GAME RECAP: No Loss To Report
Phillies
enjoyed the rest after being obliterated by the Mets.
OTHER NOTES FROM THE DAY:
- Hamels went 7 1/3 innings
and gave up one run on six hits in his May 18 start vs. Colorado. Hamels
also recorded seven strikeouts in the outing.
- Hamels has been his best
during night games this season, posting a 4-1 record and 2.09 ERA in seven
starts.
- Rockies shortstop Troy
Tulowitzki has a .321 batting average in 56 career at-bats at Citizens
Bank Park. That includes four home runs and eight RBIs.
- When Bettis has started for
Colorado, the Rockies are 3-0 on the season. That includes a 6-5 victory
over Philadelphia on May 19.
NEXT GAME:
The
Phillies will host the Rockies at Citizens Bank Park on Friday to kick off a
three-game weekend series between the two National League foes. The opener will
mark the fifth meeting between Colorado and Philadelphia this season, with the
two splitting a four-game series last week. Cole Hamels is scheduled to get the
start for the Phillies, and he has been impressive, posting a 5-1 record and
2.23 ERA in his last seven starts. Colorado will send out right-hander Chad
Bettis after pushing back Jordan Lyles' scheduled start. In his previous start
against the Giants on Sunday, Bettis went 8 1/3 innings and surrendered only
two runs on six hits for his first win of the season.
PHILS PHACTS:
Now Is Not The Time – Ruben Amaro Jr.
made the type of comments no general manager should make, embattled or
otherwise. He criticized the customers. Amaro apologized this week for his
harsh comments about Phillies fans in a CSNPhilly.com story, but of everything
he said in a nearly 20-minute interview with beat reporters on Tuesday at Citi
Field, he got this much right: Amaro's comments detracted from the fact that
what he said about the
organization's prospects is 100 percent
correct. It makes no sense to rush them to the big leagues. "Listen, I'm
as excited about seeing these guys -- the [Aaron] Nolas, the [Zach] Eflins, the
[Roman] Quinns, and some of the other players who are having a lot of success
right now -- as any of [the fans]," Amaro said. "But there's a process
they have to go through. There's a process and a plan in place." Of
course, it has been difficult to trust the Phillies' plan after the past few
years. The Phils won a franchise-record 102 games in 2011, but despite one of
the highest payrolls in baseball, they have trended downward since. They
finished 81-81 in 2012 and 73-89 in each of the previous two seasons. This
year's Phillies are on pace to finish 63-99. The Phils' plan in recent seasons
was to add complementary pieces here and there and hope that Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Ryan Howard and Carlos Ruiz could turn back the clock. But the
sentimentality for 2008 died last August, when Pat Gillick became team
president. Gillick, who is in the Hall of Fame partially because he built the
Blue Jays from the ground up as an expansion team, said the Phillies would
rebuild. Gillick also said it would take time. The Phils, he said, would not
compete again until 2017 at the earliest. What is happening this season is what
rebuilding is. It is a lot of frustration. It is giving players extended
opportunities to prove themselves because the organization has nothing to lose
by letting them play. It is watching players on one-year contracts like Jerome Williams, Sean O'Sullivan and Chad Billingsley pitch in the rotation while Nola,
Eflin and others learn their craft in the Minor Leagues. Amaro got heated this
week probably because he has been asked incessantly about Nola, whom the team
selected in the first round of the 2014 First-Year Player Draft. When is Nola
coming up? Why don't the Phillies ever promote their prospects when they are
young? Nola has made 20 starts in the Minor Leagues. Compare that to the number
of Minor League starts made by other former first-round picks out of college
before they became established big leaguers: 2006: Tim Lincecum (10th pick, 13 starts); Max Scherzer (11th pick, 30 starts); Ian Kennedy
(21st pick, 43 starts); 2007: David Price (first pick, 27 starts); Tommy Hunter (54th pick, 36 starts); 2008: Brian Matusz (fourth pick, 19 starts); Andrew Cashner (19th pick, 39 starts); Wade Miley (43rd pick, 73 starts); 2009: Stephen Strasburg (first pick, 11 starts); Mike Minor (seventh pick, 41 starts); Mike Leake (eighth pick, zero starts); 2010: Matt Harvey (seventh pick, 46 starts); 2011: Gerrit Cole (first pick, 38 starts); Sonny Gray (18th pick, 53 starts); 2012: Michael Wacha (19th pick, 26 appearances, 17 starts).
