The Decade in Review: Phillies v. Eagles
by David S. Cohen on Jan 11, 2010 3:30 PM EST
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PrintWith the Eagles now done for the decade, we can ask the question: who had the better decade, the Phillies or the Eagles?
If you had asked any Philadelphia sports fan three years ago which franchise, looking back in 2010, was going to have had the better decade in the first decade of the 2000s, it would have been an easy call - the Eagles, by a landslide. Even two years ago, it would still be clearly the Eagles. But, the Phillies' last two years have changed everything. So much so, that I think it's quite clear that the Phillies had the better decade.
But, you can decide that for yourself. Here are the comparisons that matter:
Overall record:
Eagles 103-56-1
Phillies 850-769
Winning percentage:
Eagles .644
Phillies .525
Playoff appearances:
Eagles 8
Phillies 3
Playoff record:
Eagles 10-8
Phillies 20-12
Playoff winning percentage:
Eagles .556
Phillies .625
Championship appearances:
Eagles 1
Phillies 2
Championship wins:
Eagles 0
Phillies 1
Point/run differential and spread:
Eagles 3758-2883 (+875)
Phillies 7978-7499 (+479)
Coaches/managers:
Eagles 1
Phillies 3
Major awards:
Eagles 2: Vincent, Walter Payton Man of the Year 2002; Andy Reid, Coach of the Year, 2002
Phillies 6: Bowa, Manager of the Year, 2001; Howard, Rookie of the Year, 2005; Howard, MVP, 2006; Rollins, MVP, 2007; Lidge, Relief Pitcher of the Year, 2008; Hamels, WS MVP, 2008
As I said, I think it's pretty easy at this point given the Phillies 2 World Series appearances and 1 World Series win. If they just had 1 World Series win without the second appearance, it might be a closer call, although I'd still go with the Phillies. But, although they haven't had the consistency the Eagles have had, the Phillies have reached higher heights and that matters more in this town at this point in time.
But, others may feel differently. Of course, feel free to give your input below.
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Argh! I wanted new content to distract me from having to think about the Eagles, not to remind me of them!
Anyway, I could see it either way. On one hand, yes the Phillies have had much better success in the postseason. On the other hand, the baseball postseason is much more of crapshoot than the football postseason is, and despite their many well-documented failures to “win the big one,” the Eagles have actually been a good postseason team on the whole. They had a better postseason winning percentage than the Giants, Buccaneers, or Colts, for instance, who each won an SB in the decade.
Obviously, from a fan’s perspective, you’d rather take the Phillies 2000s Experience over the Eagles 2000s Experience. But if the question is which organization’s management performed and deserved better this decade, it’s a much more difficult call.
Since I think most people are going to pick the Phillies, I’ll go with the Eagles just to balance things out a little.
I'll give you that
If you’re talking about management performance, without looking at results, I’ll agree. I still think the Eagles are a better run organization. But, I think that’s just part of it. I think results also matter here, and the Phillies win on this one.
by David S. Cohen on Jan 11, 2010 3:44 PM EST up reply actions
Agreed with this 100%.
If we’re looking back at who performed better in the decade, I think the Phillies’ title, and additional World Series appearance, tips the scales in their favor. The playoffs may be a crapshoot, but if we’re evaluating in retrospect, it’s almost like using ERA as opposed to xFIP — the latter might tell us more about what to expect going forward, but the former paints a more accurate picture of what happened.
That said, despite baseball being my favorite sport, the Eagles actually narrowly edge the Phils as my favorite team for the reason you mention, David: I still think they’re a better run organization, top to bottom, than the Phillies.
In the past decade, there are a few things I’ve absolutely thought well of the Eagles for.
1) I’ve always thought they were solid in terms of talent evaluation and managing the payroll, and had key Moneyball-like tenets they operated on that I appreciate: peak value of players, don’t overpay for linebackers or wide receivers, focus on the line, have defense focus on not giving up points, concentrate on the defensive secondary, care not for sentiment (hence even getting rid of Dawkins I thought at the time was a sign of organizational strength, though I hated to see him go).
2) Independent of a title, they did manage to unite the city to a far greater degree than the Phillies. I hearken back to the masterful ONE CITY, ONE TEAM campaign. Partly this is baseball’s fault for somehow alienating all of black America while the NFL and NBA filled the void (if there ever was one). Where I see black and white people united about sport in Philadelphia, they are wearing Eagles jerseys.
3) With limited and noticeable exceptions, they really have focused on getting solid citizens—bright, thoughtful players, especially on the lines, but throughout the team. They have been, on balance, accessible, decent folk, and the exceptions were generally kicked quickly out of the bag.
