Ear-Lee Exit

For those hopelessly befuddled by the 2011 Phillies' failure to bring home a second world championship in four years, look no further than the man they brought in to do it.

And let's be honest, people. How often does the best team during the regular season actually win the World Series? The Phillies definitely weren't before they won it in 2008.

How can a team that wins 102 games lose in the first round of the playoffs? The 2001-02 A's know a little bit about that. It took the New York Yankees eight years to win it all again with the highest payroll, and the pitching juggernaut in Atlanta that won 14 straight division titles captured the ultimate trophy just once.

And be glad Ryan Howard's Achillies waited until the last out of the NLDS to give out on him. Sure he only had two hits in 19 at-bats, but he almost single-handedly won Game 1, and his 6 RBI in the Division Series were six more than he had in nine postseason games last year.

Sure, the offense could have been a little more consistent (just six total runs after the second inning of Game 2), but in my humble opinion, if you're going to point the finger at anyone, point it at Cliff Lee.

It's a fact that the Phillies would have won their fifth straight division title without Lee (they did it last year). Philadelphia brought the Anointed One back to shut down the opposition in the playoffs like he did for the team in 2009. Lee was the missing piece of the puzzle, ensuring the world title that everyone predicted would return to the City of Brotherly Love.

In Game 2, the Phillies did their part by handing Lee an early 4-0 lead. Such a lead should be plenty for the guy who went 4-0 in the postseason two years ago. A lot can happen in two years.

Lee didn't look anything like the guy he was in June and August. The streaky ace hit a dip at the absolute worst time, as the Cardinals pounded him for five runs on 12 hits in a come-from-behind win.

He pitches like the Phillies needed him to, and they're preparing to play the Brewers in the NLCS right now. That's the ugly nature of the five-game series. Lee himself said that loss was on him alone, and he was right.

In his last three postseason games - dating back to the 2010 Fall Classic - Lee is sporting an ERA of 7.13. He's an elite pitcher with a full arsenal of weapons to get guys out, but when he's not keeping the ball down or working the corners, those pitches are left in the middle of the plate for major league hitters to crush. Here's hoping his stuff is more effective next October.

I personally can't wait for it. The odds are always stacked against the best team in baseball, so I hope the Phillies beat them.

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.