By SCOTT LAUBERSo, about a half-hour after last night's exhilarating 11-inning win, Chad Durbin walked toward me in the Phillies' clubhouse. He took a deep breath, smiled wryly and said, "Smoke and mirrors. Smoke and mirrors."
I laughed.
Durbin tossed scoreless 10th and 11th innings to earn the win, his fifth in 55 relief appearances. But it wasn't easy. It definitely wasn't easy. He loaded the bases without getting an out in the 10th before Pedro Feliz turned a nifty, and rarely seen, third-to-home double play. In the 11th, Durbin allowed a leadoff single by Angel Berroa, then retired Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier and Pablo Ozuna.
Before last night's game, Charlie Manuel was asked a seemingly reasonable question. With Billy Wagner sidelined indefinitely by elbow discomfort, don't the Phillies have a huge edge over the Mets?
"We ain't got no advantage over the Mets," Manuel said. "We've got to make an advantage over the Mets. Their bullpen's banged up a little bit, but you know what? At the same time, our bullpen's a little banged up a little bit, too. We don't have [Tom] Gordon, and we've got to get to [Brad] Lidge."
Last night, the Phillies' bullpen proved that can be a problem. The Dodgers scored the go-ahead run in the seventh against J.C. Romero and Ryan Madson before Durbin's tightrope walk. Romero, Madson and Durbin have all been excellent throughout the season. But they'll be used heavily in September.
What's your level of confidence in those three guys in the seventh and eighth innings?
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Feliz and Shane Victorino were the offensive tag-team that contributed to the tying and winning rallies last night. But shouldn't Joe Blanton get some credit, too? After a shaky first inning that could've been much shakier (he got out of a bases-loaded jam by allowing only one run), Blanton shut out the Dodgers for the next five innings, giving the Phillies' offense a chance to eventually come around.
"Everybody keeps forgetting about Joe," Victorino said. "Joe battled. He was in a tight spot, especially in the first inning. To do what he did, that was big."
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Will Jimmy Rollins, mired in a 4-for-48 slump (2-for-25 on the homestand) be leading off again tonight? I think so, but check back in a bit for lineups, as the Phillies go for the four-game sweep.
5 comments:
our bullpen has been more than a bit lucky this year.
if you look at homeruns/flyball, our bullpen was due to regress. i did a little study about this on a blog i'm part of back in early june and correctly predicted some regression on the part of romero, durbin, and lidge:
http://www.thegoodphight.com/2008/6/6/546954/fluke-or-not-part-3
about a week and a half later, joe sheehan of baseballprospectus.com did a similar piece:
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=7677
i still clearly underestimated durbin, who's strikeout rate has shot up since i posted that, and despite being lucky, lidge still is an elite closer. our bullpen is not bad, but it's just not elite across the board.
at the same time, our hitting is very much underperforming and looking at the numbers, i have to assume it's just luck. the team's batting average on balls in play is way down this year (second lowest in the league) despite the fact that it has been above average for the past three years. not only that, everything that would seem to cause a low average on balls in play (other than luck) seems to be in tact, as it has been the past few years. we have about the same line-drive rate, batter by batter, the same walk and strikeout rates, and it seems like the only thing missing is luck. i did a piece on that on the same blog last week too: http://www.thegoodphight.com/2008/8/20/598019/we-gon-hit
so, while my level of confidence in romero/durbin/madson in the 7th and 8th innings isn't really all that high, my confidence in our hitters to pull wins out of their hat like last night (and like so many times in the past few years) is very high.
a half game out in late august, and we have basically the same schedule as the mets (one extra game left against milwaukee is the only difference), this is pretty much going to come down to luck. very exciting past couple of days-- hopefully we have a good week!
(by the way, someone will probably post under my name soon claiming to contradict what i just said. it's not me.)
Is "luck" just a way of saying you have absolutely no idea who will win the divison?
Yes, it is. And neither does anybody else. I think it's almost exactly a 50/50 chance (I guess I'll give the Mets 52%, Phillies 48%, since the Phillies and Mets schedules are the same, except the Phillies have one extra game against Milwaukee and are half a game out). People can come out strong one way or the other, and half the time, they would be right. But like calling a coin toss, you're just guessing, and half the time you can claim you knew all along...but you didn't.
Sounds like you should give the paranoia a rest, matts. No one believes you're not posting twice.
Paranoia? I had to look that big word up, msn. Thanks for the comment.
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