For Phillies Phans this is the apocalypse. Chris Carpenter held the “can’t miss” Ashburns to just three hits, and the upstart Cardinals went on to take the NLDS three games to two in a sparkling 1-0 win in Philadelphia, ending the Phillies post-season dream of another October World Series appearance. Phillies fans were so disappointed, they didn’t even boo.
The Philadelphia loss was as surprising as the poor performance of Charlie Manuel’s team, which couldn’t put together enough hits to cage the Redbirds. “Actually, I don’t know what to say,” Manuel said, following the loss. “I just got through talking to our team, and basically when I look at it, we played 162 games, and definitely we had the best record in baseball.”
But the best record (and the best pitching staff), wasn’t enough to carry the Phillies into the NLCS — with Phillies’ fans describing their team’s elimination as “a crushing disappointment.” The depth of the loss is reflected in the Philadelphia blogosphere: “Thud” was the headline of The Good Phight, while Beerleaguer led its coverage with “Failure In Philly.”
But while baseball’s blogworld focuses on “the Phailure in Philadelphia,” Friday’s loss was more the result of Chris Carpenter’s pitching performance than the poor hitting of Ryan Howard & Company. Carpenter walked none and struck out three, taming Halladay in what Cardinals’ manager Tony LaRussa called “a dream match-up” of Cy Young winners. Carpenter threw 110 pitches, 70 of them for strikes. It was a Phorgettable night in Philly, but not in St. Louis.
Of course, there are teams in baseball that would love to have bragging rights to a 102 win season — including the one right here in Washington. But expectations were so high in Philadelphia that what will follow now is an off-season of recriminations, and an effort to find that one missing piece that Phillies’ fans think they need. It might be ugly. “There are no two ways around it: 2011 is a failure for the Phillies,” Crashburn Alley said. Oh, boo-hoo . . .
If you watched Tim Kurkjian last night on ESPN, then you know just how close he came to an on-air myocardial infarction. In the history of the game, he said, what viewers just saw was history — the best night of baseball ever of any regular season. The best, as he repeated, in 200,000 games. In fact, he’s right — it might well have been.
Unless, of course, you’re a fan of either the Boston Red Sox or Atlanta Braves. For both of those clubs, and their fans, the “night to remember” was a belly-up sinking that compared with the loss of the “unsinkable” Titanic: it just wasn’t supposed to happen. Fans will focus on the Red Sox, of course, but down in Atlanta the despair was as keenly felt. You only have so many shots at this, and this may be one of the Braves’ last.
“When you’re in a slump as a team, you find a bunch of different ways to lose,” third baseman Chipper Jones said after the Bravos dropped a nail biter to the Phillies. “Bats go silent. You get wild on the mound. You walk in runs. You find different ways to lose and we sure did over the past couple weeks.”
Okay. But still — the most improbable of improbables was not the Braves loss to Philadelphia (let alone the Redbirds whitewashing of the Astros), or even the fact that somehow the Tampa Bay Rays came back to take a 12 inning victory from the Yankees, but Baltimore’s epic ninth inning walk off victory against the Nation. “Now, there’s something you don’t see every day,” the unsinkable Molly Brown said as she saw the Titanic go down, stern first.
And that’s what we all said, last night, when Robert Andino put a Jonathan Papelbon offering just off the glove of Carl Crawford in left field to score Noland Reimold and give the Orioles (the Orioles!) a walk-off 4-3 win in Baltimore. There’s a reason why fans keep their mouths shut when they’re watching a no-hitter in the ninth, just as there’s a reason why you don’t pitch Tim Wakefield eight times in the middle of a divisional race just so he can get his 200th win. (What the hell were they thinking?)
Here’s some other things you don’t ever do, no matter what. You don’t calculate that you have an inside shot just because the Rays are playing the Yankees, you don’t headline that you have “the best team ever” at the beginning of a season, you don’t describe the Iraqi insurgents as “pushovers” — and you don’t call a ship unsinkable when it’s sitting in Belfast Harbor: you don’t flirt with icebergs.