It’s hard not to feel very mixed about the stuff that’s gone wrong. Vick is a great example, because he was simply poorly utilized AND should not have come anywhere near the “Courage Award.” That stuff rankles me, mostly because I’m a dog owner. I really thought he’d garner some good results, and could see the thinking and was even willing to spot the ex-con signing given what Reid had been through with his sons. He didn’t, so I don’t understand the point of the signing (um, we could have used that roster spot for another linebacker!), but am left with lingering alienation. I also think the market has changed, and their slavish devotion to economic tenets (e.g., anti-linebacker. For how much we cry about losing Stewart Bradley all season, on balance he’s not all that and a bag of chips) doesn’t seem as true now as it was 10 years ago. So, I wonder how limber they are in their thinking anymore. And maybe there are some exceptions that you need to consider with respect to loyalty, like keeping a guy like Dawkins on the roster, somewhere on the frequency of once per decade. There was probably some way to swing it, and the guy gave up his body for this club, and then some.
by Wet Luzinski on Jan 12, 2010 8:10 PM EST up reply actions
The Eagles certainly deserved a better fate this decade, all things considered. They didn’t lose for lack of trying to constantly improve the team and settling for “just being competitive” which was the Phillies mantra for decades.
But winning cures all and the Phillies have claimed the ultimate prize in their sport which must burn the butts of the Eagles’ brass to no end
In a way I’m kind of glad about that because the Eagles never should have been in the “top dog” position to begin with. I’ve always firmly believed that Philadelphia is a baseball town every bit as much as (if not more so than) it is a football town. It’s just that the local sports scene got knocked off its axis for a good twenty years because of a perfect storm of events that all began simultaneously in the late ‘80s (ten straight losing seasons by the Phillies, the exciting Buddy Ryan teams grabbing everyone’s attention, the rise of WIP as the opinion leader for local fans, etc). My hazy memories from the period before the late ’80s are of the Phillies being the more popular team, and when I talk to people older than me they usually confirm this.
But now that the balance of power has more or less been restored, I’d like the Eagles to have a little more luck than they’ve been having. (Not that I didn’t want it before, but it’s all the more intense now.) The Eagles organization isn’t without its faults, but they’ve just been getting treated so unfairly lately by the media and fans and they deserve something better.
I think it’s a toss up.
Certainly the Eagles never gave us that wonderful championship that will live with us for ever and ever and might be the single best sports memory I can recall. (Heck, I still have game 5, part 2 saved on my DV-R, much to my wife’s dismay)
But, with only 2 exceptions, the Eagles fielded a truly competitive team every year this decade…they went to the postseason 8 times, and 7 of them, they won at least 1 game. They reached the NFC Championship 5 times and the Super Bowl once. By contrast, the early 2000s Phillies teams were hard to watch and even when they got more competitive, they couldn’t quite get over the hump into the postseason until 2007.
So, I think it’s pretty clear, the Eagles were clearly better from 2000-05, and the Phils were better 2005-09, imo. For the entire decade, I’ll let the WS championship give it to the Phils. But we can only hope that the Eagles give us plenty more decades like this into the future (preferably with SB championship in tow)…
Philly Sports and Coyotes Hockey - and yes, I am tired of defending my teams...
Random
You point out the essential randomness here — the date divisions of the decade. If we break it down as you did, or even 2000-2007, the Eagles win by a landslide. But, in our Base-10 system, the cool round number dividing lines are 2000-2009, so the Eagles lose thanks to our never adopting octal.
As for having game 5-B on DVR, I had it through most of this season but somehow it disappeared….
by David S. Cohen on Jan 11, 2010 3:50 PM EST up reply actions
Would 2000 have been the start of the octal? Is that what you would call the 8-year period even? I would hope so because it is a pretty cool word to use. But, yeah, it is completely random and arbitrary, and that’s just the way it works out.
All I know is, the Phillies look to be a good team in the upcoming years, the Eagles certainly have questions to address (stay healthy, damnit!!!!), and the Flyers need to keep repeating the success of the last 9 games for me to truly have faith…but that is all the Philadelphia teams I care about (sorry, Sixers…just not into the NBA) primed for success now and in the near future. I can’t really ask for much more as a sports fan.
Philly Sports and Coyotes Hockey - and yes, I am tired of defending my teams...
by Jordan Ellel on Jan 11, 2010 3:55 PM EST up reply actions
6 seed
How many additional times would the Phillies have made the postseason if two additional teams were added to the pool? 2005 and 2006 come to mind.
http://www.thegoodphight.com
That's what makes is hard
How many playoff rounds would the Eagles have won if they played a series and it wasn’t a “one and done” scenario?
