The numbers don't lie

In June and August, Cliff Lee has pitched better than anyone in baseball history.

What about the other three months of the year?

I admit I have seen no one else try to answer that question, because it's not a normal practice to search for flaws with the best team in baseball - particularly after Hunter Pence's arrival put the offense back on track.

However, I feel it's a very important question when it comes to the quest for a World Series title. No one would argue that the rotation of Lee, Roy Halladay, Cole Hamels and Roy Oswalt/Vance Worley is easily the most intimidating of any playoff-bound team in the last dozen years, but if those guys aren't pitching up to their reputations, the road to the top gets murkier.

Here is why I'm concerned about Lee:

June 6-28, Aug. 4-Sept. 6 - 11-0 0.30 ERA, 1 HR

April, May & July - 5-7, 4.22 ERA, 14 HR (the Phillies went 8-9 in those 17 starts by Lee)

I present the above evidence for anyone saying that Lee is deserving of the Cy Young Award. He definitely deserved it in 2008 because he dominated throughout the entire season. I find it much harder to back someone who is only great 40 percent of the time.

While Halladay and Hamels have been consistently effective all season (the run differential between each of their best and worst months is less than two), Lee has been incredibly streaky. This isn't uncommon for him, but the problem is when he's not pitching his best, he's barely an average pitcher, and the rust takes a while to shake off. Don't get me wrong, Lee has carried his weight overall this season, but if he takes another dip in the playoffs and another starter has a bad outing, things could go wrong very quickly.

We all remember how stellar Lee was in the 2009 postseason, when he almost single-handedly pitched us into the World Series. He finished 4-0 in five playoff starts with a 1.56 ERA. He picked up the only two wins in the series against the New York Yankees.

Lee began the 2010 postseason much the same way with the Texas Rangers. He won his first three starts, allowing just two runs and striking out 34 in 24 innings. The wheels came off in the World Series, however. He lost Games 1 & 5 and coughed up 10 runs to a San Francisco Giants team that had averaged just three runs per game over the first two rounds of the playoffs.

That begs the question, which Lee are we going to get in October this season? With a 10.5-game lead over the Atlanta Braves, we can afford a bad Lee over the next few weeks. That way, he can recover in time to pitch like he did two years ago.

All Good Things...

Pat "The Bat" Burrell is headed back to the World Series, but unfortunately for the white-rally-towel twirlers, not as a member of the Phillies.

Brotherly love wasn't enough for the boys in red pinstripes as they saw their season end with a 3-2 loss in Game 6 of the NLCS to the San Francisco Giants, who needed to beat the San Diego Padres on the final day of the regular season just to make the playoffs.

Now the two teams that were expected to meet again in the World Series for the second straight year will both be watching from home. An offensive blackout led to the demise of the both the Phillies and the Yankees, though the writing was on the wall for Philadelphia.

Injuries took a heavy toll on the Phillie hitters for a significant part of the regular season. While the addition of Roy Oswalt led to a dramatic turnaround over the last two months and another NL East title, that same old magic that carried the team through the previous two postseasons was nowhere to be found. And playoff teams that boast some of the best pitching in baseball took a note from the Yankees on just how to handle such a dangerous lineup.

It was no surprise, then, that Ryan Howard was the strikeout victim who ended Philly's 2010 dreams.

Howard is now first or tied for first for the most strikeouts in two separate postseason series, and drove in nary a run from the clean-up spot this October. Since his infamous whiffing in the 2009 Fall Classic, the Big Piece has struck out in 30 of his 56 playoff at-bats. That means that in more than half his trips to the plate, the man who is paid $20 million per year to crush balls over the fence didn't even put the ball in play. Of the 26 times Howard managed knock the ball between the lines, only one left the yard.

Ironically, Howard was the only starter in the lineup to hit better than .300 in the postseason this year, though he was typically all alone on the basepahts. Raul Ibanez was a distant second with a .226 average. Carlos Ruiz, who had never hit below .262 in any previous postseason, was dead last at .192.

