Comments on: The Phillies Would Finish 5th in the AL East

By: Garrett

Garrett — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 23:26:56 +0000

Don’t get the wrong idea, Johnny, the pitchers certainly deserve most of the blame; they’re professionals and have shown some ability at success, therefore it’s reasonable to expect them to perform better. However, it is still the responsibility of the coaching staff and the catchers to help them work through their funks. I wonder at what they are doing about these recent problems. Since I am not in a position to watch games regularly, I’m not aware of how good or bad Ruiz is at calling a game.

I think the Phils need to get off their duffs and make a big trade-deadline deal for one more starter. Talk to teams loaded with starters like the BoSox. Talk to Seattle about Erik Bedard if they start to slip and think they won’t be in contention. The Phils have assets, they need to do something with them.

By: BMT

BMT — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:19:59 +0000

Well I guess we’ll never get to a consensus about how good the Phillies are. Yes, they have the 2nd best record in the NL. They are a .500 team against every team in baseball other than the historically-bad Nationals and they lose 2 games at home for every one they win. Yes, they should beat the Nats (which they and everyone else do) but if we’re having a discussion about how we think they rate then these factors come into play. We are not arguing the standings here, we’re talking about things “power rankings” style. In that ways, wins and losses are the most important number, of course. But once you get past that, you have to look at the quality of opponents and for a team that plays in a relatively-weak division and has racked up 1/3 of its victories against a truly-awful team, there are reasons to be apprehensive about how good this team is.

By: parsnip cabbagepaw

parsnip cabbagepaw — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:56:28 +0000

That’s the point BMT…playing 8 games against the AL East and being 3-5 doesn’t dictate anything, it’s too small of a sample size. There are roughly 100 games to be played and the Phillies have the second best record in the NL…this team will make the playoffs which is more than I can say for sure regarding the Rays, the Yankees, etc.

By: pdkelly

pdkelly — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:44:03 +0000

Well, I guess your point is valid Johnny, if you’re allowed to throw out the Phillies Nationals wins. I say let’s throw away the Dodgers record vs. the Nationals, the D’backs, the Rockies (hot of late but not during most of those Dodgers games), and the Padres (who after a solid start are now as bad as the Nats). So really the dodgers are just 21-16 against the non-shitty in the league. My point is you can’t just throw away the Nats games, when evaluating the Phillies season. Those wins are in the bank, they get to keep them. But if we’re just talking wins/losses like BMT suggests, then the Phillies are the 4th best team in baseball after 39% of the season,even if right now they are not playing very well.

By: BMT

BMT — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:29:27 +0000

There’s always hope for the Phillies because they have great hitting and mediocre pitching that (historically) has found a way to solidify and pitch very well from August onwards. All I’m saying is that right now, the Phils don’t look that great and the only thing we’ve got to go on to suggest they’ll pick it up is what they’ve done in the last 2 season, which ain’t too shabby.

By: Johnny Goodtimes

Johnny Goodtimes — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:26:59 +0000

Beckett is not in big trouble for the reason that BMT just expounded on: that you can’t take a sample size out of one game (.006 of the season). You can take it after 63 games (39%) of the season, however. And the bottom line is that after 63 games, the Phillies are a decent but not very good team. They beat up on the Nationals and are .500 against everyone else. I will, however, allow for the fact that they always seem to play their best baseball in August and September, so there is hope.

By: pdkelly

pdkelly — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:21:57 +0000

@BMT I would never use the should have won argument. And if you look again you’ll realize I never did. I was just calling into question the domination claim Johnny was making by pointing out the fact that it’s hard to claim a team was dominated in a game they nearly won. Now did the Mets get dominated by the Yankees in that 15-0 game. Of course, but that doesn’t mean the Mets would finish 5th in the AL East either. If you wanna talk about strength of schedule let’s talk about the Dodgers and that division they play in.

By: pdkelly

pdkelly — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:16:22 +0000

The Phillies beat the best team in baseball, the Boston Red Sox with JA Happ on the hill vs. Boston’s ACE and second best pitcher in baseball, Josh Beckett. They chased Beckett in 6 innings with 6 runs and 11 hits. By your logic The Red Sox are in big trouble, which they’re not. I know you don’t mean it Johnny. Blog Traffic is Blog Traffic.

By: BMT

BMT — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:14:54 +0000

As strange as it sounds, the World Series is a significantly worse test of which league is better than is Interleague play. If for no other reason than the sample size, the World Series is (at most) 7 game played between team that have won a two-series tournament. Obviously (and I would never argue with this), a World Series win is the most important thing for any team in a given season.

With that said, if the discussion is about ranking teams during the season (projection, guesswork and opinion, for sure) then it has to be said that the Phillies really don’t look that great. You can run on forever about how they “should” have won games but that argument can be applied to every single game that falls into the “L” column for every team in baseball. The bottom line is that through 63 games they are this good. If you want to dismiss the conversation on the grounds that “we’ll see what happens” then we really shouldn’t be having any conversations at all.

The bottom line is that the Phillies are 3-5 against the AL East. I don’t know that this necessarily tells us anything, but please stop with the BCS argument of how they “should have” or “would have” done this or that. They didn’t and that’s the great thing about baseball vs. college football or figure skating: the only numbers that matter are wins and losses.

By: Johnny Goodtimes

Johnny Goodtimes — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:12:35 +0000

I shouldn’t have called Marquis a bum. He’s 8-4 with a 3.77 ERA. But he’s 50-48 with a high 4 ERA in the four years previous. He’s a #3 or #4. This team needs a #2.