That’s why for me the NFL playoffs have always been more about luck than the MLB playoffs.
tb
I still think about that Bucs NFCCG and get cold sweats. By far their worst loss of the decade. That was the year.
http://www.thegoodphight.com
Yup. I still have nightmares about that game. Ronde Barber, Joe Jurevicius… and we took the early lead, too! Oh man.
I have nightmares about that game too, and how cold it was at the stadium.
Bought tickets outside and of course they were bogus, but I got inside anyway and thats when I found out they were no good. The usher just told me to disappear (tickets had real section, row and seat numbers but no seats, 2nd or 3rd row by the dugout). Great start but we left at halftime, so freaking cold and getting colder. we flew in from Orlando on the first flight(6am) of the day, what an adventure it was for me and my kids.
by SmilingJPhilsPhan on Jan 14, 2010 12:26 AM EST up reply actions
I don’t think that’s really true. The NFL playoffs are certainly more about luck than they would be if they played seven-game series in the NFL. But that doesn’t mean they’re more about luck than the baseball playoffs are.
Football is a sport where the best teams routinely win over 80% of their games in the regular season, so it seems that there’s something about the sport that greatly reduces the influence of luck even in individual games.
But again, with such a tiny sample size in relation to baseball how can you even compare? They only play 16 times. Surely the more they played the more likely it would be that the winning percentage of teams would go down.
Actually, only two teams won more games in this past decade than the Eagles and their winning percentage was only .644
I don’t think you can a ten-year NFL period and compare it to a single MLB season just because the number of games will be equivalent. Over ten years, the personnel on each NFL team will vary greatly, so that’s the more likely explanation for the winning percentages gravitating toward the mean in football.
I don’t have the time to do this, but what if we broke down the Eagles’ season into series victories and re-configured their record (i.e., winning a 3 game series 2-1 or 3-0 equals 1 W, and vice versa). For the four game series (or the very rare 2 gamers) , we can have ties. I wonder what the Phils record looks like then, and whether that better compares to the % we would see in football for truly dominant teams, etc.
Philly Sports and Coyotes Hockey - and yes, I am tired of defending my teams...
by Jordan Ellel on Jan 11, 2010 4:33 PM EST up reply actions
Obviously, I meant the Phillies’ season…stupid work distracting me from the important stuff
Philly Sports and Coyotes Hockey - and yes, I am tired of defending my teams...
by Jordan Ellel on Jan 11, 2010 4:35 PM EST up reply actions
Alright, I’m bored enough at work that I did it myself…
Phils record by series in 2009 was 32-16-3; winning percentage of .627; this is significantly better than the .574 they achieved by going 93-69. A .627 winning percentage would equate to a record of 102-60 and would’ve given the Phils the second best record in all of baseball (behind the Yankees). Now I’m curious about how the Yankees’ record would also change, but I think it is safe to say that it would improve a bit as well and perhaps this would get us closer to the NFL-like %s…
Philly Sports and Coyotes Hockey - and yes, I am tired of defending my teams...
by Jordan Ellel on Jan 11, 2010 5:04 PM EST up reply actions
I like this analysis.
Can’t say whether it’s valid, but it at least attempts to normalize the obvious discrepancies between a 16-game season and a 162-game season. Another approach might be to analyze their winning percentages as a comparison with the rest of their respective leagues. We know the Eagles had the 3rd most wins in football; where are the Phillies relative to their peers?
However, the main thing missing from this discussion is the acknowledgment that organizational success in baseball takes longer to develop due to the minor leagues; rarely does a baseball player enter the major league straight out of the draft, which is expected of high picks in football.
Organizationally, the past three years for the Phillies represents the visible portion of an ice berg of organizational movement. A football team can turn itself around much faster, even if it does require a lot of decisions turning out well.
Eric Bruntlett also scored the winning run of the WS. Misty water colored memories…
by Wet Luzinski on Jan 11, 2010 6:38 PM EST up reply actions
I dont think its fair to compare the point/run differential. Its a lot easier in football to have a much more extreme spread.
not that anybody was looking at that stat anyway, Im just saying.
by philiafan14364 on Jan 11, 2010 6:14 PM EST up reply actions
What is an "Eagles"?
Thankfully, due to growing up west of most of you, I am permitted to divide my loyalties. 2008 was an wonderful year in my case — twice blessed, even though the Super Bowl in question was played in 2009, following the 2008 season.
Remember the Phitans
by RememberthePhitans on Jan 11, 2010 8:17 PM EST reply actions
There is also no Eagles equivalent for the Conan O’Brien bit after the 2007 season where Mr. Met found the Phanatic in bed with Mrs. Met.
Can haz youtube, plz?
.eom.
