The Phils dropped the final game of their opening series to the Nats today. Kyle Kendrick struggled, and newly acquired Nelson Figueroa surrendered the game winning run on a Ryan Zimmerman double in the 7th inning.

Perhaps most frustrating in today’s game was the squandered opportunity presented by a lead off double in the 9th inning by Chase Utley, who was eventually stranded at 3rd when the final out – a Shane Victorino pop up – landed in Christian Guzman’s glove.

So the Phillies and their Five Guys eating, beer chugging, economy stimulating fans head out of DC, a 2-1 record to show for it.

What did we learn about the local 9 during this series?

1. Phillies fans know the way to the District of Columbia. And Nationals fans know how to bitch about being outnumbered at their own ballpark.

2. Raul Ibanez’s hitting woes are mildly concerned about after a lackluster spring training and an .091 batting average against a Nationals pitching staff that most of the Phillies batters manhandled. Last year, Boston’s David Ortiz had an abysmal start to his season, but his results improved as the campaign wore on. One of Ortiz’s issue was his bat speed, something that appears to be ailing Raul as well. Lucky for our aging leftfielder, he has a nice reservoir of goodwill built up with Phillies fans, and he’ll have plenty of support while he gets his swing right. It’s still too early to start burying Raul.

3. Placido Polanco …

When will folks finally get sick of Manny Ramirez? The media for the most part tolerates this crap, and his teammates are oftentimes complicit in his behaviors by shrugging off his antics with the tired “Manny Being Manny” talking point.

The latest example is that, during the nail-biting bottom of the 9th inning on Monday night, while everyone else in the free (baseball) world was glued to the play on the field at Citizens Bank Park, Manny Ramirez was showering in the clubhouse after being pulled for Juan Pierre in an attempt to have some competent defense in leftfield. Well covered here, here and here.

Manny, in typical fashion, blew this all off as much ado about nothing, and his manager and teammates were more than willing to go along for the ridiculous ride.

Manny: “”I come out of the game early, I take a shower.”
Joe Torre: “”I think the way it turned out, it probably doesn’t look good. But it’s nothing different than he has done before.” And, “As we say, Manny is Manny. He’s a cool customer.”
Randy Wolf: “”I love him. He’s Manny.”

Oh, gosh. I really hope I get to be a big league ball player one day. Then, maybe I can be a teammate of Manny’s so I can say how great it is to be around such a cerebral guy. He’s just….just….just….Manny!

Joe Torre was at the Bruce Springsteen concert last night. If Manny had even a sliver of the Boss’ energy, passion …

My wife is from Pittsburgh, so I have a soft spot in my heart for the city and its sports teams, with the exception of the Penguins. I have trouble rooting for those guys. Anyway, I cannot imagine being a Pirates fan. I don’t even think as Phillies fans we can adequately empathize with their plight.

Even when the Phillies were trading away their best players earlier this decade, most notably Curt Schilling and Scott Rolen, they did so with a gun to their head. Their intention was not to jettison key players in order to save money and propagate an unending rebuilding of the team. The Phillies’ management philosophy was a bungling mess. They started to turn it around by signing Jim Thome in advance of their move to Citizens Bank Park, and then they rewarded the fans who bolstered their revenue via the new park by investing in their young core and not being afraid to sign free agents. They just couldn’t figure out how to make it work until they realized that the core problem was the GM. 3 years later, jackpot.

The Pirates organization is pathetic by comparison. And worse yet, they know exactly what they are doing. They play baseball in a palace – If you’ve never been to PNC Park, get there asap. I know you’ll be helping line the pockets of these scoundrels in the Steel City, but that ballpark is something else.

This …

The Phillies have released details of their plans to honor Harry Kalas over this coming weekend:

The club will pay tribute to Kalas, who died Monday afternoon in Washington, D.C., before its 7:05 p.m. ET game Friday against the San Diego Padres at Citizens Bank Park. Fans are urged to arrive at the ballpark early that night. Details on Friday’s events will be announced later.

The Kalas family and the Phillies will also have a memorial tribute for him at the ballpark Saturday. The opportunity to pay respects to Kalas will be given on a first-come, first-served basis to as many fans as possible from 8 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. At that time, all fans in attendance will be directed to seats for an on-field tribute that begins at 1 p.m.

The Phils will also be wearing a black circular patch with “HK” on it for 2009 that is similar to the one their wore during the 2007 season to honor the memory of John Vukovich.

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I am in favor of the idea of playing “High Hopes” after the conclusion of every Phillies win. Some have suggested that it should be done during the seventh inning stretch, but I disagree. Make a Phillies win that much more special by creating a lasting legacy to the man with a post game singing of Harry’s favorite song.

