2012 Philadelphia Phillies - Mid Season Report - It's Ugly

I have to start this blog entry by telling every one that I’m angry.  I won’t say, “I’ve had it with this team this year.” But I’m as close to saying that as you can be, and we are only through 87 games!! The last place Philadelphia Phillies are 37-50 and 14 games back of the Washington Nationals at the All-Star Break. I’m sitting here trying to come up with a sentence to follow that last one, but I can’t, so let’s move on to why I’m so fed up with the team I live for (sports wise anyway).

While I am pretty upset with this team, I’m nowhere near the level of anger of this guy. Most of my posts this year have been somewhat optimistic and hopeful for the upcoming prospects of this collection of stiffs; that's how they're playing at least. In fact, my last post was entitled “Now or Never” and I explained that the Phillies needed to begin to make a run with at worst 7 wins during their 10 game homestand. They began those 10 games with 2 straight wins, but finished losing 5 out of 8 for a pedestrian at best 5-5 finish.

Oh well, I thought. They are just continuing to tread water but with Chase due back soon, and hopefully Ryan Howard following we can get hot. Well, Chase returned 11 games ago and the Phils have managed to win a miniscule/pathetic/ridiculous 1 game since then.

The losing I can take- Let me rephrase that. I can take .500 baseball from this team. The team with the second highest payroll in baseball. But I CANNOT take losing 10 out of 11 with the team the Phillies have. I CANNOT take watching this team go through the motions and act like this trash they are producing on the field is merely okay.  They don’t seem to understand what’s at stake? Maybe they do and they just don’t care. Did everybody see Hunter Pence barrel over 3rd base coach Juan Samuel on his way to scoring a run?  Then did you watch as Pence and every one around him laughed non-stop about this? Yuck it up fellas. Keep laughing, I know you're laughing all the way to the bank, but not all the way to the win column and certainly not to October. Laughing there would be fine and dandy if the team was doing anything right on the field. But even when the score they look like idiots.

I have watched almost every game during this losing streak and let me tell you it's just bad baseball. It seems like every little intangible that good teams do; (and the Phillies used to be the best at it) the Phils are locks to not get them done.

Man on 3^rd less than 2 outs? Forget about it Mayberry (you could insert any name here, but Big John Stud seems to be the best at not getting that run in with less than 2 down) is striking out or popping up.

Men on first and third, our pitcher wants to throw over to first? Just throw it into right field instead of taking the balk because Hector Luna is charging in for a bunt.

Jimmy Rollins has a 3-1 count in a key situati- scratch that he already popped up on the first pitch after the last guy walked on 4 pitches.

In need of a shut down inning after we just took the lead in the 8^th? Are you kidding me Bastardo’s walking the leadoff man on 5 pitches. Oh, and that run will score, book it that run will score. Cliff Lee walked a leadoff man in 3 innings in one game. All 3 scored.

Let me think what else?

Is it me or does Hunter Pence ever look like he knows what he’s doing in the outfield? He’s certainly capable of making some plays, but everything he does looks shaky at best. I’ll talk about his hitting later…

Shane Victorino? What can I say? He has to be pretty pissed he came up with that season he had last year instead of this year because he has probably cost himself at least $20 million with the shlop he’s produced at the plate. I’ve never seen a guy look more clueless up there. It’s not just that he doesn’t come through much, it’s that he clearly lacks a plan, a clue, and discipline at least from the left side. Those three things come in handy in the big leagues, and I don’t know if Shane is losing it completely, but can you remember a clutch hit from him this year? I can’t.

I don’t want to get too in depth on the players yet, but these are just some shallow, fairly obvious observations I’ve made throughout the first 3+ months of the season.

So not only do they get the little things wrong, but there just seems to be a lack of, well, Dr. Evil explains it better than I can right here. Mojo may actually be the perfect word for it. The Phillies are lacking chemistry, heart, energy and just a general will to win ball games. It's like they forgot how to win. It just feels like they are going to lose every game. When they got up 2-0 on Sunday against the Braves, I felt like Randy Quaid in Major League 2. “So what they’ll blow it in the 9^th.” Annnnd, they blew it in the 7^th. If they get down late in a game. Forget it. Every relief pitcher might as well be Mariano Rivera because the Phils don’t mount late game rallies, let alone push a single run across in an extra inning game for once.

