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NLCS Game Six: Get him to the dugout, boys
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NLCS Game Six: Get him to the dugout, boys
"Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something.â — Pancho Villa's last words.
As the San Francisco Giants jumped up and down on the same mound that Brad Lidge collapsed onto after recording the final out the 2008 World Series, the Phillies quietly sulked back a clubhouse without champagne, and complained.
âIf you are going to make the call, make the call,â Ryan Howard said bluntly, just moments after he left a bat on his shoulder and let home plate umpire Tom Hallion decide his season. Hallion had made the call, of course, and the call ended the Phils season.
After making his name on proclamations like âjust get me to the plate, boys,â and the pinch-hit walk-off grand slam, the 30-year-old, $125 million first basemen, took a big step towards soiling it when the third strike of his 30th K in his last 56 postseason at bats passed him looking (and according to both FoxTRAX and PitchFX it was a strike), and finished a series where he didn't produce a single run.
It was a fitting end. Now, for the first time since 2007 the Philadelphia Phillies' season is over before the World Series kicked off, and you can't say the Home Team didn't deserve it. They put up just 3 runs a game, and for an entire NLCS were legitimately worse than a West Coast team led by two waiver wire pickups and the two fattest third basemen since Bobby Bonilla. In a series featuring names like Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, and future Red Sock Jayson Werth, it was Juan Uribe who had the biggest hits, Cody Ross who won the MVP, and Matt Cain who had, without hyperbole, infinitely more RBIs than Ryan Howard. The Phillies earned their offseason.
The loss was a team effort, at least from the offense. Chase had as many bad defensive plays as base hits, and Raul Ibanez's .226 postseason average was actually the second best among regulars. Shane Victorino summed up the series best: With the bases loaded in the bottom of the fifth inning, Shane jumped on Madison Bumgarner's second pitch for a weak ground ball out. This was the type of big situation that a poised, experienced team like the Phils is supposed to come through in. Instead they reached at a bad pitch early in the count against a rookie.
As the last few innings wound down the Phils turned to full-fledged âwait for the long ball mode,â and after the game Brad Lidge told reporters that he was âshockedâ at the outcome, and âfelt like we had the best team in baseball this year, and it just didn't work out.â If their play was any indication, Lidge spoke for the team. They didn't execute when they needed to, and looked like they thought that they'd get to the World Series simply for showing up — a birthright, instead of a Red Badge. Problem is, it isn't the team that Brad Lidge believes is the best who gets the Commissioner's Trophy, it's the team who wins the games, and for at least this year, that team wasn't the Phils.
Notes â¦
- Now that he's done with the Phillies, I wonder if Cody Ross is going to realize he's Cody Ross
- Freddy Sanchez will forever be the 2006 batting champion. If that isn't enough to tell you we need some new stats, I don't know what to say.
- Peace, Werth. Enjoy Boston.
- Cliff Lee will start Game 1 of the World Series
- I had plenty of notes to on the âfightâ that was started when Jonathan Sanchez summed up his night in the word he shouted at Utley, but I think I'll scrap them all for now. Not in the mood for jokes, and the fact that the benches cleared over that was certainly a joke. I will say this tough, I'm disappointed HLHIII and Pat Burrell didn't find each other in the midst.
- This one was more about the Phils than it was the Giants, but credit where it is due: the Giants pen pitched a hell of a series, Tim Lincecum showed a lot going to the pen on one-day rest, and Buster Posey isn't even a little bit of a fluke.
- Finally, the upshot: It would be hard to argue that the Giants didn't find some holes while the Phils found gloves. The baseball playoffs can be a crapshoot, and the best team doesn't always win. That can work against your favorite team (2010) or for them (2008). Heading into next year, your Home Team could be doing a lot worse. They will be the oldest team in the majors (again), but they'll have frontline pitching and in a league where frontline pitching matters, and a lineup that should still be seen as competent, if no longer dominant. They should be good enough to get back to the playoffs, and, as both the Phils and the Giants proved this year, anything can happen when they get there.
- Phils in 2011
Did anyone else see how long it took them to show the Fox trax for the last pitch. It seemed a little fishy to me that it was right on the line. A little too convenient when to the naked eye it was clearly low.
This was a team effeort, all right - Utley and Victorino repeatedly came up small. And much will be said about Howard's taking that final called strike, but know this: he couldn't have hit it, anyway. Pitchers with decent control have been consistantly getting him out with that low & away borderline pitch for the better part of two years, and if they don't make a mistake in the heart of the plate, Howard will do most of the work himself. In 2009, the Yankees easily solved Howard in this manner, and it's what you can expect whenever he faces a good team's post-season starters. Ryan Howard is completely and utterly incapable and unwilling to alter his approach to hitting in any way that interferes with that big, Dave Kingman-like swing that got him to the majors - he's made a fortune from the Phillies' foolish contract, and even a 50% post-season strikeout rate will not cause him to ponder the situation. Hell - he's on record stating that he doesn't see *any* difference in outs - "an out is an out", according to The Big Piece. Now, where do you start with someone like that?
@Matt: whether or not that pitch was a strike, it was a pitch that was close enough that you have to at least try to foul it off with two strikes. And I say foul off because @anonymous is absolutely right: Brian Wilson made the pitch he needed to make; Howard knows he can't hit that pitch so he hoped he'd get the call rather than whiffing or hitting it weakly fair. The best reasonable outcome for Howard swinging at that pitch is a foul ball, but Howard hasn't really demonstrated an ability to even put his bat on that pitch. As to some of Anonymous' other points, I don't know that I agree with your assessment about Howard's strikeouts vs. other types of outs. Yes, he struck out 50% of the time, but he also had a .400 on base percentage in the NLCS which means he reached base at a better clip than anyone else on the team. And his four doubles gave him a slugging percentage (.500) second only to Werth's (.611). Regarding your comment about Howard refusing to change his approach, I think that the hallmark of a great player is the ability/willingness to work toward improving, which is a trait Howard's demonstrated in many facets of his game (defense, baserunning and, yes, he even cut down his Ks this season). But I find the assumption — that any flaw in a player's game is something that can be fixed simply by wanting to — to be problematic. As if NOT every player wishes he could hit like Ted Williams and only a lack of wanting it bad enough or working hard enough for it keeps/kept them from it. We're talking about a zero-sum game, and one in which its players have already reached the 99.99999999th percentile of all humans who can play it. They are at a point where there are some things, some flaws, that simply exist and an inability to improve upon them is not evidence of a character flaw or even evidence that they haven't tried to improve them, but merely evidence of a physical limit. Ryan Howard, like every other player who's stepped on a baseball field anywhere, is an imperfect player. And one of his imperfections is a hole in his swing that makes him susceptible to pitches on the low-outside corner. And yes, he should take the many millions of dollars he will make from the Phillies through 2016 as a covenant to try like hell to patch that hole. But we shouldn't be surprised if he can't.
[...] [...]
Matt, "Fishy" is an understatement! I felt insulted. Do the folks at Fox think I can't notice the difference between the obvious placement of the pitch as clearly shown in the video and where they so conveniently placed the little white dot. What a farce! Did you notice during the "pitch by pitch" recap of the final at-bat that they cut away to another image when they got to the last pitch! Once they had time to relocate the dot, they showed the final pitch. Here I was thinking this was some sort of sophisticated contraption, but it is apparently just someone tapping a screen after each pitch. Finally, it seems like it would have been in their best interest to show it correctly, out of the strike zone, which would have led to a lot more for their announcers to talk about (after the game and the next day).
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