As Charlie Manuel explained, the Phillies were too concerned with working the count, rather than being selective. They stood and stared at too many fastballs down the middle of the plate, making it easier for pitchers to get them to chase at breaking balls that tailed out of the zone. Combined, Cincinnati and San Francisco held Philadelphia to 3.7 runs per game - compared to 4.6 in '08 and 5.5 last year - and not even the likes of Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels can carry you to a championship with that kind of production.

The beleaguered Phillies pitching staff still consistently put the team in a position to win. Aside from Game 3, each one of Philadelphia's losses in the NLCS could have gone the other way. It was basically the Giants coming up with the big hits, and some would add Halladay not getting the start in Game 4. No one can predict what would've happened in that scenario, but as close as each game was, such decisions loom very large.

But the shadows cast on the end of this season will quickly fade, as the sun shines brightly on a new day for the Phillies in 2011. All three elements of H2O are returning, as well as the entire starting lineup, aside from the likely departing Jayson Werth. Should the corner outfielder follow in Burrell's footsteps and find his way back to the Fall Classic with another team, the Phillies hope that when he gets there, they will be staring him down from the opposing dugout.

Reds get a lump of Cole

It wasn't that long ago when the Phillies experienced the hurt they just put on the Cincinnati Reds in the Division Series.

It was 2007 and a fairly young Philly team made a surprise trip to the postseason for the first time in more than a decade. Leading the way was experienced manager Charlie Manuel, who was in the third season of a job that finally paid the dividends the higher-ups were hoping for. Just as quickly as the Phillies realized their dream, it was snatched away by a three-game sweep.

Since then, Philadelphia has done nothing but win in the playoffs, and it showed an untested Cincinnati team and its veteran manager how it's done.

Twenty-six-year-old Cole Hamels locked up his team's third consecutive trip to the National League Championship Series with a pitching performance on Sunday that arguably exceeded any of his stellar starts during the 2008 postseason. He allowed just five hits and struck out nine in a 2-0 win. Hamels threw the second complete-game shutout for the "Big Three" in the series, proving that even if two of the three are dominating, the Phillies are still unbeatable.

Hamels often found himself on the wrong side of these kind of games during the regular season, but the October Phillies are a different breed from the first-half Phillies. They come up big when it matters the most. Shane Victorino made a game-saving grab, Chase Utley hit his 10th career postseason home run and Hamels took care of the rest.

The crafty left-hander said after the game that his overwhelming success at the hitter-friendly Great American Ballpark - he's now 7-0 there - could be partially attributed to that fact that it was the site of his first big league start back in 2006. The Reds have improved a great deal since then, but they ran into an even more refined Hamels. The perfection of his cut fastball in the latter half of this season added a new weapon to set up his deadly changeup, which had Cincinnait's right-handers hitters fooled all night.

As good as their pitching has been, the Phillies would be the first ones to admit that they're still not firing on all cylinders. Nearly half of their 13 runs scored over the three games were provided by the opposition. The shallow dimensions of Great American were barely enough to take Utley's homer, the first long ball of the postseason for Philadelphia. The team knows it can hit much better than this, and a better outing from Roy Oswalt also wouldn't hurt. His first playoff start in five years turned out like his first start as a Phillie, but he went 7-0 after July 30 so a better outing in the NLCS is very likely.

The players in Philly know to ignore all the great hype surrounding them, but thus far they're on track to prove the prognosticators correct. The Atlanta Braves and San Francisco Giants - two other teams that have returned to the playoffs after long absences - are in the midst of an uncomfortable battle, and whichever group advances, they know the road only gets harder against a dangerous Phillies team that's now won six of its last seven series on the big stage.

Braves tripped up

Philadelphia Phillies fans from Mars hate the Atlanta Braves more than ever now after one of their own got taken out.

