Results tagged “charliemanuel”

Remember that time when that cute little girl threw the foul ball away during that one Phillies game? Awwwww. Remember when Bruntlett had that amazing unassisted triple play and everyone forget how much he kind of sucked? Yesssss. The season may be over, but the voting and awards aren't yet! The 2009 This Year in Baseball Awards nominees have been announced and quite a few Phils are in the running. Take a gander and vote your brains out, Philly. It's what Jimmy's walk-off double would want you to do. Voting ends December 11th.

The Phillies advanced to the NLCS Tuesday night in true Philly fashion: by making the whole town cower in fear, waiting until the last minute, then pulling ahead by a margin so minuscule it could have easily been wiped out in the bottom of the 9th. Tonight our Fightin's square off against the Dodgers at 8:07 p.m for Game One of the series. If the last few games serve as any indication, you might want to keep a barf bag nearby. (Note to the Phillies: It's not exciting when the wins come down to the wire, it's just nerve-wracking. Stop doing that and get big leads early instead. Then keep them. Please and thank you.)

The MLB announced the roster for the All Star game this past weekend. The Phils pulled out with three roster spots sending Chase Utley, Raul Ibanez and Ryan Howard. And at the helm of this year's National League All Stars team is our very own Charlie Fuqua.

A week's worth of hijinks thanks to our friend Craig...

Ah, the transience of the MLB off-season. I, for one, am sitting on the outfield fence this year. It does seem like it was just yesterday that I was on Broad Street, climbing all over every male friend that I have in attempts to gain a bird’s-eye view of what a City of Champions truly looked like. (I mostly just got a face-full of aerial Bud Heavies and some wayward champagne spray, but I figured that came with the territory.)

Who needs an RSS feed when you have us? Bringing you best of the 215's this week...

I was eight years old when my dad woke me up in the middle of the night to watch Mitch Williams strike out Bill Pecota and send the Phillies to the 1993 World Series. The following week in school, I taught myself to draw the Phillies’ logo for the construction-paper pennants we hung in the windows. To this day, it’s the only thing I can still successfully draw aside from a rather pathetic looking Dachshund.

You gotta give Derek Lowe some credit for taking it like a man. After his sinkerball silenced the Phillies’ bats for five innings, he hung a few up in the zone and suddenly the Dodgers were trailing the game. Even though those homers were just over the wall, he didn’t blame the ballpark. Even though Shane Victorino only got on base in the sixth because of a botched play by Rafael Furcal, Lowe didn’t fume and call out his players like John Lackey did in the Angels-Red Sox series.

It’s still hard to believe. The Phillies have found their way into October, alive and thriving. And they are National League East champions. Sounds a little foreign, but we’d be lying if there wasn’t a sweeter sound in Philadelphia. The moment when Brett Myers struck out Wily Mo Pena, threw his glove straight into the air, and his teammates mobbed him was a defining moment for this Phillyist. After years of hearing Harry Kalas drone...

Coming off a three-game sweep of the Mets, the Phillies headed to Kansas City to face the second worst team in baseball. “Hello, two sweeps in a row,” we thought. Our confidence soared as Ryan Howard hit a two-run home run in the first inning. “They’re not even putting up a fight,” we said, comfortably smirking. Until Freddy Garcia started pitching, with a strained right shoulder. Garcia didn't make it through two innings before he had given up six runs, en route to an 8-4 loss.

To clear up any speculation of bias, we at Phillyist absolutely love the Phillies. Pat Burrell? Not so much.

already. We might be projecting here.)

We admit that we shut off last night's Phillies game in disgust. (This seems to be turning into a pattern with us, although this should surprise no one, given the Phightin's 3-9 start - a start that makes "lackluster" look like "on fire." Seriously, they're off to their worst start since 1997, a season so bad that we gave up and started paying attention to the Pirates.)

Phillyist paid another visit to the nation's capital on Tuesday, and took in the first game of the Phillies-Nationals series along with a humidity-drenched crowd of 25,735 that yet again included a significant number of Phillies fans. While much has been made of the fact that Phillies don't play any games against teams over .500 for the rest of the season, the Nationals boast two quite good players in leadoff slugger Alfonso Soriano and possible Rookie of the Year Ryan Zimmerman.

After two excruciating losses, the Phillies beat the Mets this afternoon at Shea Stadium, 5-3, to avoid the series sweep and come back home for the weekend on a high note. The Fightins' got on the board early thanks to first inning homers from Bobby Abreu and Ryan Howard, but similar to the last two games, gave up the lead in the next inning, and the game was tied at 3-3 until the seventh.