So . . . so don’t rewrite the rules. They remain, the rules. You don’t tempt fate, which is what the Red Sox did all of September, and it’s what they did last night. It’s call hubris, and it’s been around since Homer. “I’m pretty shocked,” Red Sox arm John Lester said. “Not only with the Rays game, but in our game, we’ve got the best closer in baseball. That stuff doesn’t happen to him.” Oh, c’mon. Sure it does. This is baseball.
The Nationals closed out their home half of the 2011 season with a decisive, 3-0 win over the Braves — bringing the 35,000-plus fans that came to see them to their feet in sustained standing ovations for their home nine. The victory, the team’s 78th, was sparked by the pitching of Ross Detwiler and home runs from Wilson Ramos and Michael Morse.
Following the victory, Nats’ skipper Davey Johnson praised his club for their year. “There is a lot of fire in this ballclub,” he said. “They are not satisfied with this year. You could probably ask everybody in that room and they wish the season started again. That’s the sense I get from this ballclub. The young nucleus is coming along. It’s just a tribute to the whole organization to be at this point.”
In many ways this was a classic Nationals’ victory: Ross Detwiler pitched out of two jams to notch the win, with the Nationals’ bullpen of Henry Rodriguez, Tyler Clippard and Drew Storen locking down the last home triumph. Rodriguez was particularly effective, striking out three while throwing his fastball, in one instance, at 101 miles per hour.
“Once you get into that bullpen of theirs and you’re facing Rodriguez, Clippard and Storen, the swings get a little tougher. Those guys are pretty good,” Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said. After the game, Phil Wood thought that the Rodriguez outing was particularly impressive — and that “there would come a time” when we’d see the swap that brought him from Oakland as one of the best trades in the team’s history. Wood was being understated: that is apparent now.
Following his home run in the bottom of the seventh, which put the game nearly out of Atlanta’s reach, Michael Morse was given a curtain call, his first ever. “It feels great to win,” Morse said afterward. “The team played great. It’s good momentum to show Washington that we are putting together a good team.”
The Wisdom Of Section 1-2-9: Nationals’ fans are getting louder and more outspoken — the result (perhaps) of the recent winning streak and hopes for next year. It was in the 7th inning that they made their feelings known to the few Braves fans in attendance, standing and chanting “Let’s Go Cardinals! Let’s Go Cardinals!”
In the aftermath of Chien-Ming Wang’s steady and powerful outing against the Atlanta Braves on Saturday, Davey Johnson faced the Washington baseball press. In light of Wang’s performance against the Braves, he was asked, would he recommend that the righty be offered a contract for 2012? Johnson didn’t hesitate: “No doubt about it,” he said, and then repeated it. “No doubt about it.”
Washington fans might rise to applaud this statement, particularly in light of Wang’s recent outings. The righty, signed by Mike Rizzo while still recovering from a blown out shoulder, has proven to be a good gamble. Wang has pitched no fewer than five innings in each of his last ten starts, and has pitched six complete in his last two — which includes today’s four hit 4-1 spectacular against Atlanta.
Johnson made it clear — he would have left Wang in to complete the game, but the bullpen needed work, and performed to their usual standards, with Gorzelanny, Clippard and Storen combining to hold the Braves to two hits in three complete innings of work. Drew Storen notched his 41st save on the season, and it’s probably not his last.
Wang made it look ho-hum-easy. He threw 85 pitches, 51 of them for strikes. His sinker looked as good as, or even better than, normal — a fact mentioned by Johnson, who said that the more Wang’s pitched, the more progress he’s made. His teammates in the infield agree. “He works quickly and he knows what he is going to do,” second sacker Danny Espinosa said. “When he has such a good plan like that, you stay active in case a ground ball [comes your way]. It keeps you in the game.”
