DePhinitely Healthy

by char6587 on Oct 31, 2008 2:18 AM EDT

So obviously there are about 30,000 other reasons that we won, but I think the 30,001st might be how healthy we stayed this season. I know we discussed this a little earlier in the season, but I feel like it's worth a mention now.

Just to warn you, this is highly unscientific. Here is the list, in order, of how many players each ML team put on the DL (either the 15-day or the 60-day) this season. I realize that this doesn't take into account how important the players were who got injured, how long they were out for, how much of a difference the injury made in their game while back on the field, and a lot of other stuff that is likely very important in analyzing this correctly. BUT, I do think that it does a good job of representing how well this team stayed on the field. I don't know how much I believe in chemistry or any of that stuff, but I do think that consistently having your best players in the game has got to help somewhere along the line.

Phillies - 9

Brewers - 9

Astros - 10

Indians - 10

Mariners - 10

Pirates - 10

White Sox - 11

Twins - 11

Giants - 11

Diamondbacks - 12

Cubs - 13

Rockies - 15

Royals - 15

Angels - 15

Tigers - 16

Marlins - 17

Toronto - 17

Padres - 18

Red Sox - 20

Yankees - 20

Baltimore - 20

Mets- 22

Cardinals - 22

Reds - 22

Rays - 22

A's - 23

Braves - 24

Dodgers - 26

Rangers - 27

Nationals - 29

I don't know exactly what I'm trying to say, here. Mostly, I just think that it's really important that we all thank the baseball injury Gods every night for not throwing very many lightning bolts at our guys this year. Unlikely that we'll be so fortunate in the future. Go Phils!

via photos.upi.com

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also, in unrelated news, mike jacobs traded to the royals for Leo Núñez. yikes

by char6587 on Oct 31, 2008 2:21 AM EDT 0 recs

Glad to see the Royals are turning over a new leaf!

Wait a second…..

"When you get that nice celebration coming into the dugout and you're getting your ass hammered by guys - there's no better feeling than to have that done." - Matt Stairs 10/13/08

Gold... Pure Gold...

by foos05 on Oct 31, 2008 7:58 AM EDT up 0 recs

Fantastic point. I was thinking about this earlier today, and indeed have been, off and on, for a couple months now—mostly as in “damn, if they don’t win this year, it’s doubtful they’ll ever be this lucky with injuries again.”

Think about it. The only key guy they lost for a long period was Gordon, and that was somewhat expected—though it still took them about 6-8 weeks, and a few losses, before they addressed the problem when Madson started pitching out of his mind. Rollins missed a bit less than a month, Victorino, Werth and Feliz all about 2-3 weeks each. There were less key guys like Jenkins who had relatively mild injuries. And that was pretty much it.

The training staff did a tremendous job—it can’t be easy keeping guys like Hamels and Moyer ready to excel over a full-and-then-some season—and luck was a big factor.

by dajafi on Oct 31, 2008 1:17 PM EDT 0 recs

Thank you Scott Sheridan!! ALso, Thanks goes to Rich Dubee for making sure his pitchers didn’t develop bad throwing habits during the season. As we saw with Myers and Kendrick it is very easy to develop bad habits. IT is important for a pitching coach to recognize that and deal with it as quickly as possible.

by schrifty on Nov 1, 2008 10:23 AM EDT up 0 recs

As a Mets fan

this list makes me feel like .0001% better about this season, considering you and the Brewers were the teams that beat us out and had the least DL trips. That said, (and I have no idea why I’m pointing this out..maybe b/c it’s 6 in the morning and it’s better than writing a paper) but I will point out that your “big 4” (Rollins/Utley/Howard/Burrell) actually missed like 20 more games than our “big 4” (Wright/Reyes/Beltran/Delgado). Mostly that was Rollins, the other 7 all played 157+ games. I don’t know what any of this means, but the conclusion I keep coming to is “bullpen = important.”

Speaking of bullpens: I said before the season to anyone that would listen that Lidge didn’t have the mentality to close in Philly, and I still believe that: once he blows that first save…..

by cjmulrain on Nov 1, 2008 6:05 AM EDT 0 recs

Once he blows that first save what? He will only have a 98-99% success rate? I will take that

by schrifty on Nov 1, 2008 10:25 AM EDT up 0 recs

sorry

I was being sarcastic, but as I said, it was 6 in the morning, so what sounded funny in my head probably didn’t come out right. I simply meant it as “once he blows that first save, he’s gonna go into meltdown, 2006 mode” – it’s what I kept telling my old college roommate all season long (he’s a huge Phillies fan). Obviously, that never happened. But hey, there’s always next year (I can hope)!

by cjmulrain on Nov 1, 2008 3:21 PM EDT up 0 recs

I live in New York and, probably because I have so many friends who live and die with the Mets, I have warmer (or at least less bitterly hate-filled) feeling for them than a good 99.9 percent of Phillies fans. I watch at least a few dozen Mets games a year, as well as upwards of 120 Phils games, so I think I have a pretty good handle on both teams.