The Phillies may have won Monday night to stretch their winning streak to eight games and take a four-game lead in the division. Cole Hamels may have continued his second-half brilliance. Carlos "Chooch" Ruiz may now be one of the most beloved catchers in all of baseball for his barrage of clutch hits.

But the night belonged to Braves left fielder Matt Diaz. The hot corner was moved back about 200 feet, as Diaz made a sensational diving catch in the first inning, and then caused a nutty Philadelphia fan covered from head to toe in a red, skin-tight outfit to take a dive in the seventh.

The Golden Rule for players when fans run onto the field is to steer clear, lest they run with violent motives in their head. Diaz chose to ignore the rule and took matters into his own hands, running up on the guy from behind taking him out with a nudge and a trip. He could see the taser-less security guards weren't going to catch up to the fan, and really, where could he have hidden a weapon in that get-up?

Jayson Werth and Brian McCann laughed in appreciation of Diaz's fearless act after watching from home plate, and Philadelphia fans in the left field seats gave him a standing ovation. During the heat of a postseason race, it was a perfect gesture of solidarity and sportsmanship. Fans and players alike can't stand when some fool further delays a game so many people already call too slow. It disrupts the flow of the action and breaks the players' concentration. All they can do in a situation like that to express their contempt is stand and stare at the offender with their hands on their hips. Diaz finally decided to utilize his hips in another way, and more power to him.

Diaz also collected one of the six hits allowed by Hamels in a game that could've easily ended in a 3-1 win for the Braves, rather than 3-1 the other way. With a runner on in the top of the seventh inning, Martin Prado missed a towering three-run homer by about a foot down the left field line. Hamels got him to ground into a double play - one of the three on the night - on the very next pitch to end the threat. Errors by Jason Heyward and McCann led to two unearned runs for Philadelphia in the fifth. Those proved to be the difference.

The Phillies stayed true to their formula of looking lost at the plate against a rookie. The momentum of scoring at least five runs in each of their last four games couldn't help them against the untested arm of Brandon Beachy, who was called up to make his major league debut after a sore knee made Jair Jurrjens a late scratch. Beachy surrendered only an RBI double to Ruiz before the mistake-prone fifth inning led to his exit.

The Atlanta bullpen, which boasts the second-best ERA in the majors (3.02) behind San Diego, pitched 3 2/3 innings of one-hit ball. The Braves' bullpen is their big advantage over the Phillies, but they hope the relievers won't be needed as much over the next two games of the series.

The Philly offense has failed to score more than three runs in 16 of Hamels' 31 starts this season, but he has won his last four and though the numbers weren't on their side tonight, the Phillies won their eighth straight. They also won their 90th game and with 11 left to play this season, it's the quickest they've done so since 1993. It's got to be hard not to imagine the glory of yet another division title as the reality of that comes more into focus with each passing day.

In the meantime, the Phillies will gear up for the second game of the series, tip their hat to Diaz and ban all Martian landings in Citizens Bank Park through the rest of the year.

Bad timing

Mike Sweeney notched his first big hit in a Phillies uniform Thursday night. Stepping to the plate with two on and two out, he yanked a 1-2 offering from Sergio Romo past a diving Pablo Sandoval (the ground shook as Kung Fu Panda fell upon it) for a two-run double.

Had this been either one of Cole Hamels' previous two outings, it would have been a walk-off hit.

Instead, Hamels put the Phillies in an early 5-0 hole - not even providing them a chance to try and give him support - and they failed to pick up any ground on the Braves, who lost earlier in the day to the Nationals. It was just the third time this season Hamels allowed at least five earned runs. Hopefully, he wasn't scoreboard watching, because if this was his nervous response to pitching in an important game, it's going to be a bumpy road through September.

Hamels did not look comfortable on the mound, as San Francisco knocked him around to the tune of three runs on four hits. Rookie phenom catcher Buster Posey hit the first of two RBI doubles off him, and the damage could have been even worse had it not been for an inning-ending double play. Hamels made it through just five innings and 86 pitches before Charlie Manuel pulled the plug. Setting the Giants down in order in his final frame didn't make any difference.

