Instead of giving my amateur opinion on who I think will play 3rd base in 2010 for the Phils, I’ve been working on some other site enhancements that I hope will add some value for folks who swing by. For the record, I really have no clue who the Phillies are going to sign to play third, but I am starting to wonder, based on the available options, whether Feliz at $5.5 million was such a bad thing.

Check out the new Postseason Gamelog page, which chronicles every Phillies postseason game ever played, provided the ability to sort by runs for/against, Phils pitcher of record and more. It also includes links directly to each game’s box score via baseball-reference.com.

I am going to have a separate page for postseason stats in a format that I think is more digestible than what I have found elsewhere. I may expand that to regular season as well.

For the first time in 16 years, Phillies fans had to endure the sight of a team celebrating a World Series win at the expense of their favorite team. In 1993, it was a gut punch – I don’t remember moving for quite some time after Joe Carter turned on that Mitch William’s offering.

This time, we were granted a few innings to allow the reality to sink in: the Phils weren’t going to repeat as World Series champions. Ryan Howard’s too-little-too-late two-run home run in the 6th inning of Game 6 helped chase Andy Pettitte and provided a glimmer of hope for the Philly faithful, but it was just a cruel tease. The Phils put up zeroes the rest of the way, and Mariano Rivera closed it out with a 5 out save.

Once the sting of the World Series loss subsided, even a hardened cynic had to admit that 2009 was a very successful Phillies season.

No team gets to Game 6 of the World Series without a healthy dose of plays that brought joy or heartache to players and fans alike.

Top Five Moments

1. Jimmy’s 9th Inning Walk-Off Double – I don’t know where you were, but I was laying on my couch, feeling pretty sorry for myself as the bottom of the 9th got started in Game 4 of the NLCS. The Phillies were down 4-3, and were facing the prospect of having to beat Dodgers’ closer Jonathan Broxton. Ibañez …

It didn’t come crashing down on the Phillies tonight in a flash.

No, if you were watching Pedro closely enough, you could see this one coming from the first inning. Pedro’s velocity was too low for him to fool anyone and his pitches didn’t have the movement on them that a guy pitching in the 80s needs to miss bats. Especially these bats.

In the bottom of the second, Hideki Matsui hit a towering 2 run home run to right field for the game’s first runs. Thoughts of Pedro pitching deep into the game, or finding some unknown gear that he’d put aside in 1999 for just this occasion were gone. Even on full rest, Pedro had nothing. I’m not casting aspersions here. Pedro gave us a strong half year, and for the right price, I wouldn’t even mind seeing the Phillies discuss re-signing him. But tonight was not his night.

Pedro escaped further damage in the 2nd, but he needed a lockdown 3rd inning in order to keep the Phillies in the game as they worked to solve a very beatable Andy Pettitte.

But it wasn’t to be. Pedro got himself into trouble in the 3rd inning after initially striking out Brett Gardner, who resides at the bottom rung of the Yankees order. The problem is that the top of the order follows the bottom. Baseball is funny that way. The Phillies definitely won the battle of the bottom hald of the orders, but the trophies are …

Whoever says that baseball is a boring sport has never watched October/November baseball. And they definitely have never tuned in to a Phillies game.

The Phillies won Game 5 of the World Series with an 8-6 win that shouldn’t have been nearly that close. Cliff Lee wasn’t as sharp in this one as he was in Game 1, but he certainly outpitched AJ Burnett, who brought absolutely nothing to Citizens Bank park except extended batting practice for the Phils.

This is the kind of game that the Phillies needed to play in order to beat the Yankees. You can’t score 3 runs and hope to hold on. The top half of the Yankees order is relentless. The Phillies haven’t faced such a formidable 4 batter stretch in the playoffs in the last 3 years like they have Jeter, Damon, Teixeira and Rodriguez.

A couple of thoughts while I await a decrease in my heart rate.

1. Johnny Damon is some hitter. He works an at-bat and finds a way on base. The sense of deja vu after he hit that single in the 9th was enough to make me run from my TV and find the nearest bed to crawl under.

2. The Phillies can absolutely win this series, but whatever happens, they’ve given the Yankees trouble in all 5 games of this series. This is no one-sided affair. The pundits will write about how this was just delaying the inevitable. But the Phillies are not dead. Andy Pettite was …

It will go down as one of the worst losses in Phillies history, given the time and place. We won’t ever forget this one. It will haunt us.

The Phillies came within 1 strike of heading to the bottom of the ninth with a tie game and Phil Coke on the mound for the Yankees.

The possibility of a 2-2 World Series and Cliff Lee pitching tomorrow night was so close you could already imagine the headlines in the papers tomorrow and talk of how the resilient Phillies struck again – how these Phillies were not to be taken lightly. I could already imagine myself reading NY Post columns from bad writers bitching about Girardi’s decision to leave in Joba Chamberlin to pitch to Pedro Feliz.

It was so close.

But it wasn’t to be. Instead, I’ll have to avoid print media, electronic media, non-electronic, non-print media, ancient hieroglyphics that foretold of this disaster. It’s iPod time in the car tomorrow.

With a full count and no one on the ninth pitch of the at-bat, Johnny Damon singled to left field. Should have been a minor speed bump even with the dangerous Mark Teixeira coming to the plate.

The Phils put the shift on for Teixeira, which someone with more baseball knowledge than me will need to explain to me, as I don’t see the sense in shifting the entire infield over when you are protecting a one run lead and you’ve got a runner on base. Of …

I turned to my Dad in the late innings last night as we shook excess rain off of our ponchos from Sect. 420.

“It’s hard to believe that on the one-year anniversary of the parade, Cole gets booed on his way off the mound”.

