Monday, October 09, 2006

For Phils, What Should Have Been

The Philadelphia Phillies aren't in the postseason, and the sin of that is, if they were they would be one of the best teams going.

First, the Phillies by far had deeper, and arguably better starting pitching than most of the thinned-out, broke-down rotations that qualified to pursue the National League pennant.

Second, the Phillies' offense, multi-faceted with the speed/power of Jimmy Rollins at the top of the order, a revived Chase Utley right behind, and mighty Ryan Howard cleaning up in the cleanup position, probably would have scored some runs. Which is more than, on, the San Diego Padres, the New York Yankees, the Minnesota Twins, did.

Thing is, to win in October, you've got to win September. The Phillies ultimately didn't, losing just often enough in the final week to allow the Los Angeles Dodgers and Padres to win the three-way race to the wild card (with the Padres surging to the NL West title and L.A. snaring the wild card).

L.A. and the Pods are terribly flawed compared to the Phillies. But they took care of business where the Phillies could not - something the hometown team rightfully should fret about all off-season.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You're right Claire, they could have been a contender.There are so many things they could have done. If they had good baseball people running the show instead of Montgomery and his flunkies they would have been in the playoffs for the last two years, at least. Perhaps more and perhaps a world championship. The owners could have been the toast of the town, instead of the clowns they are.They were so afraid to hire a great manager, ( Jim Leland ) who would have had them in the playoffs for both years. Afraid that he might have rocked their gravy train boat, that they hired a good ole boy or clown like Charlie.