley? Regular second baseman Placido Polanco returns from the DL this weekend, but Utley's been hot. Especially last night, going 3-4 with a homer, double and single. Heck, Larry Bowa even batted him in the 5-slot. Polanco, on the other hand, has been less-than-spectacular (and not fantastically well either, for you Outkast fans out there). Their stats:

         AB  AVG  OBP  SLG
Polanco 112 .238 .273 .349
Utley    37 .297 .316 .649

Sure, they're small sample sizes, but you have to think that Utley at least deserves a shot at the starting job.

Dilemma #2: What do you watch tonight if you're a Philadelphia sports fan? You've got the Phils/Padres matchup and game 7 of the Flyers/Lightning series, both starting around 7. The Phillies game features the newly called-up Josh Hancock, who's gone 4-3 with an 3.60 ERA, 22 K's and 10 walks in 40 innings pitched for the Scranton Wilkes-Barre Red Barons (dear god, their website is annoying). The Flyers, on the other hand, are fighting for a berth in the Stanley Cup finals after a thrilling 5-4 overtime win on Thursday. I'll probably end up putting the Flyers game on TV and leaving an MLB.com Gameday window open on my computer so I can check up on the Phils (and maybe tune into the RealAudio feed during intermissions). Or I guess I could get a life and do something productive with my Saturday night. Yeah right.

just what the doctor ordered

Wow, I'm not sure anyone was expecting a five-hit shutout by Brett Myers tonight. It was exactly what the team needed, though, especially considering the state of the bullpen as of late. Anyway, the end result is a three-game sweep of the team that, at the beginning of the series, had the best record in the league. Not bad.

Of course, not everything is looking rosy at The Cit right now, what with Thome and Wolf recently added to the list of injured Phils. Will Carroll discusses the injuries in today's Under The Knife over at Baseball Prospectus. Here's an excerpt for you cheapskates out there:

"Wolf had a "tingle" in his elbow after an outing in Colorado. While there's no pain the day-after, the team is concerned enough to give him some extra rest... Thome is dealing with more hand problems; two swollen fingers on his right hand now join his left thumb that has been bothering him since Spring Training. Highlights from Sunday clearly showed Thome wincing as he swung the bat, even when he hit a home run."

OK, so neither injury is the end of the world or anything, but any time you've got both your staff ace and your top slugger down, you have to worry a little bit. As for the rest of the team's injuries (Wagner, Powell, Hernandez, etc), ESPN.com has the word:

"Wagner won't be activated when he's eligible to come off the disabled list Sunday. Wagner, out with a groin injury, probably will have to make at least one rehab appearance. Powell pitched one scoreless inning in his only appearance since coming up. Reliever Roberto Hernandez, who was sidelined with a calf injury, will be activated on Thursday. Left-hander Jim Crowell was sent down to Scranton after Wednesday night's 9-4 victory."

So there ya go. San Diego comes to town tomorrow -- the Phils are 12-4 so far the season against the NL West, so hopefully they can continue with that success this weekend.

praying for rain

The Phils managed to pull out a win tonight, but I'm guessing I'm not the only one that was hoping the rain wouldn't let up and we'd be spared the inevitable 9th inning relief drama. Man, do we need Billy Wagner back or what?

John over at yuda.org wonders why Padilla was left in to pitch the 7th tonight and I see his point, but after Bowa pulled Wolf too early last night (at least according to Tom at Shallow Center), I can see why he was left in, especially considering the state of the bullpen lately. Padilla only ended up throwing 108 pitches, which isn't exactly Dusty Baker territory, so I'm not going to complain.

P.S. I told you so. ;)

chart number three

OK, so we dropped one tonight to the Rockies, but considering the previous day's performance and a 7-2 record on this road trip thus far, I'll take a 6-7 loss. It doesn't take an idiot to realize that this is a different team than we saw at the beginning of the year. It does, however, take an idiot like me to throw it all in an Excel spreadsheet and make a pretty little graph out of it...

Team Batting Averages Through 5/15

There's a definite positive trend here and just about every average is up in the past week or two (save for Placido Polanco, who's currently on the DL). We've still got a couple players hovering around .250, but everyone is finally well over the Mendoza Line.

(i don't) dig doug

Doug Freaking Glanville led off last night. Despite this (and his going 0-for-5), the Phils beat the Rockies, 6-4. So they're now 14-3 when they score at least 5 runs (and 4-12 when they don't, ouch). If anyone looked like a leadoff hitter last night, it was (glup) Jimmy Rollins, who went 3-5 with two stolen bases and three runs scored. You know, if Bowa is going to not play Byrd and the choice for the leadoff slot is between Rollins and Glanville, I'll take Rollins any day. The last time Glanville had an on-base percentage above .300 was in 2000 and the last time he was even a useful player offensively was 1999 (.325/.376/.457).

