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You: A shortstop with a career 85 OPS+ who, along with your teammates, just put up only the second goose egg in the hits column in postseason history.

Roy Halladay: The best pitcher alive today, who just made you and all your teammates look like Little Leaguers. Blind ones. With Down Syndrome. And no arms.

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All you need to know about tonight’s game:

Hits

Roy Halladay – 1

Cincinnati Reds – 0

Incredible.

He'll take "The Rapists" for $800. The Phillies. In case that wasn't clear or anything.

One second. I’m not quite done enjoying the idea of Sean Connery announcing a baseball game, especially when he has to say “OPS.”

Aaaaaand…we’re good.

The Phillies and Reds open the playoffs in less than 48 hours, which is a lot less time than it’s going to feel like. It appears that we’re heavy favorites in this one, but we all know how little that actually means. The postseason rarely rewards the team that is truly best. Anyone capable of being objective will tell you that the Phillies were not the best team in the playoffs in 2008. Did any of us care? Of course not. We were World Fucking Champions (© Chase Utley, all rights reserved). We weren’t the best last year, either, but only because Brad Lidge and Cole Hamels were shells of their former selves. This time, though, a legitimate argument can be made that no fellow combatant is as talented, top to bottom, as us. That’s comforting, and awesome, to know, but it doesn’t make us invincible. Any team good enough to emerge from the 162-game gauntlet with a division title – even a division as shitty as the NL Central – is a threat in a short series. Luck and random variance play a much larger role in the playoffs, simply because there just aren’t that many games. Anything can, and probably will, happen…which makes objective analysis a lot less reliable than it would normally be, but here goes.

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"So anyway, in my dream, Heyward's balls were *this* big. I could hardly get one of them in my mouth!"

As reported by Fox Sports this morning, Braves president and former GM John Schuerholz needs the wahhhmbulance to take him to the hospital for emergency vaginal sand extraction (on the way home, he would like a wahburger and some french cries):

“When they built that damn ballpark, we didn’t have a prayer. They started printing money and hitting shorter home runs,’’ Atlanta president John Schuerholz on the emergence of the Phillies as an NL East power coinciding with the team’s move into Citizens Bank Park.

For the million billion hojillionth time: Citizens Bank Park is not slanted heavily in favor of hitters. Yes, the short porch in left leads to a few balls leaving the yard that wouldn’t in a lot of other stadiums, but the dimensions aren’t markedly different from most major league ballparks. It’s consistently been around the middle of the pack in park factors for the last several seasons, with the exception of homers, which are slightly above average. It’s nowhere near the launching pad/homer haven/Little League field/other dumb, stupid, wrong term butthurt opponents love to use that it gets the rap for.

Never mind the incontrovertible truth that all these crybabies choose to ignore: The other team gets to hit there, too, and nothing changes. The fences don’t move back 20 feet or morph into the Green Monster when the opposing team comes to bat. As far as excuses for getting your collective taint handed to you, as opponents so often do by the Phillies, are concerned, that’s a pretty lousy one.

You’ve got to love Schuerholz being on the rag before this series even starts. Imagine how chapped his ass will be on Wednesday, when the Phillies send the Bravos home to their half-empty stadium with tails between their legs and an insurmountable six-game deficit. Even better was Charlie Manuel’s short, sweet response when someone told him about Schuerholz’s bitch fit: “Champions can hit anywhere.” It’s hard to remember when he’s bringing J.C. Romero into crucial situations, but this man is awesome.

At least ol’ John Boy can take solace in bringing this prestigious award out of retirement. What a douche.

So, here we are.

It’s September 14. Since a four-game losing streak left them seven games behind Atlanta on July 21, the Phillies are a face-breaking 36-15. Only the Twins (35-13) have been better in that span. With all the injuries and inconsistency and subpar years and bad contracts and constant hand-wringing, this team has the best record in the National League, and is on pace for 94 wins, which would be their highest total since 1993 and tied for fourth-most in franchise history.

This speaks volumes to the depth and resiliency of this group. After enjoying a run of near-perfect health in our last two pennant-winning seasons, the 2010 model has rarely been fully functional. Not many teams could weather replacing one of the best players in baseball with Wilson Valdez for two months, especially when every other infielder also missed significant time.

It also says a lot about how far the franchise has come in a few short years. Go back four or five years, and we as fans would have been thrilled with the kind of talent the Phillies currently employ, and simply making the playoffs, to say nothing of winning a postseason series or five. As annoying as it is sometimes to hear people complain about “only” being fourth in the NL in runs or having a fifth starter with an ERA around five, that represents progress. We have become accustomed to excellence, and we will not and should not accept anything less.

