Honestly, J.D. Durbin's middle name is Adam. He's technically calling himself "Joseph Durbin Durbin."
After Adam Eaton landed on the 15-day DL for his chronic spasms of Suckitude (the same affliction that also took down Rod Barajas and Freddy Garcia), thus leaving the Phillies with $24.5 million of starting pitcher carcass spoiling in the sun, I did a funny thing.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
Eaton's injury meant that "The Real Deal" Durbin, the once and future king of Phillies spot starters, would find his way back into the rotation for today's game against the Pittsburgh Pirates. There is just something about Durbin that perfects encapsulates the inspired lunacy that is the 2007 Phillies, and their starting pitching in particular.
He's been an amalgamation of Bill and Ted thus far, a slacker with a heart of gold and a knack for popping up at historically opportune moments despite the fact he has absolutely no business being there. And you know what? He has amazingly done more than enough to keep the back end of the Phils' rotation afloat (no word yet on if he's going to graduate from San Dimas High).
There can be no certifiable explanation for Durbin's success--not for a guy who pitched 8 total innings in the majors with 13 earned runs before joining the Phillies. His ERA was 94.50 (0.2 IP, 7 ER) when they picked him up for crying out loud!
Since then, he's 3-1 with a 4.44 ERA and 10.03 run support in his four starts. He shut out the Padres on the road. He relieved Kyle Lohse in Lohse's injury-marred first Phillies start and wound up with the win. He even got a save against the Teal Bastards in a game the Phillies led 11-1 in the ninth. That is some strange, strange voodoo right there.
Clearly, the boy is blessed with some sort of heightened consciousness during stressful situations, becoming the perfectly adequate tweener pitcher when we need it the most. He's a beautiful disaster, an accident of history like Jeff Weaver in the 2006 playoffs. There's no way that he shouldn't be a huge failure, given what we know about him and the Phillies.
With the high profile (and highly expensive) flops of Eaton, Garcia, and Jon Lieber, youth is being served on the mound in Philadelphia. It has the potential to be a Detroit Tigers Lite rotation, a collection of young, cheap arms willing their team to victory with enthusiasm instead of experience. With Cole Hamels, Kyle Kendrick, and the soon-to-return Scott Matheison channeling Bonderman, Verlander, and Robertson (sort of), it's not hard to starting thinking about the postseason. But, fittingly, it may all hinge on Durbin, the sink-or-swim Mike Maroth-type of this analogy. It could mean the Series.
It could also mean he's going to lose 20 games.
Which, I wonder, is the real deal?
Showing posts with label false hope. Show all posts
Showing posts with label false hope. Show all posts
Friday, August 17, 2007
Thursday, August 2, 2007
All Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing
Ed.'s note: I've got a bit of a backlog while switching Internet providers. This was meant to be posted on Aug. 1.
The trade deadline has been something of an enigma for the Phillies in recent years, when they have been buyers instead of sellers. This, it's safe to say, must be jarring for a front office used to concentrating on how many useless spare parts and shoulda-been prospects they can get for the latest star that wants out of Philly. Ultimately, the Phils' trade rumors are mere whispers, the objectives too modest, and the returns generally mediocre.
For reference, let's look at the acquisitions for the 5 of the past 6 seasons when the Phillies were still in playoff contention at the end of July:
2001--Todd Pratt (C), Turk Wendell (RP), and Dennis Cook (RP) from the Mets; Felipe Crespo (INF) from the Giants
The return of Tank was nice, but the bullpen additions (who weren't that good to begin with) were a classic example of Ed Wade-era futility. Wendell's failure down the stretch (7.47 ERA) was one of the greatest individual pennant chase collapses in Phillies history.
2003--Mike Williams (RP) from the Pirates
Williams was an All-Star solely on the basis of his saves for an atrocious Pittsburgh team (but aren't they all?). Coincidentally, his Phillies ERA that year was only slightly higher than his ERA for the '93 team, and the worse the Phils were in the mid-1990s, the better he pitched. This was a stupid move on karma alone.
2004--Felix Rodriguez (RP) from the Giants; Todd Jones (RP) from the Reds; Cory Lidle (SP) on waivers from the Reds
Sensing a theme here? In Philadelphia, c-r-a-p-p-y spells "relief." Rodriguez actually wasn't all that bad, but Jones--pitching for his sixth team in four seasons--didn't live up to the hype. A great example of why you shouldn't trade simply for name recognition (Lidle, to a lesser extent, also illustrated this concept). Too bad that for the Phillies, "learning from example" usually involves something like this.
2005--Matt Kata (INF) from the D-Backs; Michael Tucker (OF) on waivers from the Giants
I had to triple-check to make sure that this was true. In the last year of Ed Wade's tenure, Ol' Puddinghead's solution to get the playoffs monkey off the Phils' back was to stock the roster with speedy, slap-hitting benchwarmers. They had a combined 24 ABs, 5 H, 3 RBI, and 0 HR. Kata posted a negative OPS+, a stat that adjusts individual OPS to a the league average of 100, from an incredible 6 ABs. It's getting tougher to resist the urge to hurl this monitor through a study-room window.
