City of Pain

Chase Utley and Placido Polanco are apparently heading to the DL today, and you know what that means: Hello Greg Dobbs. Just when the Phils were poised to start chipping away at Atlanta’s division lead and push the overachieving Mets’ head back underwater where it belongs, this shit happens. Arguably your two best pure hitters are going to be sitting on the bench until at least the All-Star break, and maybe longer. Both players also lead the all star voting at their respective positions.

Since 2007 the Phils have been pretty lucky in terms of fighting off the injury monster.  I recall Utley breaking a bone in his hand, I think Rollins got hurt one year for something, and maybe Brad Lidge last season, although we would have been better off had he stayed on the DL the entire year. This season it all finally caught up with us, just like most things do in the universe.  If there is any silver lining in any of this, it is that this is happening near the All Star break. In theory, both players could be back immediately after the break, missing 13 games.  That’s three more Halladay starts and seven home games.

The only way to remain in this race is to stay afloat until the break. That’s assuming no one else gets hurt in the process, unless that person is Greg Dobbs, and then we can rejoice once again.

You may believe this to be true. You may also believe that some random shithead pecking away at this computer is the worst thing that ever happened to journalism. It’s just that right now in Philadelphia, we’ve got a paucity of topics worth our time, so we get filler topics. Not just on the overnights, but every damn day all the time. It’s these miserable little hypothetical and barroom conversation starters that just annoy the piss out of me. Talk to me about the games, rumors, anything but this crap.

Let’s cover some of these ridiculous topics:

Is Jaime Moyer a Hall of Fame pitcher?

No. I don’t care how long he pitches. I don’t care how many wins he has. He was never a pitcher the other team was scared to face. He was never dominant. He was good for some very good Mariners teams in the early 00′s. He’s nothing special. Please stop. I know he’s a great guy and he’s from Souderton. Good for him. Name a little league field after him. But not in the Hall of Fame. This isn’t like stuffing the All-Star ballot box for Raul Ibanez. This is utter nonsense.

Why don’t people like Cole Hamels?

Because he’s different and Philadelphia doesn’t like his brand of different. He talks funny. He’s from California. He’ll never have a bloody sock or run face first into a wall. He’s a dorky kid from Cali with a hot blond wife and a ridiculous baseball player who should probably stop talking and doing commercials that air in Philadelphia for his own good because this town is poisoned against him (thanks 610). He only won us our only championship in the last 30 years. It’s the same thing as hating Iverson because he has tattoos. The ignorant minority gets on the air and colors everyone’s attitude in a moronic way.

Oh my God, we’re never going to win anything ever again without Cliff Lee.

This may or may not be true. But let’s get one thing straight: it happened. And let’s get another thing straight: Ruben Amaro is not getting fired for it. And finally, there’s no guarantee we would be any better off now, in October, or in the future for keeping him. These three kids they got back from Seattle, who knows about them at this point, other than the fact that Phillipe Aumont is not doing so hot? Who knows about the people we traded for Halladay, or even Cliff Lee? We don’t know dick. It’s fun to play these games, but for every regret, there’s a Pat Burrell. I didn’t like the trade then, I don’t like it now, but for fuck’s sake, get over it. We have more pressing things to worry about like Mike Zagurski’s featureless face.

Why can’t we trade Raul Ibanez and Joe Blanton for Tim Lincecum and call up Dominic Brown?

These callers are great because I do get a good chuckle out of the host mocking their utter lack of baseball knowledge and common sense. So these are OK. I actually love trade talk because it’s interesting when it’s coming from Buster Olney. But when it’s Gerry from Olney, it’s just a waste of my time.

Ok so maybe I was a little harsh on Grampa Moyer last week. I’m sorry for calling for his assassination in the backyard, just past the tool shed with a very powerful rifle. After all he has had a pretty good season considering he’s been pitching since the onset of the Korean war. He’s going to end up with 12+ wins this season and he’s pitched into the 6th inning in something like 14 of his last 17 starts. Shutting down the Yankees to three hits through 8 innings is about as probable as Keanu Reeves winning an Oscar. I don’t know where he pulls this shit from sometimes.

There will be no more anti-Moyer posts this season. He deserves better, unlike some of his teammates. However, I am working on multiple posts that I fully plan on releasing later this season. Some titles include “Blanton requests Dollar Dog night off,” “Hamels eats cock for charity,” and “Greg Dobbs: His Final Days.”

Is a sweep at the hands of the Yankees inevitable? I suppose you can take Roy Halladay’s 18-6 career record against the Yankees as a positive until you remember that the Phillies can’t score runs, even against mediocre pitchers these days. Losing two games against New York this series will surely put the Phils no better than 4.5 games out of first with the Twins on deck this weekend.

Of course there is one way to make sure all of this doesn’t happen, even considering we have to watch Kyle Kendrick and Jamie Moyer pitch the next two games against Burnett and Pettite: score some f’ing runs. Somehow over the past 35 or so games, the very thing that has kept the Phillies relatively dominant the past three seasons has totally abandoned them. What is the magic number these guys need to focus on to get back into this season?

Phillies record when scoring 6 or more runs this season: 15-1.

Phillies record when scoring 5 or more runs this season: 15-4.

Phillies record when scoring 4 or less runs this season: 11-25.

Seems simple right? Score five runs and you win 80% of your games. The guess here is most teams have a pretty good record when they score 5+ runs, but then again most teams don’t have the luxury of arguably the most potent offense in all of baseball. Or so we thought. As much as we want Moyer, Blanton, and Kendrick burnt at the stake, the thing that is killing this team right now is not the starting pitching, it’s these clowns hacking at garbage pitches and not hitting the ball over the fence. Now 17th in baseball in home runs, 20th in batting average, and 24th in hits, there seems to be no end in sight.

So once again, I’m going to lay off the pitching for the next two weeks. I’m focusing on six runs. I don’t give a shit who they are playing against.

It’s a good thing the Phillies don’t play the Red Sox every game, because there is a good chance they’d finish the season 0-162. Last night was pretty much par for the course as we watched Jamie Moyer shit his adult diapers and take the Phils out of the game before they had a chance to do anything. It’s bad enough when your team has trouble scoring runs, but it’s a hundred times worse when you put said team in a nine run hole by the 2nd inning. Imagine being a major league baseball payer and hearing that instead of facing a 24 year old young gun that night, you get to face a pitcher that pitched while Steve Carlton was still in the league. The Boston fans were so goddam bored that they started doing Celtics chants. In the 2nd inning.

You know as a fan that your team is in trouble when you look at that day’s starters and you say to yourself “oh fuck Moyer’s pitching tonight? Didn’t he just pitch?” every five days. Even though you know it’s his turn, it’s always a giant, steel-toed kick in the nuts every time. And frankly, I don’t need to hear fans say how good he’s been (for his age, of course always part of the argument). His ERA jumped over a full run last night and now he’s in his comfort zone with a 5+ mark. The simple question is this: do you want Jamie Moyer starting an important game down the stretch when your team needs a win? If your answer is yes, you obviously haven’t watched a single baseball game in your entire life.

This team has bigger problems than Jamie Moyer right now, that is apparent, but watching them continue to trot him out there every five days makes me want to stab myself in the eye with a box cutter.