The big difference in 2008 was the bullpen, but that’s an artifact of the huge gap between the performances of the two GMs. In 2006, Omar Minaya couldn’t do any wrong: the Maine/Benson trade, the Jose Valentin and Endy Chavez pickups, the great relief work from Bradford, Feliciano and Sanchez. This year, he couldn’t do much right: in the tense last few weeks of the season, I kept coming back to the fact that the Mets, with their superb Wright/Reyes/Beltran/Santana core, were trying to win with guys like Luis Ayala and Brandon Knight and Ramon E. Martinez in vital roles.

Never mind that those guys basically suck anyway; it’s a terrible failure of planning to have to depend on them down the stretch. And it’s not like Omar shouldn’t have figured out how lousy his bullpen, beyond the injury risk Wagner, was by early summer. Pat Gillick by contrast was able to get equally cheap but much more effective in-season help from guys like Eyre and Stairs.

As for Lidge: it doesn’t matter if he never saves another game for the Phils. He had the greatest relief season in the team’s long history; he’s got a lifetime store of goodwill from 95 percent of the fans there.

by dajafi on Nov 1, 2008 3:01 PM EDT up 0 recs

right on

I have been saying for most of the past 2 weeks that, all other things staying the same, if the Mets and Phillies traded their bullpens straight up for one another, the Mets would have won the division by 5-10 games. And I don’t mean that as a knock on the Phillies, b/c to me that shows that Gillick did a great job building an entire team, while Omar did a great job building 2/3 of a team, and an absolutely brutal job on the other 1/3.

I’ll admit that prior to the season I didn’t think Lidge was gonna be that good, but he was obviously fantastic and IMHO your season MVP (I’ve never had an appreciation for how vital lock-down closers are until this year…I actually missed Armando Benitez!). I expect Lidge to regress next year, and I hope to God that Omar builds us a solid pen, and I expect things to come down to the wire again next year. As much as I hate the Phillies, it would be pretty awesome if both teams could make the playoffs next year and face off in the NLCS….that has epic written all over it.

by cjmulrain on Nov 1, 2008 3:28 PM EDT up 0 recs

It’s also about budgeting and prioritizing. To some degree, it was because the Mets gave up so much to add Johan Santana that they were unable to get their bullpen to where they needed it to be. In other words, one can’t really say that “if not for the bullpens, the Mets were better,” because the weakness in the Mets bullpen was very much a direct consequence of the strategy that Minaya & co. used in building the team. It was a flaw in the team’s DNA, not just a random accident.

by taco pal on Nov 1, 2008 3:44 PM EDT up 0 recs

probably right on that

The Phils lineup was a little better than the Mets, the Mets rotation was—I think, I’m not entirely sure—a little better than the Phils over the course of the season (though not in the last two months, with Maine on fumes/hurt and Myers pitching out of his mind). The benches were probably a wash with maybe a slight edge to the Phils because of Dobbs. I haven’t looked at the numbers, but I could easily see the difference in the two bullpens being worth 8 games or so.

What’s interesting is how much the 2008 Mets resembled the 2003-2005 Phillies—teams that had great cores but were undone by a few horrible performances, particularly among relievers (until ‘05, when Wagner was very good for us). Those Phillies teams didn’t have any pitcher as good as Santana, though.

At the end of that time, which was when Gillick replaced Wade, the Phils had a problem getting over the top because they had a depleted farm system—with the massive exception of Hamels, but nobody yet knew if he could stay in one piece—and were at the limit of their budget capacity. The Mets farm system seems to be pretty much nuked, other than Fernando Martinez whom I’m not yet convinced about, but cost won’t be an obstacle for them.

Were I Minaya, I’d try to make more trades with the Marlins—little has made me angrier over the last few years than Florida’s serial deals to send talent to Queens—for a starter like Ricky Nolasco and maybe relievers like Miller or Kensing. I think between Stokes, Niese, Parnell and Kunz, they probably have 2-3 decent relievers who are minimum-salary guys. Probably they’ll sign K-Rod or make a play for someone like Kerry Wood to close, but I’m not sure that’s a good idea—either of those guys would be pretty likely to follow the Wagner pattern and miss a year or more of a long-term deal. There are some decent bets among the Type-B relievers, though nobody you’d want to see closing.

I kind of have this idea that Maine would be a good closer, if he could keep the walks under control. That would an interesting thing to try.

by dajafi on Nov 1, 2008 4:07 PM EDT up 0 recs

Maine as a closer

has been talked about a lot among Mets fans. It definitely could work, b/c Maine is usually great the first time through the order. If he can’t figure out how to get his pitch counts down and make it past the 6th inning consistently, it might not be a bad idea.

by cjmulrain on Nov 2, 2008 1:33 PM EST up 0 recs