Phils-Pirates series recap: Vintage Phillies

The microcosm of the Phillies universe can be whittled down to a single series in Pittsburgh.

Win one. Lose one. Win one. Lose one. A .500 effort from a .500 ballclub. The series saw the token game with more runs than they needed, battering the Bucs 12-1 in the opener. They built on that momentum next game by beating out a whole four hits against Kippy Wells, losing 3-0 on Tuesday. Wednesday night is what I would call a “normal effort” offensively, waiting until the seventh inning to really get anything going, winning 5-0 thanks to solid pitching from Vicente Padilla and company (the token abnormality. Note Robinson Tejeda did not pitch this series).

That brings us to last night, when the only thing missing to complete the sphere of wonder was the heartless game when they stranded a ton of men on base. The final: 2-1, letting this truly winnable series slip away, weenie style.

That’s 18 runs by my count, an average of 4.5 per game, on par with their season average of 4.66. By that measure, they have a pretty good offense based on league standards.

Next time you read or hear that stat to justify the quality of this offense, tell that person to take his stat and shove it.

Comments

[Oisin]

Boy are you in pain, man. But then, we've all got good reason to be frustrated. If we could just do *something* about the pitching . . . anything . . . then our offense would be an asset, not a symbol of all that is frustrating about the Phils.

[kuff6]

Oisin: Are you kidding me?Pitching definitely wasn't the problem this series. They held PIT to 1, 3, 0, and 2 runs, but only ended up with a split? How in the world is that not an indictment against the offense?

[Ken]

How can you guys stand it anymore....they are making me ill..just about everything they can do to lose they do..

the fact that their stats are not bad only makes it worse to me..

I still have 10 games to go to and i can barely stand it!!!!!!! arghhhhh

sorry - just venting

[tim]

It's a combination of the pitching and hitting, as always. The Phils score 4.66 runs a game, but give up about 4.6 runs a game, hence a .500 team. They need to improve both areas ideally, or at least one, to win more games.

In this series, the Bucs offense was characteristically bad for all four games, while we had one statistical outlier (win), one average game (win), and two sub-average games (both losses).

[Oisin]

Kuff,

I say pitching, because the last time I checked, we second in the division and fourth in the League in runs scored. We are not in this situation now because of our offense, but because we've not had consistent pitching. As pawnking noted sometime back, if you get on base a lot, you'll have a lot of guys LOB, unless you're good enough to score every guy who gets on. But we hemorrhaged runs in this first half. That is why we're a five hundred ball club, as tim says.

[Oisin]

And while I'm on the subject, we're currently first in OBP in the league. Where our OPS suffers and our offense suffers is in home runs (stand up thome). Plus if Jimmy stays out of that leadoff spot like he's been doing, then we may get some more runs scored (although not if David Bell is hitting second . . .). But all that is refinement. Our hitting will take care of itself. We need to do something about the pitching.

[pawnking]

The Phillies pitchers are FIRST in the NL in ERA, OPS against, and almost every pitching category but wins on the road, and last in almost every one at home. I posted recently that it isn't entirely the park, but that's one weird stat, one deserving of consideration. The Phils score runs at home and get scored on at home. The prevent runs on the road but can't score much there. Go figure.

[Tom Goodman]

"The Phils score runs at home and get scored on at home."

Hmmm, maybe it's the park