Jonathan Sanchez took the Gaints rotation off life support, taking a one-hit shutout into the ninth inning. The only guy who gave him trouble was Shane Victorino, who went 2-for-3 with a walk. It wasn't until he was lifted that the Phillies finally started to show their own signs of life, and it was too little, too late for the fans who made up the 100th consecutive shutout at Citizens Bank Park and biggest sellout crowd of the season. They all had a big reason to come out and support their team, which sported baseball's best record (20-5) since July 22, and the second-best home record of the season behind Atlanta. Instead of celebrating, 45,000 exited the stadium scratching their heads.

It is just one loss, which is unavoidable in this game, but in the climate of playing from behind at this stage in the season, each defeat is magnified and dissected and feels like a momentum-destroyer. It's the playoff itch that can't be satisfied until the winners are decided. Until then, raw skin will be the result.

Luckily, some positive news concerning Ryan Howard may provide some ointment. He has been cleared to start his rehab assignment with Class A Lakewood and could rejoin the team as early as Sunday. The Phillies can't wait to get him back into the cleanup spot, as his .292 average is the highest since his MVP year in 2006 and his 81 RBI were leading the NL went he went down. Keeping fingers and toes crossed, the Big Man's return will give Philadelphia its full starting lineup for the first time since May 21.

We will get by

Now THAT was more like it.

The last time Cole Hamels had a shaky outing (June 26 against Toronto) his team scored just one run for him. Tonight, the hitters kept on battling as the lead bounced back and forth.

The Phillies scored multiple runs in four different innings, and a potent, but impatient Diamondbacks lineup couldn't keep up. And the 3-5 hitters in Philadelphia's order, the constant source of scrutiny and frustration since late May? They went 6-for-11 with two bombs, six RBI and five runs scored. Please sir, can I have some more?

Jayson Werth finally went yard again, and you can expect some more of that in the near future. His jacks always come in bunches, and his signature blast is the one that lands in the center field vines at Citizens Bank Park. Raul Ibanez is working on a six-game hitting streak, batting .429 (9-for-21) in the span. He's also driven in at least one run in his last four starts. The 3-hole seems to be agreeing with him.

A 3-0 loss to the Strasburg-less Nationals can't be a good sign for the Braves, as their seven-game lead in the NL East has been chopped in half in less than a week. It's looking more and more like the Phillies will be nothing but spectators as the Trade Deadline nears, so they can't let up.

In the midst of all this success, Philly lost another key piece for at least a few days as Shane Victorino left in the seventh inning with an oblique muscle strain. The way things have been going, I was waiting for the next starter to go down, and I'm not surprised it's Victorino. He made trips to the DL in 2007 and '08 after constantly pushing his small frame to the limit with his blazing speed in the outfield and around the bases. A warning light goes off in my head whenever I hear about an oblique injury. I didn't even know what an oblique muscle was until 2006 when Albert Pujols was sidelined for a month with an injury to his, ending what would have otherwise been a career year (and would probably have cost Ryan Howard his first and so far only MVP award).

The Phillies shouldn't let this stop their current surge, and Jimmy Rollins (sore left foot) should be back on the field by the end of the week. As I alluded to in a post last week, the lineup will do just fine with Placido Polanco hitting leadoff.

The only problem is with Victorino out, Werth is no longer a bargaining chip for an upper-tier starting pitcher, and he's the best one Philadelphia had. Then again, if he really is heating up, would Ruben Amaro want to trade him anyway? The Phillies are still near the top of the list of teams who may land Roy Oswalt, but no matter how interested the Houston Astros may be in J.A. Happ, or how many young prospects the Phillies are willing to part with, I can't see Oswalt wanting to play in Philadelphia. It would give him a shot at another World Series appearance, no doubt, but he can get that much closer to home.