2006--Jamie Moyer (SP) on waivers from the Mariners; Jose Hernandez (INF) on waivers from the Pirates; Jeff Conine (OF) on waivers from the Orioles
Once the Phillies got a GM that wasn't afraid of spreading his peanut butter and his jelly with the same knife, they got a little busier. Gillick's work was even more extensive due to the Bobby Abreu trade, but none of the prospects he got in return was meant to be a quick fix anywhere on the roster. Plus they were prospects from the Yankees, whose minor league system is as naturally fertile as a Phoenix sod farm. Moyer (or as I like to call him, the Iron Turtle) finally gave the team a late-season acquisition that could actually contribute. Conine only brought back bad memories of 2003 while playing a decent outfield. Hernandez was yet another player whose career basically ended with a half-assed Phillies playoff run. What a way to go.
This year's additions continue this proud tradition of massive confusion and desperation-soaked maneuvering. The fact that the Phillies never surrender anything of circumstance is little consolation. It's like watching a blind man trying to solve a Rubik's Cube.
2007's own special wrinkle was the rash of injuries immediately before and after the deadline. Even though he's no Chase Utley, the Tad Iguchi deal was pretty good. Unfortunately for Iguchi, Utley is rehabbing like a man possessed. An early return for Chase raises the tricky question of who to demote from the club, but hopefully it'll be close enough to September and the expansion to the 40-man roster that it won't matter much.
Julio Mateo is not the best Madson replacement, but the Mariners are to Pat Gillick what the Giants were to Ed Wade (which means Brian Sabean must have really liked to pick on retarded kids in school). I swear, Gillick's phone must only be able to dial Seattle, Chicago, Toronto, and Cincinnati. And only the Phillies would have a series in which they lose two members of a four-man outfield in the same game and see their newly acquired starter injured in his first inning of work.
And so it goes, every year, as best-laid plans give way to the likes of J.D. Durbin coming down the chute and low-impact trades that force the regulars to play even harder to keep the ship from sinking.
The trade deadline has been something of an enigma for the Phillies in recent years, when they have been buyers instead of sellers. This, it's safe to say, must be jarring for a front office used to concentrating on how many useless spare parts and shoulda-been prospects they can get for the latest star that wants out of Philly. Ultimately, the Phils' trade rumors are mere whispers, the objectives too modest, and the returns generally mediocre.
For reference, let's look at the acquisitions for the 5 of the past 6 seasons when the Phillies were still in playoff contention at the end of July:
2001--Todd Pratt (C), Turk Wendell (RP), and Dennis Cook (RP) from the Mets; Felipe Crespo (INF) from the Giants
The return of Tank was nice, but the bullpen additions (who weren't that good to begin with) were a classic example of Ed Wade-era futility. Wendell's failure down the stretch (7.47 ERA) was one of the greatest individual pennant chase collapses in Phillies history.
2003--Mike Williams (RP) from the Pirates
Williams was an All-Star solely on the basis of his saves for an atrocious Pittsburgh team (but aren't they all?). Coincidentally, his Phillies ERA that year was only slightly higher than his ERA for the '93 team, and the worse the Phils were in the mid-1990s, the better he pitched. This was a stupid move on karma alone.
2004--Felix Rodriguez (RP) from the Giants; Todd Jones (RP) from the Reds; Cory Lidle (SP) on waivers from the Reds
Sensing a theme here? In Philadelphia, c-r-a-p-p-y spells "relief." Rodriguez actually wasn't all that bad, but Jones--pitching for his sixth team in four seasons--didn't live up to the hype. A great example of why you shouldn't trade simply for name recognition (Lidle, to a lesser extent, also illustrated this concept). Too bad that for the Phillies, "learning from example" usually involves something like this.
2005--Matt Kata (INF) from the D-Backs; Michael Tucker (OF) on waivers from the Giants
I had to triple-check to make sure that this was true. In the last year of Ed Wade's tenure, Ol' Puddinghead's solution to get the playoffs monkey off the Phils' back was to stock the roster with speedy, slap-hitting benchwarmers. They had a combined 24 ABs, 5 H, 3 RBI, and 0 HR. Kata posted a negative OPS+, a stat that adjusts individual OPS to a the league average of 100, from an incredible 6 ABs. It's getting tougher to resist the urge to hurl this monitor through a study-room window.
2006--Jamie Moyer (SP) on waivers from the Mariners; Jose Hernandez (INF) on waivers from the Pirates; Jeff Conine (OF) on waivers from the Orioles
Once the Phillies got a GM that wasn't afraid of spreading his peanut butter and his jelly with the same knife, they got a little busier. Gillick's work was even more extensive due to the Bobby Abreu trade, but none of the prospects he got in return was meant to be a quick fix anywhere on the roster. Plus they were prospects from the Yankees, whose minor league system is as naturally fertile as a Phoenix sod farm. Moyer (or as I like to call him, the Iron Turtle) finally gave the team a late-season acquisition that could actually contribute. Conine only brought back bad memories of 2003 while playing a decent outfield. Hernandez was yet another player whose career basically ended with a half-assed Phillies playoff run. What a way to go.