Jason Weitzel at Beerleaguer wrote that last night’s start used up any remaining goodwill that Hamels had built up from 2008.

Being an athlete is akin to having a banking relationship with your fans. You make deposits and withdrawals. The truly great players keep their accounts consistently in the black, making huge deposits consistently and only withdrawing small sums here and there.

Cole’s 2008 was a massive deposit. So much so that his atrocious 2009 cannot ever take away the magic that was his 2008 postseason. But Weitzel is right that the extra love that comes along with being a World Series hero one year can vanish in a subsequent fall failure. At this point, we must grapple with the duality of Cole’s October fate: 2008 hero. 2009 heel.

We’ll always have 2008, Cole. In 20 years, I suspect we’ll remember a lot more about last year than we will this year if 2009 doesn’t end with flatbeds on Broad.

But if the Yankees do go on to claim another World Series championship this year, Cole will be as much the goat for this year as he was the man for last year.

He’ll have company though, as several Phillies players are coming up very …

Some thoughts after soaking in the Phillies Game 1 spanking of the New York Yankees:

1. Close your eyes and imagine for a minute that the Phillies do not trade for Cliff Lee before the deadline. Where does this trade rank all-time? Lee is such a perfect fit on this team because, like his teammates, he does not give a shit who he is playing, how many World Series championships they have, or how much bigger their city is, or how many so-called pundits picked the other guys. The Phils may very well still be in for a dogfight in this series, but there is NO National League team that is better equipped to go into Yankee Stadium and knock down the Yanks than the Phillies.

2. The new Yankee Stadium is not nearly the home field advantage that old Yankee Stadium was. The crowds had more of an edge, behind the plate didn’t look like a corporate cocktail party and it was much louder. The sense I got, watching from home, was that the crowd was nervous before the first pitch, let alone when Sabathia struggled in the first.

3. Cole Hamels looks and sounds like a complete tool in those Comcast commercials. Only Mike Richards’ soulless West German BMW commercials are worse.

4. I am still waiting for one of these expert baseball talking heads to mention things other than how stats and platoon splits determine who wins a World Series. Heart counts more than platoon splits. …

This past week has been a bitch. First pitch can’t get here any quicker.

Everyone is picking against the Phillies. Hell, even Jayson Stark is picking the Yankees, and he probably has a book deal lined up if he is wrong.

The Phillies are the more seasoned playoff team; the defending World F. Champs, yet no one is giving us a shot to win. In the last 5 playoff series, we’ve lost 5 games. Every talking head out there is predicting we’ll nearly match that in one week.

Every other playoff series is nice, but when you see your team in the World Series, it’s enough to bring tears to your eyes. You’re so proud that they got there, and you have tons of faith that they’ll do their best, but you’re petrified anyway. So much can go wrong.

Beat these Yankees. Grab legendary status. Own this town, forever.

What all of the pundits never seem to talk about are the stuff that doesn’t get a column on the stat sheets. Because you can’t quantify it. You can’t divide it into another number to prove your point. You just know it when you see it. Heart. Confidence. Sticktoitiveness. Resolve.

The Yankees may have it to. They’ve had tons of comeback wins late in games and that certainly speaks to heart.

But the Phillies have in bucketfuls. They aren’t headed to New York to put on a good showing.

They’re going there to win.

I am trying to avoid too many previews about the World Series leading up to Game 1. I don’t need to read which team 30 different idiots at ESPN think is going to win and in how many games. Most of the analysis is generally homerism by each team’s metro papers, who don’t want to piss off the locals. The national media are for the most part johnny-come-latelys who just rehash tired storylines and tell us things about our team we know better than they do, since we live and die with them every day.

So I am resorting to daydreaming about back to back to back Word Series trophies. About another perfect fall afternoon on Broad Street, watching flatbeds roll down the street carrying our heroes to the coliseum. About timely hits. About resurgent aces. About those inevitable butterflies that invade your stomach 15 minutes before the first pitch and leave only after the game’s winner is decided.

I really don’t care that we’re playing the Yankees. Winning against the Tampa Bay Rays doesn’t dampen the 2008 World Series one iota for me. We could have beaten any team in the World Series and I would have been just as delirious. This year is no different. I am not thinking about avenging 60 year old World Series sweeps, and I am not thinking about being a roadblock to a 27th World Series crown. I won’t feel any better should we lose to the Yankees than I would if we lost to …

It’s been a few days since the clincher of the NLCS. I am still pretty spent. Those NLCS games were a bitch. With the exception of the 11-0 Game 3 blowout, every game had a ton of drama.

Here’s some interesting stats and more as we wait to find out who we’re playing in the Series.

Jayson Werth is now the Phillies all-time postseason home run leader with 7 long balls. His opposite field shot to right-center on Wednesday was crushed.

The first ever postseason home run by a Phillie was hit by Fred Luderus in the 1915 World Series. 61 years later, the franchise got its second postseason homer off the bat of Greg Luczinski in the 1976 NLCS against the Cincinnati Reds.

61 years. 4 wars were fought in the meantime. Damn, we are blessed fans right now.

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If the Phillies wrap up 2009 with another World Series, Charlie Manuel will become the 25th manager to win at least 2 World Series.

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The Phillies have now played the Dodgers in 5 NLCS. After losing the first two in 1977 and 1978, the Phils have won the last three (1983, 2008, 2009).

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Jayson Werth leads the team with 11 strikeouts in the postseason, but we’ll take it when he also leads the team with a 1.208 OPS which is just a hair better than Ryan Howard’s 1.204. Imagine what the Phillies offense would look like right now with a locked-in Pedro Feliz, …