These days,
when the St. Louis Cardinals face the Philadelphia Phillies, I find myself
circling the dates on my calendar. So far this season, the two teams have
provided nothing but great baseball drama.
The teams first
met in June with identical records of 40-28, both firmly established as early
contenders for their division. The first game of that series started on a Friday
the 13th, and appeared as though it might last all weekend, for the
Cardinals’ pitching staff exhausted itself in futile effort to find 27
outs. Supersub Aaron Miles had to take the mound as the sixth reliever,
and thankfully capped the onslaught at 20-2. However, the Cards shrugged off the
beating and took the final two games of the series, earning both victories by a
single run.
This series
sketched out a mythic conflict – pitting a powerful but mercurial force against
an undersized but opportunistic and relentless unit. To date, that 20-2
demolition stands as the Phillies’ high point of the season, in terms of runs
scored, division lead, and games over .500.
The second
series started, as does this one, with Phils’ ace lefty Colbert Hamels on the
mound, one of baseball’s most unhittable starting pitchers. This day in July
belonged to the oft-overlooked Joel Pineiro, though, as he kept the Phillies’
offense guessing while the Cardinals found two solo home runs – just enough to
win on a day that saw only three hits total for the Birds.
The strategy of
not scoring a lot of runs and hoping for pitching brilliance did not work well
the rest of the series, though, as Philadelphia took the last two, to retain a
slim division lead over the surging Mets.
They would end
up coughing up that lead, but not for very long as a recent five-game winning
streak piloted them from two games back to a game up on the New Yorkers.
Ironically,
this particular winning streak was ignited by abysmal outings from Hamels and
their newest starter, former A’s pitcher Joe Blanton. Hamels suffered his
shortest outing of the year, allowing nine runs to the Braves in a calamitous
fourth inning. Blanton fared little better, getting yanked before registering an
at-bat in his start the next day. However, the Phillies’ lineup erupted on both
occasions, overcoming a combined 11-run deficit to win both games and drive a
stake through the heart of the Braves’ season.
The acquisition
of Blanton was the latest deadline-deal folly perpetrated by the Phillies’ front
office, who has made some infamously bad deals in years past – most notably,
dealing Bobby Abreu and Cory Lidle to the Yankees in July 2006 for C-level prospects. Even
though they were on the other side of the fence this time, dealing prospects for
“proven major league talent,” the pitcher they received is perhaps no better
than the man he replaces in the rotation – Adam Eaton. And the talent they lost,
prospects Adrian Cardenas and Josh Outman, were ranked #2 and #5 in our
Scout.com Top 20 prospect list for Philadelphia in 2008.
Among his
pitching comparables entering his age-27 year, baseball-reference.com lists our
old friends Kip Wells and Jason Marquis. And Blanton rang up numbers this year
in the very pitcher-friendly confines in Oakland that would have made either man blush:
a 5-12 record with a rather pedestrian 4.96 ERA. Perhaps the only promising
number on his statistical ledger was a low rate of home runs allowed, a
not-surprising figure in the cavernous concrete tank known as the Network
Associates Coliseum.
Granted, he was
expected to be a reliable pack-horse, not a powerful white Arabian. For a team
desperate for innings from its rotation – only Hamels and Moyer are averaging
even six innings per start – acquiring a reliable “innings-eater” seemed sound
strategy. And eat he can. From 2004-06, the Oakland right-hander fattened up on 203, 192,
and 230 frames, pitching with general effectiveness and occasional brilliance
the whole way.
He has yet to
live up to his waistband, however. Since arriving in Philly, Blanton has
consumed a total of eight innings in two starts, coughing up seven runs and two
homers. Both times his team bailed him out for wins, wins that could just as
easily been enabled by the likes of J.A. Happ, their version of Mitchell Boggs.
In a trade
deadline that featured an unusual number of high-profile players sent back and
forth – perhaps the most exciting deadline since Carlos Beltran – the Cardinals
might have hoped to sneak in a low-profile acquisition or two, most notably to
boost their tired bullpen and revolving rotation.
However, as
this deal might prove once again, often it is better not to make a move,
especially when viable alternatives might exist already in your
system.
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