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Chills

US CAN!!!

In Which The Universe Continues To Screw With Philadelphia

Yes, I know.  This is an Eagles blog.  Roger that.  There's a reason I don't try to cover the Phillies or Penn State or the weather (ha!) or anything else in this space. 

All Eagles all the time.

Except right now.  Because -- and you'll have to forgive me for this -- this is the closest those of us in the 30(ish) age group have ever come to a championship we could actually remember. 

Which means this morning, yes, I read the Eagles coverage, but only after I checked out everything I could find on the Phillies.  And this evening, rather than spending time writing up tomorrow's no doubt scintillating statistical examination of the Eagles' recent trend for not beating teams quite as badly as maybe they ought to, I made dinner, plopped down in front of the television, and prepared to either scream my head off in celebration or start to get very, very worried about the rest of this week.

What I did NOT expect, however, was the great cosmic screwoff we just got tonight.  I mean, seriously, can we please for the love of Andy just put this thing away? 

Here's the central problem with being a Philadelphia fan.  It's not that our teams never win.  Oh no, it's that because they never win, we can't even enjoy it when they do. 

The Phillies are up 3-1.  They have four chances to score versus only three for the Rays.  Our bullpen has been lights out all series.  Even if we don't put this away tomorrow (or Wednesday?) we still have two more chances. 

And I feel sick.

We'reThisClose

I literally can't believe this is happening.  And I do mean literally, in the sense that I still don't believe it. 

Can this finally be the time?  Will the city finally get its championship?

You know you're a Philly fan when (#6,376):  Your team is up 3-1, finally starting to tear the cover off the ball, has its best pitcher on the mound tonight and you're thinking, "Uh-oh, this is one heck of a set-up." 

What A Crowd

Awesome showing by the Bank fans tonight.  Brought it all game.

And that was a heck of a game.

Pat The Bat?

Yeah, I know, football blog and all, but I couldn't let this Rich Hofmann story go unremarked upon.  Let's cut right to the chase:

Since 2000, when Burrell broke in with the Phillies, there are only 23 players who have hit at least 200 homers and driven in at least 750 runs. He is one of them. Alex Rodriguez, Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez, Albert Pujols, Pat Burrell - all on the same chart.

And then at the bottom of the story he then helpfully goes on to provide that chart.

Now I'm not what you'd call a real baseball stat head, but doesn't focusing entirely on home runs and RBIs seem like it's putting a bit too much weight on just two, not particularly comprehensive stats?  If you look at the list, you see that Todd Helton is "ranked" one spot above Burrell.  So they're pretty much the same player, right?

Uh, no.  Burrell's career OPS is .859 (which isn't bad).  Helton's is 1.005.  And yes, ballparks effects, but there's a 22-point gap in the their OPS+ as well.

Hofmann is also just using cumulative numbers from a very specific date range, which makes the comparison even more meaningless.  You won't find either Chase Utley or Ryan Howard on that list (yet), but you're not going to get many people arguing that those guys haven't been better than Burrell the last few years.

Besides, the problem with Burrell has never been that he isn't a pretty good hitter.  It's that being a pretty good hitter and being an underachiever are not mutually exclusive labels.

Take it away, Tom.

Great Profile Of "Nails"

In honor of opening day, here's an unbelievable New Yorker profile of Lenny Dykstra and his newest non-sports venture.  It advances the stories a few years past the "Holy crap, Nails is a successful businessman???" stage.

Phree Phillies -- um -- Phreading?

There will be plenty to say about the Eagles for the next two weeks, but right now it's worth savoring everything we can about the Phillies.  Like BIll Lyon coming out of retirement to give us a little of the old magic.

If last night's play-in game was any indication, this is going to be a wild postseason. 

If you're looking for more info on the Phillies than you can find in the papers, I highly, highly recommend Balls, Sticks & Stuff.  Tom also runs a great sports pheed over there that captures articles from lots of Philly bloggers.