Friday: Cole Hamels makes his major league debut with 4 2/3 scoreless innings to help the Phillies win 8-4 over the Cincinnati Reds.

We had so much hope in Ryan Madson, the hot young thing that could be the stable leg in the Phillies' starting rotation. Wrong. He got shelled last night for nine runs, and it only took him an inning and some change to do it. Hey, we know it happens, but this is a bad time for a Phillies pitcher to self-destruct early in a game, especially with a bullpen that’s already overtaxed. They managed to hold the Nats to one more run for a 10-4 loss, which give the Phillies a whopping 2-7 record at home.

Last night when Phillyist was looking up some baseball stats, we found this cool link to a database of major league baseball uniforms. The database allows you to search for the uniforms of desired teams by league, city, and range of years, and then displays the home and road uniforms of the team for each year in the range.

The Philadelphia Phillies entered their weekend series needing a sweep of the Washington Nationals to keep hope alive in their Wild Card chase. They got their sweep, but unfortunately, they needed something else: the Cubs to take three of four from the Houston Astros in Texas. While the Cubs were able to take the first two games from the Astros, they dropped the last two games, sending the Phillies home for the winter.

Every local sports columnist and TV anchor tried to remind us heading into the weekend that the Cincinatti Reds put an end to the Phillies' playoff hopes these past two years. They all seemed dead-on Friday night as the Phillies blew a 6 - 1 lead to fall behind the Reds, 10 - 6. The Phillies, it seems, had blown it again.

It's happened a few times this season: Charlie Manuel makes a bad move. Bill Dancy makes an even worse move. An Ed Wade acquisition, like David Bell or Michael Tucker (better yet, David Bell AND Michael Tucker), hits into a key double play.

Jimmy Rollins extended his league-leading hit streak last night against the Atlanta Braves, but that was about the only thing that went right for the Phillies. The Fightin's lost 4 - 1 against the Braves last night in Atlanta, leaving them two games behind the Houston Astros, who beat up on the Pittsburgh Pirates. Both teams have 11 games left this season. The Marlins, sitting in third place in the Wild Card race, lost to the New York Mets in 12 innings and now find themselves three games back of the Astros.

We came, we saw, we wasted time at work. Here's a look at the ever growing Philly blogosphere:

Phils fans were happy - jubilant, even - for just a little while last night. It started with a two-run Bobby Abreu homer that tied the game at 5. The ball was smashed to center field and many fans probably imagined that the clutch eighth inning homer was drilled right down the through of Howard Eskin. The throat of Howard Eskin being A.J. Finch's catching mitt, obviously.

If we were old school, we'd believe in baseball gods and Skip Bayless. If were nu skool, we'd believe in Stephen A. Smith and Moneyball. But we sit comfortably in between, so we believe in heartbreaking baseball and anyone but Charlie Manuel.

The Phillies capped off a terrible Labor Day weekend with a heartbreaking loss to the Houston Astros last night, 4-3. The game seemed to get out of hand immediately as an error, as well as two Brett Myers walks, led to four first-inning runs for the Astros. Last week, we agreed with disputed lanky columnist Phil Sheridan that Myers was beginning to look like the team's ace. We started to doubt ourselves after the first inning last night, but Myers came through afterwards, shutting down the Houston bats for the next six innings. Meanwhile, Sheridan don't gotta believe.

Much maligned Phillies third baseman has been able to stave off the critics a bit this week. The other night, Bell's two-RBI single helped the Phillies to a much-needed win over the Mets. Last night, Bell stepped up with the bases loaded and two out and hit a grand slam, launching the Phils to a 7-1 win over the Washington Nationals. The win left the Phillies four games behind the NL East leading Atlanta Braves. The Phillies sit one-half game over the Houston Astros in the National League Wild Card chase.

. It’s the second in a row of Lieber’s starts where the he had pitched an excellent game and the team could not score a few runs to get him the win. In his last start before last night, the Phillies lost 1-0 to the Dodgers; last night, they lost 2-1 to the Astros. Just score some freaking runs and give this guy a break! Phillies, you have no excuse for last night: you had all of your starters playing (except for Lieberthal, but that’s a good thing), you had an excellent game from Lieber, and you even had that ridiculously shallow 315-ft left-field wall.