However, if a deal is somehow made and Oswalt becomes a Phillie, Amaro might finally silence his critics.

Throw a Cole on the fire

I would be remiss not to at least share my feelings on the announcement of minor league players now getting tested for HGH. When I first learned about this particular hormone a few years back, I was appalled baseball wasn't testing for it along with steroids. As far as I was concerned, HGH gives players even more incentive to cheat because not only was it not being tested, but it didn't swell the muscles and the head to alarming sizes. The drop in power numbers across baseball would suggest that the steroids policy was enough to deter most players from using any performance-enhancing drugs, but this latest step may help cleanse the sport completely. I'm all for it.

Before Cole Hamels went to bed last night, his next start staring him in the face, he knew that he was now a member of a three-man rotation for all intents and purposes. That's a wild notion, let alone reality, and quite a burden on a young pitcher. No one knows how long these thoughts kept Hamels awake last night, but when he stepped off the mound after eight innings of one-hit ball against the streaking St. Louis Cardinals, he appeared like he'd had the best night of sleep in his life.

It was a performance that should've guaranteed a win for the Phillies, but like so many similar performances this season, they gave Hamels nothing and kept all of us biting our nails. To be fair, the Phillies were facing an elite pitcher in Adam Wainwright, but they hit him all game. He admitted afterward that he didn't have his best stuff, but no pitcher has really needed his best stuff against Philadelphia over the last two months.

As the game moved into extra innings, I still couldn't see this falling the Phillies' way, despite how lost the Cardinals looked at the plate. The game was in St. Louis and the momentum still seemed to fall on the home team's side.

It turned out that nine innings of just one hit were too many beatings on the confidence, and Placido Polanco was due to hit one out. Even after his shot, the Phillies managed to string enough baserunners together to tack on another run. The swing on Jayson Werth's RBI double carried the awkwardness of a man whose name had never been thrown around so much for all the wrong reasons, and who had previously been 0-for-18 with runners in scoring position, but it got the job done. How ironic it would be if this was the win that finally led to the right track for a team Werth might not even be a part of by next week.

I will not make such a claim yet, however. Even the worst teams in baseball don't lose all of their games, and Philadelphia has lost four of its last five series, making an anomaly out of that sweep of the Reds before the All-Star Break. Past experience also suggests that the Phillies were supposed to win this game. The two previous times they fell to two games over .500 this season, they won their next game to avoid a complete collapse. It's almost like the Phils are playing Russian Roulette with their season and they haven't yet pulled the trigger with the bullet in the chamber.

The team is hoping that a new starting pitcher will remove the bullet altogether, but I'm not convinced such a move will sweep in drastic changes. Just looking at the past couple of years, top-notch arms that were traded mid-season went to teams that were already playing well. When CC Sabathia was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers in July 2008, they were sitting in second place nine games above .500 and just 3.5 back in the NL Central. The Phillies weren't far removed from a 10-game winning streak and had a six-game lead in the NL East when they picked up Cliff Lee last year.

The Phils aren't in the midst of a run this time around, and the arms available aren't of the caliber of Lee or Sabathia. They can't even score runs for the two aces they already have.

But there is good news. Philadelphia finally returns home after nearly two weeks, and after a 2-6 road trip, is somehow in second place. The Phillies sport an encouraging 27-18 record at Citizens Bank Park, and their recent victory, the roar of the home crowd and the sight of the Liberty Bell in right center have to stir up some optimism. The Phillies need all they can get right now, because there's a real possibility with the maximized budget and tight grip on the few prospects they have left that no new pitcher will don the pinstripes before July 31.

Polly gets his cracker

Wow, guy's first game back from the DL. It almost seemed like it was supposed to happen that way.

It was Placido Polanco's only hit of the game, and it started the Phillies' four-run rally in game that came within one out of their third straight loss to the Cubs. Polly got some help on the other end, as Brian Schneider was out by a mile after trying to score from second base, but Geovany Soto let the excitement of a game-ending tag get the best of him. He barely allowed the ball to deflect off the top of his glove before he went lunging for his counterpart. In Bob Uecker's ironical vain, Schneider would have been "out by an eyelash," at the plate, but he instead scored the Phils' tying run.