Remember the Phitans
by RememberthePhitans on Jan 11, 2010 10:05 PM EST up reply actions
You can no haz. Looks like Phils licensing people were all over that one in an effort to protect the brand, so it’s scrubbed from the Interwebs. Can’t blame them if that’s their job. Hoping someone out there has it linked/archived/saved somewhere. It was a camp classic.
by Wet Luzinski on Jan 12, 2010 7:45 PM EST up reply actions
If you are going by the regular season
The Eagles have been a model of consistency throughout the decade. But they have constantly faltered in the big games time after time whereas the Phillies have succeeded on multiple occasions in their big games. Despite losing the 09 WS, the Phillies have played at their highest level when it matters the most and when the pressure is on. You can’t say the same about the Eagles.
Overall: My answer is the Phillies.
What “biggest games” are you referring to? Let’s not forget that the Eagles were in a lot more big games than the Phillies this decade. They won most of them too.
There was one time that the Phillies didn’t falter. One time they succeeded. It’s really not a big gap here. When people talk about the Phillies being “clutch” it’s that one time. The one time they won it all.
But hey, that one time is more than enough for me to say the Phils had the better decade. That one time is what it’s all about.
Tough call… It all depends on how you measure success.
by Phils 2036 World CH on Jan 12, 2010 12:02 PM EST reply actions
Championships is what its about
Everyone is fighting to win the championship whether it be the Superbowl or the World Series. Therefore, the Phillies have been the most successful in reaching that goal.
In life, as in a football game, the principle to follow is: Hit the line hard.
-Theodore Roosevelt
There is NO COMPARISION, Phillies WIN!!!!
I really thought that Laurie should have sent Reid packing!! It is hard to know who the owner is! Is it Laurie or Reid??
Laurie has no identity as an owner. I like what the Denver owner said concerning his decision to release Shanahan. He said: I had to let Shanahan go in order to save my club. Shanahan had been there so long, that the Denver owner said that Shanahan WOULD’VE OWNED THE CLUB!!
I wonder how many Eagles fans realize JUST HOW MUCH POWER REID HAS IN THE EAGLES ORGANIZATION? And what has Reid delievered? A bunch of regular season and playoff wins, THAT’S IT!!! The club was falling apart, and he just let it crumble!!
We never got a decent replacement for Dawkins, Samuel CANNOT TACKLE, he was FORCED TO MAKE A MOVE at linebacker, so he got Witherspoon, which was decent. He never replaced Tra, or Runyon, and they only decent draft since Westbrook, was Desean Jackson, Jeremy Maclin, Lesean McCoy, AFTER he was embarrassed by Arizona in the 2009 NFC Championship game!!! Celek was a good discovery!! He hadn’t gotten ANY help for Trent Cole, and our O-line is in SHAMBLES!!!
He NEVER took control of the club during the T.O. fiasco, letting Donovan his bread and butter man handle the problems, and getting totally embarrassed on National T.V. The ONLY person to come to Donovan’s aid was an EX-PLAYER, Hugh Douglas!!!
In spite of Reid’s wins, HE HAS BEEN A BIG DISAPPOINTMENT, and NEEDS TO FEEL THE WRATH OF THE EAGLES NATION!!! REID AND LAURIE NEED TO FEEL THE WRATH OF EAGLES NATION!!!
And we’ll have to deal with him for ANOTHER 3 seasons of boring press conferences, and nonchalant attitude, and “It starts with me, I’ve got to do a better job” bullshyt!!! NOTHING BUT EMPTY PROMISES!!! I know that the Eagles faithful loves their Eagles and football, but; we need to think about putting a serious dent in these people’s pocketbooks!!
See, the only thing that rich people understand is profits, and when that profit number declines, that’s when they get moving!!! We all have to make our own decisions in life, I’ve made mine. I’m not going to support these guys until they decide that they are going to bring a Super Bowl to Philly and put a real club on the gridiron, with real football plays, and quality up and down the ORGANIZATION!! Enough with this BULLSHYT!!!
I STILL LOVE MY EAGLES, BUT I WILL NO LONGER SUPPORT THIS REGIME!!!! We are laughingstocks FOR SURE, NOW!! How in HADES do we come from a close loss in the 2009 NFC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME, to a BLOWOUT LOSS in the 2010 NFC WILDCARD GAME??? This is what REID and LAURIE HAS TO ANSWER, and I WON’T REST UNTIL THEY ANSWER THIS QUESTION!!!
deep breaths, my friend. Deep breaths. Consider the next few weekends a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with the family. Or expand it.
by Wet Luzinski on Jan 12, 2010 7:47 PM EST up reply actions
phillies by a lot because they have actually won the big one
eff you we winning anyway
A.I. IS BACKKKKKKK
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