This has been a strange season. The Phillies dominated early before injuries and a prolonged offensive slump had them treading the waters of mediocrity and occupying a position everyone remembered, but nobody missed: Staring up at the Braves. Yet again, the second half has been our time to shine, but the wins have come more often from stellar pitching than offensive fireworks. Personally, I don’t care how we win as long as we win.

Our lead in the East is only a game, and with four other teams nipping at our heels, an ill-timed skid could still put us out in the cold come October. That’s a mathematical possibility that has to be recognized. But it ain’t gonna happen. You know it. I know it. Fans of other teams know it, even if they’re still trying to convince themselves otherwise. The East, and the National League, are ours to lose, and we aren’t going to lose them. In fact – as the title of this post might have hinted at – I see plenty of reasons to believe that this team will bring home its second championship in three years. Read the rest of this entry »

First, a bit of news, in case you haven’t heard by now: Chase Utley will be in the lineup tonight, batting second. The National League is officially on notice.

On Saturday, we went over three of the teams currently in the playoff picture, and laughed at related Google image search results. Now, the others, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Presumptuous as it may be to look ahead to the postseason when the Phillies would be putting their broms in the closet if the season ended today, we’re all pretty confident in this team. Two straight NL pennants and a 16-5 run largely without two of our three best hitters will do that. Shit, we’ve managed to stay in the thick of the race with Wilson Valdez playing every day; expectations should be high upon the returns of Ryan Howard and Chase Utley, particularly the latter. And as we’ve all heard and orgasmed over by now, Chase begins a rehab assignment in Clearwater this very evening. He’s targeting Tuesday’s series opener against the Giants for his return – which, btdubskis, is also the date Howard is eligible to come off of the disabled list. Ladies and gents, we may be looking at our full Opening Day roster playing together for the first time since The Great Depression.

Anyway, there’s the small matter of securing a playoff berth standing between us and a third straight World Series appearance (a few bounces from being a potential third straight championship, but hey…two out of three ain’t bad). This recent run has done a lot of good work toward brushing aside these charlatans who would fain eliminate the possibility of having their faces broken by a Doc-headed triumvirate of terror and a fully operational Death Star of a lineup, but we’re not there yet. Ergo, scoreboards must be watched.

After the jump, a look at those who would dare take our title, including how they stack up against us in a postseason series. Heavy lies the head that wears the crown, bitches.

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That is all.

(P.S. I’ve been busy as hell this week, mostly with my new job, but I will have the day off and a massive hangover on Saturday, so I promise at least one actual post.)

In the meantime, let us all join together and laugh heartily at a 300-pound bull of a man being made the Phillies’ bitch yet again.

The Moon Shot

The Double (predicted immediately beforehand by our very own Liney)

The Shitshow

Folks, we’re sorry.

We’ve been the Eric Bruntlett of blogs lately, and that just ain’t cool.

There are any number of reasons as to how and why this happened. The Phillies stunk on ice for a while, and that shit is depressing enough without writing about it. Ryan lost his job a while back. I moved for the sixth (!) time in 15 months, and my grandfather passed. Liney’s been swamped by thesis defense and doing whatever it is that assistant GMs of soccer clubs do, which I am assuming involves a lot of penis. Chris has tripped and fallen over the first of 12 steps so often that AA kicked him out. And A Team…that turncoat bastard got himself a cushy gig writing for The Hardball Times and left us. He did not turn around, to see our hearts breaking. We didn’t want him to see us cry, anyway. Actually, we were all planning to step on one another to reach infinitesimal Internet fame, and just pissed that he beat us to the punch.

However, I have made it my mission to get things rolling around here again. Chris has hiccuped assent. Together, we will lead this blog into a glorious new age of prosperity and wonderment, an age where posts appear more than once or twice a month.

To show how much we mean business, I will invoke the most sacred rite I know.

I’m off to scream Meech’s name from the top of a mountain that I climbed in tennis shoes.

By now, everybody knows how I feel about Ruben Amaro. Disdain threatened to evolve rapidly into seething hatred if, as was rumored earlier this month, he attempted another ill-advised “three-team” deal to acquire pitching and ship out Jayson Werth.

Well, here we are on July 29th, and the situation has worked out better than any sane, rational Phillies fan could have hoped. Werth isn’t going anywhere, and Amaro deserves credit for getting Roy Oswalt for pennies on the dollar. Granted, he was dealing with Ed Wade, so it wasn’t exactly a triumph of intellect, but I can’t be as harsh toward his many failures without giving the man credit for his successes. Not without being a Mets fan giant hypocrite.

Ed Wade (Artist's rendering).

Seriously, folks, this could’ve been so much worse. Word ’round the campfire was that the Astros wanted Jonathan Singleton, that they wouldn’t kick in a significant amount of cash, and that Oswalt wanted his $16 million option for 2012 guaranteed as a provision for waiving his no-trade clause. Any and all of that would have been terrible for the Phillies. Read the rest of this entry »