Wang was even able to help his own cause at the plate. In the bottom of the 4th, he singled past first base into right field — scoring Espinosa. It was his first hit as a National, and his first in the majors. The crowd stood and roared its approval. “I had a bad record before,” Wang said of his hit. “All I wanted to do was just swing the bat, make contact, and I was kind of lucky. It was a line drive.
In notching their 77th win of the season, the Nationals put the Tomahawks in a squeeze — the Bravos needed a victory in their race for the Wild Card, and are now just two games ahead of the Musials. “We’ve got to win ballgames,” said Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez. “It’s nice to watch the scoreboard and all of that. But we’ve got to win the games that are in front of us.”
The Wisdom of Section 1-2-9: There was an ovation for Chien-Ming Wang among the section’s regulars — and for Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez, who might have been making his last start (or his last appearance) in a Nationals uniform. That fact was not lost on Davey Johnson, who noted that the Hall-of-Fame bound catcher has remained a positive force in the clubhouse. “He’s just fun to watch,” a section-mate added . . .
. . . because, while the Nationals keep winning in Philly, they still have seven games to play and, no matter what they do, will finish no better than third. We’re not just being killjoys: while it’s wonderful to see our Anacostia Nine play so well (especially at “Nats Park North”), there are some among us who (in the middle of the 7th inning last night — and then again in the 8th) stood up and screamed — “that’s just great, but where were you in June?”
The answer oughta be obvious: trying to find a pitching staff. That the Nats have now won consistently, when it counts the least, is evidence that (finally), that seems to have been done. John Lannan didn’t pitch brilliantly last night, but he fought hard and well (he’s not the same pitcher we saw last year), and a whole handful of other arms have now emerged: Milone and Peacock, and Wang and Detwiler — not to mention Jordan Zimmermann and Stephen Strasburg (and, just maybe, Livan Hernandez). And those are just the starters.
Then too, the bats have nearly ended their slumber: the Nationals pounded out ten hits last night, which included home runs from Danny Espinosa (his 21st, setting a Nationals rookie record), and the vastly underrated Wilson Ramos (who hit his 14th, which is none too shabby). More importantly, the Nats shook off their disturbing habit of serving tea to men on base — eight were left on base last night, but that number is going down, and they’ve damned near returned to the league mean.
As important (we think) is that the Nationals are now 9-8 against their in-division rivals — with the bonus that Nats fans have started to stream north. That an indication (perhaps), that Nats fans are anticipating what might (might) happen next year. “It’s a fun time,” Danny Espinosa said of his visit to the not-so-friendly confines of The Bank. “It’s a fun game to play against them. I want to play them hard because I know we can beat them. We are showing that. For myself, personally, I enjoy playing against the team.”
Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: We’ve decided to change the description of the New York Mets — they’re no longer “the chokes.” That description more aptly fits the Atlanta Braves, who barely showed up to play the Marlins last night in Miami, and lost to the stinking Fish. It wasn’t even close. Now they know how it feels. The Braves now lead the Cardinals (who woulda thought — and certainly not us), by a single game and some spit. The Cardinals surprised everyone (including their own fans) and rallied to beat the Mets in St. Louis, 6-5 . . .
You can never have too much pitching, but it appears that (if yesterday is any indication), the Nationals have more than enough for next year. Ross Detwiler is the latest evidence — the young lefty produced another more-than-solid outing on Tuesday night, at the back end of a day-night double header, taming the Philadelphia Phillies through 7.1 innings. He shut down the defending N.L. East champs and provided a sweep of the doubleheader in Philadelphia.
The 3-0 victory put the Nationals at 8-8 vs. Philadelphia this season, and Charlie Manuel has to be impressed — the Nats play Philadelphia tough, which is more than you can say about their abilities against the Marlins. Of course, Detwiler had help: a Danny Espinosa home run in the second, a throwing error from Phillies’ catcher Carlos Ruiz that allowed Jayson Werth to score, and his own single up the middle in the sixth.