The average of that group is 32.4 Minor League starts. If you remove Leake from
the equation because he is an anomaly, the average is 34.7. Sure, Strasburg
made just 11 starts in the Minors before his promotion, but no scout has
compared Nola to Strasburg (or other aces like Lincecum, Price or Harvey). Many
scouts see Nola as a solid No. 3 starter someday. And in regard to the Phillies
being slow to promote other young prospects, quite frankly, there has not been
a single player in the Phils' system over the past 10-plus seasons that can
compare to Mike Trout, Giancarlo Stanton or Bryce Harper. Besides, the Phillies do not need Nola
or Quinn or J.P. Crawford right now. They are not a pitcher or player away from
competing for a National League Wild Card spot. If they were, one of those
prospects might have been called up already. This season is about the long
term. This is about a sustained run of success. Calling up Nola, Eflin, Quinn,
Crawford and others before they are ready would not help the Phils achieve
that. "Aaron Nola used to pitch at LSU once a week, and he never pitched
in the summertime," Amaro said. "When we first drafted him, he wasn't
on a five-day rotation; we had to gradually work him in from seven days to six
days to five days so he could get used to that routine. "It takes its
toll. It's a process, just like anything else. There's a rhyme to the reason.
That might not jibe with everybody the way that we're doing it, but I think
we're doing it in the best interest of the club and the player." Amaro was
right, even if nobody heard it.
Remembering Perfection – A Roy Halladay
gem was unlike any other. Most of the dominant pitchers of the mid-2000s -- the
Lincecums, Verlanders and Sabathias -- worked like an avalanche, but Halladay
was death by 1,000 impossibly precise cuts: eight innings of called third
strikes and weak dribblers and exasperated hitters. The phrase "Maddux
2.0" should not be thrown around lightly, but when he was on, Halladay
came closer than anyone. And in Miami on May 29, 2010, Doc wasn't just on -- he
was perfect. 2010 was Halladay's first season with the Phillies, and he wasted
no time terrorizing the National League: In his first two months, he put
together four complete games, including two shutouts, while pitching to a 2.22
ERA. A date with the struggling Marlins already seemed like a mismatch on paper
... and then, well, Halladay just decided to make it unfair. To demonstrate,
let's play a quick game of "How often will Carlos Ruiz have to move his glove?"
(Note: It is not a lot). Doc sat down 11 Marlins in all, and six of those were
backwards K's. It was the Platonic ideal of a Halladay start: so ruthlessly
efficient that he needed more than 12 pitches in an inning just twice, reaching
only seven three-ball counts all night. "I felt like [Ruiz] was calling a
great game up until the fourth or fifth, and at that point, I just felt like
I'd let him take over," Halladay told MLB.com after the game.
"I'd just go out, see the glove and hit it." The old saying goes that
every bid for a perfect game at some point needs that one Great Defensive Play, but in Halladay's
case, he was so good that his defense was the only thing that threatened to
derail him. In the bottom of the third, both center fielder Shane Victorino and
right fielder Jayson Werth started tracking a lazy fly ball in the gap ... and
kept tracking it, kept tracking it, and LOOK OUT, GUYS. From there, Doc just
put it on cruise control, missing barrel after barrel. Pinch-hitter Mike Lamb
gave everybody a scare in the bottom of the ninth, driving one to deep center
-- but Sun Life Stadium was a pitcher's dream, cavernous between the gaps, and
Victorino tracked it down with relative ease. And at that point, it was all
over but for the celebrating. Halladay tossed his perfecto just twenty days
after Dallas Braden threw his in Oakland, the shortest
such span since the first two in 1880 (!). Amazingly
enough, though, baseball would come awfully close to another one just four days
later: on June 2, when Armando Galarraga came one missed call short.
For Doc, though, it was the cherry on top of a remarkable multi-year run. His
time in Philly (and, ultimately, his career) came to an end far too quickly
thanks to shoulder problems, but at the height of his powers, he was the very best in the game
-- and one of the most uniquely gifted artists the game has seen.
THE BEGINNING:
The
Phillies are starting the season as expected and are now near the bottom of the
NL east at 19-30. Given the departures, aging stars, injuries, and performance
this spring, don’t expect their competitive place in the standings to last. All
time, the Phillies are 40-56-0 on this day.
Remembering Roy’s perfection and letting young players develop in the minors…
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