Road To 10,000 Losses: The Circus

Road to 10,000 Losses is a countdown to the Phillies’ 10,000th loss, coming sometime later this year. With a 5-4 loss to the Nationals yesterday, the Phillies stand at 9965 losses, only 35 away from 10,000.

I’ve written before about how it’s perfect the Phillies will be hitting loss number 10,000 this season because they are finding new ways to lose each and every game so far this season. There are plenty of ways to lose a baseball game. But if the Phillies continue playing as poorly as they are this season, they might actually exhaust all those possibilities.

Last night in the top of the 11th inning, with a man on second and two outs, Cole Hamels — a pitcher pinch hitting because the Phillies were out of players — walked. Jimmy Rollins, one of the best Phillies’ players in this young season, came to the plate. Washington changed pitchers, and the TV broadcast went to commercial.

It wouldn’t have been bad enough — this is Philadelphia, after all — for Jimmy Rollins to ground out on the first pitch thrown by Ryan Wagner. No, instead Rollins ends the inning while Philadelphia fans watching on CN8 see a commercial for the circus.

This is appropriate, of course, given the Charlie Manuel/Howard Eskin circus Tuesday night. After the Phillies 8-1 loss, Eskin asked why Manuel didn’t yell at the players, causing Manuel to invite Eskin to his office and end his press conference. The two argued behind a closed door—”We’re gonna win!” “I hope so!”—before Manuel challenged him to a fight and had to be restrained. The best part of this exchange was Eskin telling Manuel to grow up, which was met with this response: “I been growed up.”

A manager doing what a lot of people would like to do to Howard Eskin is forgivable; hell, maybe it’s even laudable. But the Washington Post’s Dan Steinberg reports last night at RFK Stadium, the Phillies manager spent a good deal of time talking about Tuesday’s incident, answered nine baseball questions, then revealed Brett Myers was moving to the bullpen as a setup man.

This is, roughly, the equivalent of demoting Donovan McNabb to holder if he has two bad games to start next season. But it’s appropriate to move Myers, the opening day starter, to the bullpen, since last year’s opening day starter, Jon Lieber, will come out of the bullpen to replace Myers in the rotation.

Moving Myers to the awful, awful bullpen might not be such a bad idea. But if the move’s a good one, it’s one that should have been done in spring training, not as a desperation move 12 games into the season. Charlie Manuel apparently brought this club into the season completely unprepared to start the regular season; it’s okay, though, since he’s absolutely completely unprepared as well.

In August 2005, I wrote an article about Manuel which was pretty nice to the man. And this year’s disaster isn’t really his fault: The Phillies’ spent the offseason pretty much just hiring Pat Gillick’s friends. Getting old players Gillick once had as a GM elsewhere hasn’t really worked out.

But, in that 2005 article, I wrote about how Manuel didn’t understand the double switch, a common baseball move. Guess what? He still doesn’t understand it, as evidenced by a game last week where reliever Geoff Geary came to bat late in a game.

The hitting, though, that can’t be saved by double switching. That inning that ended with Phillies fans seeing the circus commercial included a near home run by Aaron Rowand that bounced off the top of the wall and ended up a double. The Phillies have been walking at a near-record rate this season—6.15 walks a game, the major league record is 5.39—but the walks aren’t scoring.

The Phillies went 1-for-11 with runners in scoring position last night, as the go-ahead run got to third in the 9th and 10th and to second in the 11th. They’ve left 131 runners on base this season, most for a team in its first 13 games since 1970. The Phillies actually rallied to tie the game in the top of the 9th on an RBI groundout by Carlos Ruiz, but ended up losing in—of course—a boring way in the 13th, as Felipe Lopez’ hit a, uh, walk-off sacrifice fly.

Since most fans probably turned the game off once it hit extra innings, most of the Phillies talk today will still revolve around the Eskin/Manuel dustup. Oddly enough, I’d guess Charlie Manuel might have saved his job for at least a few weeks with his outburst. The Phillies certainly don’t want to make it look like Howard Eskin got Charlie Manuel fired, do they?