High expectations, underachieving, and injuries have certainly played a large role in this first half train wreck. But for the first time since he has been here, I have to place a large amount of blame on our skipper, the formerly infallible, Charlie Manuel.  In the past almost all the decisions Charlie made seemed to turn up golden some how. Continue to bat Pat Burrell 5^th, he’ll come around. He did. Raul is oh for his last 32, plug him in there he’ll get hot. He did. Put Wilson Valdez at whatever position you want (even pitcher) and he should come through. He did. Of course, for the serious majority of those games Charlie could pencil in Number 26 in the 3 hole and Number 6 batting cleanup to bail him out more often than not. Nevertheless, he has to do better. They have to do better.

The luck seems to have ran out for Charlie this year. Not only do almost all bullpen decisions seem to backfire (He kept running Chad Qualls out there in close games in the 8^th inning before they finally had to mercy cut him or somebody may have jumped out on to the field and actually cut him), but he's even screwed up the rotation a few times. He skipped Cliff Lee’s start after a rain delay  which blew up in his face when he had to have reliever Brian Sanches start a game later that week. This was much to my friend Bob's chagrin. I got a phone call and several serious texts about that decision from Bob alone. His gripes about this were right on when the Phils faced a 5-0 deficit in the first inning they could not recover from in the game Sanches started. 

They, and by extension we, kept having to watch other teams celebrate walk-off victory after walk-off victory, which did happen back-to-back days on one wonderful weekend in Baltimore. It used to be the Phils streaming out of the dugout to go mob who ever came up big that night. I need more Shane Victorino shaving cream pies in my life. I need Sarge to stand there in the interview and say his favorite line, "Oh boy," with a gigantic grin on everybody's face. It sure isn't as fun watching the other team do it, makes you wonder how the other half lives. 


I’m not sure what the number was, but If I had to guess it was 30 different starting lineups in the first 40 games employed by Charlie. Believe it or not, the Phils played better during that stretch than they have recently but they never seemed to come together this year as a cohesive unit. I blame Charlie for this.


And a side note that deserves its own paragraph. Can somebody please explain to me why Charlie insists on keeping a dent in the back of his hat every night? He puts it just on the top of his head, so it's not pulled tight near his ears, and then he dents the back of it in. He does this every. single. game. Change it up Chuck, it can't hurt.

After all that strife, the Phils were still hanging on and just below .500 when they finally got back one half of their All-Star duo infielders in Chase Utley. The dude homered in his first at bat back. I was at an outdoor happy hour at the time and started telling everybody within ear shot that Chase had just done this while pressing refresh every 5 seconds on my phone. Talk about a goosebump moment. Oh well. They immediately blew the 2-0 lead Chase and Chooch (they went back-to-back, their first of two times this season) had staked them and lost that game en route to losing the first 5 games with Chase on the roster. There’s no sense of urgency with this team, and when Vegas had you picked as the preseason favorite to win the World Series, and just about every writer in baseball picked you to make the postseason and/or win your division, and you’re staring up a 14 game mountain at the All-Star Break, there needs to be some goddamn urgency!!!

You need to do the little things right to win games. Not just some of them, all of them. You need to go first to third on base hits that allow it, and even some that don’t for that matter. Every bunt needs to get down. Shut down innings need to be the norm not the exception. For Christ's Sake does anybody know how a sacrifice fly works on this team? I'd bring back Bobby Abreu just for that ability at this point. Most of all, this whole team needs to pull their collective head’s out of their asses and play the way they are capable of playing (save Chooch). It starts with Manuel motivating them to do this, he should probably go with something like this..  - of course they need to win 1 for a speech like this to happen.

If that happens, instead of seeing games end like this, we might be able to see games end more along these lines.




Okay, I've vented enough about our manager and the team as a whole. In part 2 I will have more statistical and individual based analysis. Or you've had enough and think I'm nuts for dropping 1500 + words for just part 1 of a midseason report, then you can just click here.


"Okay Let's Get 2" - Click for part 2