One more thing -- Thome, you gotta use two hands, man. Seriously.

hate to say i told you so

The Phils won yesterday, but the big story was Billy Wagner, who was unable to pitch because of what appears to be a strained groin. There's even talk of sending him to the DL. Ugh. I'm not a doctor or anything, so I really don't know if this is related to the back problems or not. Regardless, i's not good. Hopefully we'll get a more definite word today as to his status.

By the way, how how clutch was Ryan Madson yesterday, going in and saving that game? I remember thinking to myself when they brought Telemaco in, "oh shit, here we go again", but when they replaced him with Madson, I had complete confidince that he'd get the job done. I'm not saying he should be the closer or anything -- in fact, even if Wagner does go on the DL, I wouldn't want Madson to take his job, he's got too much promise as a starter -- but he definitely played the role pretty well when he had to.

Update: The Phils have placed Wagner on the 15-day DL, retroactive to May 7th.

among the rain and lights, i saw the figure 5

After a 10-4 win last night, it seems like the Phils' offense is finally clicking. They've scored at least 5 runs in 6 of their last 8 games after doing so only 10 of their first 22. They're 13-3 when they score at least 5, which isn't surprising since they've got the best team ERA in the league. When people made their predictions at the beginning of the year, this was the Phillies offense that they expected to see. I hope I'm not jinxing them here, but hopefully this is the offense we'll continue to see this season.

Apologies for the lack of updates recently, but I've been busy the past couple days (and will continue to be for the rest of the week most likely). Don't give up on me, though! I'll be back to posting reglularly faster than... um... how about faster than a Billy Wagner fastball? Faster than a Jim Thome home run leaves the park? How about faster than Roberto Hernandez can blow a 2-run lead? Or faster than Doug Glanville can strike out when the bases are loaded with one out and all he needs to do is hit a sac fly to score a run?

wither wagner?

So, what's up with Billy Wagner? Luckily, the Phils didn't need him last night in their win over the D'Backs, but the fact that he's been out of commission the past couple days is makes me worry. Back spasms are the culprit, although Wagner isn't worried, "Wagner has had the spasms before and said they usually last a day, although he said this was the worst they had ever felt" (philly.com). I don't know, if I were having the worst back spasms I've ever felt, I might be a little worried. According to Baseball Prospectus' Will Carroll, "Billy Wagner thinks the problem has to do with travel. Evidently, Billy's not a fan of the friendly skies, and tenses up. The team is working with him to come up with a way to make him more comfortable, but he'll be back throwing really, really hard no later than Wednesday." I don't know, all of this sounds a little fishy. You do kind of have to wonder how much strain throwing 95-100 mph every couple days puts on someone who's only 5'11" and 195...

The Phils start a 3 game set with the Giants in San Francisco tomorrow, which means more late games (2 out of 3 in the series). Very annoying. Luckily, only one of the four games in Colorado following that are at night.

Anyway, I'm going to go listen to the rest of the Flyers game. They're up 6-0 with 10 minutes to go. Nice.

pictures, 5/2/04

As promised, here are the pictures from my visit to Citizens Bank Park this past Sunday.

First off, the ruins of Veteran's stadium. Good riddance. This was actually the first thing that I was looking for as we approached the stadium since I'd already seen pictures of the new park on TV and online. I was not disappointed

Nor was I disappointed when we arrived at the park -- how's this entrance compare to the faceless maze of concrete ramps and escalators that encircled the Vet?

One thing that becomes obvious when looking at this image is how overcast it was that day. Not exactly a picture-perfect day for baseball, but it didn't rain and the temperature was nice, so I can't complain too much. A bright sun and blue sky would have been nice, though.

One of the new statues surrounding the park. Nice, but you think they'd capture Schmidt in his early years instead of having him look like an old man, as he does here. Ah well, at least it looks like Schmidt, as opposed to the Lefty statue.

Another site before entering the park -- Lincoln Financial Field, right across the street. What a luxury -- separate stadiums for baseball and football! Finally.

Here is the view from our seats in the 200-level "Arcade" section, about halfway between 3rd base and the left field foul pole. I wasn't really feeling up to doing much walking that day, so all of the rest of the pictures featured here were taken from my seat.

The bullpens and the much-hyped Ashburn Alley, which was packed throughout the game.