Todd Zolecki also has the story on Harry’s oldest son Todd’s return to Philadelphia today.

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It will become increasing hard to come by, but do yourself a favor …

One thing is certain. Despite the ill-advised proclamations from practically every member of the Mets roster, the Phillies ARE the team to beat. That’s what happens when you’re the team that caps off the season with the baseball version of a mosh pit. Only one team gets to do it each year, and while it may still seem surreal to those of us who follow this team, it was the Phillies in 2008 who enjoyed baseball’s sweetest moment.

But 2009 won’t be a walk in the park. The Phillies bring back almost the entire team that won it all in 2008, but their rivals have improved and not every offseason decision may payoff as the front office hopes it will.

Decisions, Decisions

The Phillies biggest offseason move was the signing of lefthanded hitting leftfielder Raul Ibanez. While Ibanez has hit well against southpaws recently, the decision to sign another lefthanded hitter to replace our only legitimate righthanded power hitter in Pat Burrell remains a curious decision. We won’t be able to fully judge the Burrell/Ibanez moves until at least the end of 2009.

What we do know is that the Phillies lack righthanded power off the bench, and their only righthanded hitter with real pop is Jayson Werth. Raul Ibanez offer little in improved defense over Burrell, and is 4 1/2 years his senior. The lack of lineup balance will make opposing managers’ jobs easier and Charlie Manuel’s more difficult.

The Phillies released …

I was just about to work on a career retrospective on Randy Ready as well as a piece on Dickie Thon’s 50 Greatest Phillies moments. Such is life when you’re digging for content about the Phillies in the middle of the winter.

Randy and Dickie are going to have to wait. There’s Phillies news to spare.

We’ll start with Pat Burrell. He signed a 2 yr. $16 million deal with the Tampa Bay Rays.

2 years. 16 million. For the folks who didn’t major in math, that’s $8 million a year.

Wow.

The Phillies let a 32 year old righthanded bat with a 10 year relationship with the club who is a subpar defender go elsewhere for 1 year and $15 million less than the 36 year old lefthanded bat who is a subpar defender that they actually signed. And they gave up a 1st round draft pick to sign him as well. Sometimes first round draft picks become Cole Hamels.

Yup. Makes perfect sense.

This much is painfully obvious: The Phils did not want Pat back. Period. Not for 3 yrs. $45 million. Not for 1 year, $15 million. Not for 2 years, $16 million. Not for nothing. The Phillies were hellbent on making sure that Pat did not wear red pinstripes in 2009.

I hate this part of the year.

There are 20,000 rumors, and 5 of them will actually happen. This Hot Stove stuff keeps Ken Rosenthal employed, but it just gives me a headache.

I guess you either really like this part of the baseball calendar or you don’t. It’s like early March in college hoops. I don’t care about bubble teams – just get me the bracket and let me start filling it out.

At this point, I just want to know if Jamie Moyer is coming back. Same with Pat Burrell. Sign, or sign somewhere else. Put me out of my misery. And then we can start arguing where they should bat in the lineup, or if they are the 3rd starter or the 4th starter, because those discussions I do enjoy. I know this is the naive viewpoint – there are a million business reasons why this seems to drag on longer than the presidential election cycle – but I just get sick of reading it all. And I do read it all. It’s a sickness. It tortures me.

Murray Chass has a column on his site about the offseason rumor mill, and the log lists of players who could be traded. He doesn’t think it’s the most productive use of anyone’s time:
Many baseball writers feel compelled to compile such lists before winter meetings because they feel they owe it to fans or they want to show off their expertise. They are fortunate no one compiles a batting average on …

Recession? What recession? Someone needs to change all of the online passwords for my bank accounts to protect me from myself. I can’t help but pick up souvenirs and publications devoted to the Phillies World Series victory.

This is totally justifiable. There is no telling when this will happen again. Next year? Perhaps. But a World Series win would hold different meaning next year. This year was about getting a huge monkey off the franchise’s, and this city’s, back.

Anyway, in my endless search for all things Phillies, I bought Sports Illustrated’s 2008 Commemorative Issue. It chronicles the entire season, has some great photos, and digs deep into all 3 of the playoff series this year. There’s also a list of who SI thinks are the Greatest Phillies of All Time based on position. We’ll dig into that one in a later post.

The first article is written by Michael Bamberger and is entitled “A Tribute: A Team Even Philadelphia Can Love”. I suppose Bamberger is a Philadelphian since he refers to Philly fans in his opening sentence as “Us”.

I don’t know much about Bamberger other than the fact that he created a bit of controversy a few years back when he injected himself into a sports story by narcing on Michelle Wie for a rules violation that got her DQ’ed from an LPGA event.

What I know about him now, though, after reading his article on Phils, is that he …