Sadly, it's becoming routine in the eighth and ninth innings to beg the Phillies to keep rallies going because you never know which Brad Lidge you're going to get in the ninth. Luckily, patience above all else led to the promised land. Five of the nine batters in the frame drew walks, including a rare one from Jimmy Rollins. And though Jayson Werth couldn't put the ball in play, it was refreshing to see him do something else in a crucial, late-game moment than strike out.

I must also give big props to Raul Ibanez for tearing down the line on a weak grounder to Derek Lee that turned into an RBI infield single when James Russell couldn't cover first base in time. Much has been made of Ibanez's lack of contributions to the team, but he's one guy who will bust out of that batter's box on contact, no matter where the ball is headed. He doesn't look 38 years old running down the line either.

There were so many good things to like about that inning, and the Phillie lineup is nearly whole again with Polanco back in there, but the offense continues to sputter along. Cole Hamels is looking better with every start, but the hitters didn't give him a single run. This was his eighth quality start of the season that did not result in a winning decision. Had Soto waited a fraction of a second longer, Hamels' 2010 record would have fallen below .500 yet again. Roy Halladay can definitely relate.

Doc and Hamels are the Philly's two best pitchers, but they are a combined 17-14 on the year. The Phillies have given them each an average of less than four runs per game, compared to nearly six for Jamie Moyer and Kyle Kendrick. You can't expect the aces to keep piling up the goose eggs on the scoreboard every single time out.

OK...I expect that from Halladay, and we'll see what the Phillies give him tomorrow against Cubs hurler Tom Gorzelanny. The odds don't look good as the Philly bats mustered just three hits off him in a loss on May 19, and that was in one of the seven games this season they had all the regulars in the lineup. They need to break their current trend soon or they'll need binoculars to see how far ahead the Braves are in the division.

A clean victory

I hope millions of other people are just as outraged as I am by the latest commercial Pizza Hutt has dished out. Two Little Leaguers are sitting in their team's dugout after a game, giddily telling the viewers that their coach rewards every loss with a trip to the famous restaurant. They all but admit that this mouth-watering gesture gives them incentive to lose. This is some of the worst marketing I've ever seen, and I curse the people that allowed it to see the light of day. Viewed another way, the commercial is a biting critique on how the Unites States educates its children. It's no secret that child obesity is reaching epidemic levels, and the amount of unhealthy food ads thrown at our youth today is appalling. No wonder they're lagging behind almost every other developed nation in the classroom. We see our unfit, uninspired preteen slumped on the couch surrounded by half-eaten snacks and lost in whatever world Playstation has dreamed up, and rather than pulling the plug and encouraging him/her to get outside and experience life, we laugh to ourselves, marvel at the child's hand-eye coordination and say, "We never had anything like that when I was growing up." Believe me, you're better off without it, and so is your kid.

It's good to see the Phillies win with Roy Halladay on the hill like they're supposed to. They only gave him three runs, but that was enough tonight against the first-place Braves. It was also good to see two of those runs supplied by Greg Dobbs' two-run shot that gave the Phils their first lead in the sixth inning. If anyone needed to come through, it was him. He was able to straighten out yesterday's monster foul ball in Pittsburgh.

More importantly, Philadelphia had its first error-free game since Halladay's last start June 30. Four straight games with at least one defensive miscue is not very Phillie-like, and nothing gets under a pitcher's skin more than the guys behind him giving the opposition an extra out. Just ask Cole Hamels about Game 2 of last year's NLCS.

Speaking of Hamels, he's on tomorrow night and he'll need to be just as sharp as Halladay. You never know how many runs the Phillies will score these days, and you can't break this momentum. The Reds are next in line and are just as determined to keep their lead in the Central.