The light-up Liberty Bell, yet another of Citizen's Bank Park's obligatory pieces of flair. We got to see it go off a couple times, but in the daylight it was kind of hard to see the lights. The ring, however, was very cool.

The Phillies' luxurious dugout, another big upgrade from the Vet. This picture and the forthcoming action shots were taken with my 70-300mm zoom lens, which came in quite handy.

Bobby Abreu fouling off a pitch. Yeah, so the zoom lens is really nice.

(I don't remember what order I took these action pictures in, so I'm just going to go alphabetically through the lineup...)

Marlon Byrd

Doug Glanville swings and misses, something he's good at.

Eric Milton

Thomas Perez

Jimmy Rollins. Not my favorite player in the world, but definitely photogenic, as I've got 4 shots of him here...

Jimmy Rollins tagging out Luis Gonzalez.

Jimmy Rollins taking off against Brandon Webb.

Jimmy Rollins talking with first baseman Shea Hillenbrand.

Jim Thome

Jim Thome swinging and, unfortunately, missing.

Billy Wagner

Billy Wagner

and, of course, no Phillies game would be complete without the Phanatic...

Unfortunately, I ran out of space on my memory card before the end of the game, so I didn't get quite as many shots as I wanted. I've got a bigger card on order, though, and I'm sure this won't be my last visit to the park this year, so hopefully next time I'll be able to take more (and explore more of the park as well).

he's got radioactive blood

Blah blah blah, the Phillies lost yesterday and won the day before that. Recaps are here and here, although chances are if you're reading this site, you already know.

I don't know, I'm really not feeling too enthusiastic about Major League Baseball these past couple days. You can probably guess why. There have been some pretty good editorials written on the subject in the past couple days so I'll let them do the talking:

- MLB's Message Sickening by Rob Neyer at ESPN.com

- Quick Reversal Reveals Game's Self-Hatred by George Vescey at the New York Times

- Prospectus Today: Webgate by Joe Sheehan at Baseball Prospectus

The Prospectus article is probably my favorite, although it's only available to BP Premium subscribers, so I'm guessing most of you won't be able to read it. Basically, it uses the whole controversy to frame the incompetence of Spider-Bud -- or is it Selig-Man? Anyway, he talks about how this is really just the latest in the comedy of errors that has been his reign as commissioner. "Putting Spider-Man 2 logos on the bases and calling it an attempt to reach younger fans is an act of idiocy, but moreso, it's an act that shows how much Selig and [MLB Chief Operating Officer Bob] DuPuy don't understand what their mandate is. MLB will sell the on-deck circles, the bases and its soul, but it will not sell its players." It's true. I mean, we've got the baseball equivalent of Michael Jordan (Barry Bonds, in case you haven't been paying attention) breaking records almost every night and the owners are trying to promote Spider-Man? Hello?

Blah. I'm sure I'll listen to the Phils tonight and everything will be all right again, but of course the game isn't on yet because it's a night game out west. Don't you hate that?

home sweet home

So, another one-run loss for the Phils. It's good that we're finally scoring runs, but it's not so good that most of them have only been coming on home runs, including all of tonight's. I'd be willing to bet that The Cit has something to do with this, as it seems to be a hitter's park -- according to this post over at The Hardball Times, teams (both home and away) are scoring 24% more runs in Philly than they are in other parks (the usual small sample size caveats apply, of course). The post doesn't say anything about home run rates, but I'd imagine that they're higher as well. If it wasn't 11 o'clock at night, i'd fire up Excel and look into it myself, but i've got to get some sleep.

One more thing, though -- how cool was it when Abreu, Thome and Burrell went back-to-back-to-back in the 5th? I'm guessing that's not the last time we'll see that happen...

better come back down to mars

Apologies for the lack of posts lately, but I was up in Pennsylvania visiting my family this weekend. The highlight of the visit, of course, was going to Citizen's Bank Park to catch the Sunday afternoon game against the Diamondbacks. We won of course, but man, was it ugly (check out the full write-up over at Phillies Fan).

I took a bunch of pictures, but I'm not finished cropping and editing them (I'm somewhat of a perfectionist when it comes to stuff like this), so they aren't all ready to post yet. I do have a teaser for you, though. I think it does a pretty good job of summing up how I feel about the recent speculation that Marlon Byrd may be demoted and replaced in center with Doug Glanville...

OK, I know i could never hit a major league pitch, but come on, he's not even close. This is our future leadoff hitter? Or Jimmy Rollins? Larry Bowa is on crack...