But Detwiler’s heroics tell only a part of the story: while the box score shows a Nationals’ win, a Philadelphia fans memory will come down to this — an upstart team and untried lefty came into “the Bank” and outdueled Cliff Lee (with his stinking 2.38 ERA), a member of Philadelphia’s vaunted quartet of starters — the third of four veteran pitchers that Philadelphia is counting on to mount yet another assault in this game of capture the flag.
Of course, the other line in Philadelphia is not so much that the Nationals won, but that the Phillies lost. The Ashburns have already clinched the division and can rightly (if lamely) claim that impressive as Detwiler was, Philadelphia’s twin losses on Tuesday show that the Ponies aren’t exactly all in. Still, the Bard of South Philadelphia, is a little disturbed, and not necessarily because he’s paid to be.
“I’m not worried, I just like to see us play better,” manager Charlie Manuel said following the twin losses. “We clinched our division three days ago. Right now, I wouldn’t call it going through the motions. I’d say we’re not focused. We’re not focused into the game, I feel like. It’s normal in some respects.”
For Davey Johnson, however, Detwiler’s pitching (and not the Phillies’ performance), was the story of the game — he was why they performed poorly. “I can’t say enough good things about him,” Johnson said of his young starter. “The Phillies are a great hitting ballclub and he was letter perfect . . . Today he was nice, calm and collected and threw a lot of quality pitches.”
Detwiler made headlines, but so too did Drew Storen, who was perfect in the ninth, and notched his 40th save. Considering the Nationals’ bullpen performance in 2010, Storen’s season long excellence should be cause for a celebration or two. Storen has given the Nationals just over 72 innings in the role of closer this year, with a 2.86 ERA. Those numbers put him among the league’s elite.
No Country For Tim Lincecum: Forget pitching, what you can’t ever have enough of is baseball. Sliding up and down the dial last night (well, it used to be a dial), you could take in a murder in Connecticut over at CNN, or No Country For Old Men on AMC — it must be a marathon, they’ve shown it back to back on successive nights . . .
Former hockey player (and Washington Nationals) Nyjer Morgan turned “chippy” in Milwaukee last night after striking out against Cardinals’ starter Chris Carpenter. Morgan had battled through the ten-pitch at bat and was headed back to the dugout when he said something to Carpenter and tossed his chewing tobacco at him. Albert Pujols sprinted down the line to confront Morgan and the benches emptied, but no punches were thrown. Morgan was tossed.
“I just got in the middle to make sure that Morgan didn’t jump on Carp,” Pujols later explained. “The last thing you want is our guy that’s trying a shutout game to lose his focus. I actually like that guy. I don’t mind having a guy like that on my team. He brings a lot of energy to the ballclub, and you want to have a guy like that. But sometimes I think he goes (a little overboard) and tries to put too much energy.”
After the game, Morgan claimed that Carpenter had cursed him from the mound, and Morgan returned the favor before tossing his tobacco and shouting at him. The Cardinals won the game, a pitchers’ duel that pitted Cardinals’ hurler Chris Carpenter against Milwaukee’s Zach Greinke. Carpenter pitched a beauty, blanking the Brew Crew 2-0 on a four hitter. But the Cardinals still trail Milwaukee by a wide margin in the N.L. Central.
Morgan seemed to shrug off the incident after the game . . . but wait, wait — there’s more. Later, on Twitter, “Tony Plush” talked about Pujols — as if the game was the baseball version of Hockey Night in Canada. “Alberta couldn’t see Plush if she had her gloves on!!!” he chirped. “Wat was she thinking running afta Plush!!! She never been n tha ring!!!” Ugh.
The incident overshadowed a very, very fine game. With St. Louis struggling to catch the Brewers in the N.L. Central, the team needed a good outing from Carpenter, and they got one. He struck out five and threw a complete game, despite being up and down (he’s 9-9 on the season), during the 2011 campaign. As important, perhaps, was that Carpenter threw this magic while facing Zack Greinke, who was nearly as effective (seven innings, two earned).
