2010 Phillies Near the Break

Man, it’s been a tough sea­son. When I first thought about writ­ing this post I thought it would be about just how idi­ot­ic it was to trade Cliff Lee. He’s been trad­ed again, now to the Texas Rangers, and I think I’m just about ready to make peace with his depar­ture. Do I think it’s a move that will plague the Phillies front office for gen­er­a­tions to come? Absolute­ly, but what more can real­ly be said?

No, I want to talk about the team the Phils have field­ed since Helen, Char­lie, Flo­rence, Eileen and I attend­ed Open­ing Day. It’s been a snakebit­ten sea­son, to say the very least, with play­ers reg­u­lar­ly shuf­fling off the ros­ter and onto the DL for stints of var­i­ous lengths. It’s been things like Polan­co get­ting plunked on the elbow, or Mad­son kick­ing a chair in dis­gust. It’s been nag­ging injuries like Jim­my’s calf and big blows like Utley’s thumb. To make mat­ters worse, the NL East has improved dra­mat­i­cal­ly, with the Braves and Mets play­ing much bet­ter than they have the last sev­er­al sea­sons. Yet some­how, the Phils are still in the thick of it.

If I’d start­ed this post like I’d planned, a few days ago, it would’ve been about who was chas­ing after Lee and how the Phils should maybe just shut it down for 2010, see where they could improve, and retool for the 2011 sea­son. Find a pitch­er, pro­mote Dom Brown, bol­ster the bullpen and get ready to come out swing­ing next year. Fun­ny how things can change so quick­ly in baseball.

I know, it’s a long sea­son, but fans have been mak­ing excus­es for the Phillies lack of urgency since Daisuke near­ly no hit them back in May. I was at that game and have been to sev­er­al since. It’s been a bru­tal stretch of near­ly bril­liant pitch­ing with prac­ti­cal­ly no run sup­port. Last night’s game was no excep­tion as the Phillies near­ly fell vic­tim to a nobody toss­ing a per­fec­to, com­ing close to squan­der­ing anoth­er of Roy Hal­la­day’s pedes­tri­an com­plete game shutout performances.

(Can I just add how amaz­ing it was to watch some­one take a per­fect game that far? My heart was in my throat for the Phillies to get a walk off hit in the 9th, but man, it was hard not to want to see some­thing so rare in base­ball. I has­ten to add that Helen and Char­lie were still at the game. We have a fam­i­ly rule that we don’t leave no hit­ters or per­fect games. They were real troop­ers stick­ing it out until the bot­tom of the 11th.)

Note I said almost. If you’ve seen the news, the Phillies won their third game against the Reds on a walkoff hit in extra innings. There’s no telling what will hap­pen. Maybe they’re final­ly turn­ing the cor­ner! It’s hard to say. Every time it seems they’ve fig­ured out hit­ting, they come back the next night and strug­gling to get a hit, much less scratch some runs across the plate. It’s been an infu­ri­at­ing sea­son that way. How­ev­er, I would be remiss if I did­n’t admit that I’d giv­en up on the 2010 cam­paign. The Phillies haven’t yet and nei­ther will I.

Worst case sce­nario? It’s a repeat of 2006, which was the agony before the ecsta­sy of our three con­sec­u­tive post­sea­son appear­ances. In case you’ve for­got­ten, we made a valiant run and then got stung by the hap­less Mar­lins, only to see our post­sea­son hopes dashed in Flori­da. It was a bru­tal fin­ish to a reward­ing sea­son, and look­ing back, a sign of things to come.

I will say this: I should prob­a­bly start tak­ing blood pres­sure med­ica­tion if they’re going to play the sec­ond half like this. I look for­ward to them claw­ing their way back into the divi­sion­al race with the Braves. It’s going to be an excit­ing sea­son. I look for­ward to watch­ing with the likes of The Fight­ins, Beer­lea­guer, and Zoo with Roy.