This year's additions continue this proud tradition of massive confusion and desperation-soaked maneuvering. The fact that the Phillies never surrender anything of circumstance is little consolation. It's like watching a blind man trying to solve a Rubik's Cube.
2007's own special wrinkle was the rash of injuries immediately before and after the deadline. Even though he's no Chase Utley, the Tad Iguchi deal was pretty good. Unfortunately for Iguchi, Utley is rehabbing like a man possessed. An early return for Chase raises the tricky question of who to demote from the club, but hopefully it'll be close enough to September and the expansion to the 40-man roster that it won't matter much.
Julio Mateo is not the best Madson replacement, but the Mariners are to Pat Gillick what the Giants were to Ed Wade (which means Brian Sabean must have really liked to pick on retarded kids in school). I swear, Gillick's phone must only be able to dial Seattle, Chicago, Toronto, and Cincinnati. And only the Phillies would have a series in which they lose two members of a four-man outfield in the same game and see their newly acquired starter injured in his first inning of work.
And so it goes, every year, as best-laid plans give way to the likes of J.D. Durbin coming down the chute and low-impact trades that force the regulars to play even harder to keep the ship from sinking.
Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.
Monday, June 11, 2007
You Know It's the Phillies When...
...they lose 2 out of 3 to the Royals after sweeping the Mets on the road.
...the very worst team in the major leagues beats them by 12 runs.
...Ryan Howard homers twice--one in each loss.
...they're still just 5 games out of first in the NL East.
These symptoms of inconsistency are so pervasive that the only thing everyone--fans, players, the national media--expects the Phillies to do consistently is...be inconsistent. It's telling when a preseason World Series dark horse dangerously close to collapsing under the weight of expectations and bullpen hubris isn't even a noteworthy story. I guess Kansas City has got to hear some good news every once in a while, but the failure of the Phillies to realize their full potential has become a tired old yarn.
On the bright side, Liebs finally gave Philadelphia its first shutout of the season after they suffered their first one on the losing end to the Giants a week earlier--a great way to kick off the Second Jose Mesa Era.
Still, it was a brutal weekend and dangerously close to being this season's nadir if it weren't for the Manuel-Eskin Deathmatch in April. A series this momentous deserves its own special name:
"Willie Wilson's Revenge"
...the very worst team in the major leagues beats them by 12 runs.
...Ryan Howard homers twice--one in each loss.
...they're still just 5 games out of first in the NL East.
These symptoms of inconsistency are so pervasive that the only thing everyone--fans, players, the national media--expects the Phillies to do consistently is...be inconsistent. It's telling when a preseason World Series dark horse dangerously close to collapsing under the weight of expectations and bullpen hubris isn't even a noteworthy story. I guess Kansas City has got to hear some good news every once in a while, but the failure of the Phillies to realize their full potential has become a tired old yarn.
On the bright side, Liebs finally gave Philadelphia its first shutout of the season after they suffered their first one on the losing end to the Giants a week earlier--a great way to kick off the Second Jose Mesa Era.
Still, it was a brutal weekend and dangerously close to being this season's nadir if it weren't for the Manuel-Eskin Deathmatch in April. A series this momentous deserves its own special name:
"Willie Wilson's Revenge"
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Take That, Nationals
Take a bow, Charlie!It only took 17 games for the 2007 Philadelphia Phillies to finally get two consecutive wins and their first series victory of the season. This compares favorably to the seminal 1997 squad, which took 15 games to complete the same feat.
Apparently there was a team meeting that took place before Saturday's game that is attributed to the team's little turnaround. I'd say what the Phils needed was a nice big dose of Vitamin C:
Cole Hamels went the distance with 15 Ks on Saturday, followed by a solid performance by Freddy Garcia today. Can we stop the insanity now? Brett Myers is still this team's "ace" like Robin Williams is still "funny." Let's be real. Hamels took the No. 1 spot last August and hasn't let go since then.
It's been a euphoric weekend in general. The top third of the order is hitting again (and Pat Burrell is still over .300). Chase Utley stole a base. Tom Gordon, despite his best efforts, didn't blow a game. And most importantly, Ryan Howard returned and hit his second home run of the year. Who cares if runners are stealing on Carlos Ruiz at a rate that would alarm the MPAA?
Essentially, everyone is playing to their potential for this brief moment in time. The result: the Phillies are out of the cellar. Hopefully it'll stay that way after this week's upcoming blood feud with the gNats.
I'm shocked. There's nothing substantially negative to say right now.
Ha! Almost fooled myself there. The very same day the Phils climbed out of last place, a top of the table clash in the NL East served as a reminder of how difficult it is to overcome such a slow start. The Mets and the Braves hit the ground running and have already built a 5-game lead over Philly.
Remember when Scott Rolen said he used to get depressed playing for the Phillies because after a brief winning streak in July, he'd open the paper and discover that they were still 15 games behind?
Well, everyone should just avoid the Inquirer for the rest of the month, take a deep breath, and remember--it's just two games.
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