“Here Comes My Girl” was a 1980 hit off the 1979 album Damn the Torpedoes for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. The tune reached #59 in the US.
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The picture above is after Chris Coste hit a walk-off single to end a 13 inning marathon between the Phillies and Mets that put the Phillies ahead in the NL East. The box score is confusing, improbable, and mind-blowing; how did this group of Phillies end up winning the World Series in 2008? Jamie Moyer started against Pedro Martinez, Clay Condrey hit a double and scored a run, and the Phillies sent offensive juggernauts So Taguchi and Andy Tracy to the plate, and overcame a 7-0 deficit to win. Coste, on the 2008 World Series DVD, says that this was the moment the Phillies knew they could win the World Series. When you can overcome those odds and have Rudy Saenez get the win, I would say your team is destined to win, too. -
Every second of this ten minute and five second clip is worth watching. Alvin Lee delivers one of the most charismatic performances fronting Ten Years After, effectively stealing the show to that point at Woodstock. The clip is of their UK hit “I’m Going Home” was first featured on their second album Undead.
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I love Charlie Manuel and think he’s a great manager but for whatever reason, Chuck in a suit reading the newspaper with his name flashing on the screen made me laugh hysterically while trying to find things I may have forgotten about the 2008 season. -
Earlier this season, J-Rol wore his socks high. I had forgotten that he had also done this during the 2008 season. This screen grab was captured from the Phillies third game, and first win, of the 2008 season where a walk-off Jayson Werth walk won them the ball game. -
Two of my all-time favorites, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes and Bruce Springsteen perform the Springsteen penned “I Don’t Want To Go Home” in 1978 at Cleveland’s Agora Theatre. This clip is from possibly the most notorious Southside shows of all-time; Bruce had just completed a show that started at 8:00 PM at the Cleveland Coliseum and rushed in his limousine down toward Cleveland State University in time to perform three tunes with the Jukes. See if you can spot Conan O’Brien’s La Bamba or the Sopranos’ Steve Van Zandt in this clip.
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If you have watched or listened to any Phillies broadcast lately, you might have heard that the Phillies have had trouble scoring runs. The magic number of runs to score to win a ball game seems to be four; the Phillies are now 23-2 when scoring four runs or more after beating the Mets 6-4 tonight.
With a record of 32-19, the Phillies are on pace for 101 wins, their first 100 win season since they won 101 games in 1977, and it isn’t crazy to think that could be plus or minus 6. The addition of Chase Utley off of the disabled list is worth about 6 1/2 wins according to Crashbrun Alley. And in a year where the Marlins are keeping within arms length and the Braves just won’t go away, those 6 and 1/2 wins could easily be the difference between the Braves’ phenomenal staff catching the Phillies or not. For instance, the Phillies won the NL East by an average of 4 games in the last 4 seasons.
Utley gives the Phillies a much needed perceived boost, no doubt. As Bill Baer explains, it’s not only his offensive and defensive production that makes Utley valuable, but his value over his replacements Wilson Valdez and Pete Orr. The perception this season has been that the Phillies have been patching together a line-up, scraping runs together to win games pitched by their heroic aces. No doubt, the Phillies pitching crew, starters and relievers, have been excellent this year and deserve much credit for their success; Phillies’ pitching ranks 2nd in the NL in ERA as of this writing. But has the offense been that bad or is it part of a larger trend? To explore this, we will take a look at some basic data that may help us figure this out.
Before I begin, please note the small sample size for this review. It is done just for entertainment purposes but I thought it would be neat to search for possible trends. As far as I know, this may be the first look at it on the web.
The first piece of data is runs per game. I’m using runs instead of oERA here because runs can be created by making the defense make mistakes and because eventually, it would be essentially a comparison of the same number between oERA and ERA if I used oERA. I used ERA for the pitching statistic because it is the most commonly used and most easily accessible defensive-independent available. What remains interesting to me is that their is no pattern up or down in this small sample size for unearned runs. All of the differences remain between .25 and .34 runs per game.
Over the 4 Phillies’ playoff years and this year, the National League average has dropped from 4.71 to 4.1 a season, with an average of dropping .1525 runs a game season-to-season. I wish I comprehended Bill James’ win-shares better, so that I could tell you over the course of a season how much more valuable a run became from one year to the next and to point out how much more valuable a run is now than it was in 2007, but I don’t quite get it.
To make things simpler, compare the chart above to the one below, that of the Phillies’ runs scored and ERA. Look awfully similar, don’t they?
The Phillies had a Runs v. NL Average Runs differential of (.8, .39, .63, .42, -.02) from 2007-2011. The striking number, and the outlier, is the -.02. It is the only negative and a stark drop-off from the mighty run scoring teams of 2007 and 2009 and a .4 runs per game less than the differential they were putting up against the NL from 2010. The good news, and perhaps more obvious number when looking at the above graph is that the Phillies’ pitching has improved leaps and bounds since 2007. In 2007 and 2009, they needed the offensive outburst, being outpaced by the league average by -.3 and -.19 earned runs per game. In 2008, they were only .09 earned runs above the league average per game. It should come as no surprise that in 2010, a year they won 97 games, they outpaced the NL average in earned runs per game by .35. This year? They are outpacing the league average by a full half run per game.This number becomes very important in a series of discussion points that may become very confusing.If you compare the Phillies’ run differential versus the league average and their ERA differential versus the league average by adding the runs above average plus the ERA above or below average, you’ll find strikingly similar numbers representing each season with one statical outlier, 2010. The Phillies average per season since 2007 is [(Runs – NLRuns) + (ERA – NLERA)] = .538 runs per game. This is a very basic net runs above average, but you’ll see illustrated below that the Phillies are not straying too far from that average:
2007: .5
2008: .48
2009: .44
2010: .79
2011: .48
With the return of Chase Utley, the advantage of Dom Brown and Ben Francisco platooning, and the regression to the mean of Cliff Lee, the Phillies are poised to capitalize on this and expand this differential further but even if it continues at its current pace, the Phillies have no reason to worry. The graphs below illustrates the trend of the Phillies v. the NL in runs scored, followed by the Phillies v. NL in ERA, rounded out with a bar graph showing the Phillies in comparison to the best, worst, and average NL stats.
Would love to hear any and all Phillies’ or baseball fans’ thoughts on this.
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Saw these guys open up for the Strokes and Australian favorites You Am I with my brother Bill in Fall 2002 at the Electric Factory. They were by far the best, most cohesive group I had ever seen. I don’t often find it appropriate to use “face-melting” in any context, but their pace, enthusiasm, and music was, well, rather face-melting. Sadly, this video of “It’s Alright, It’s Ok” is one of the only pieces of media of theirs on the internet. The Realistics disbanded shortly after this video was filmed, presumably in late 2002 or early 2003. There is very little information on the group floating around on the web and their CD’s are almost as hard to track down. Thankfully, Bill bought their 7 track EP at the show. To the best of my knowledge, they have one other release, Real People Are Overrated, which features some killer tracks including “Monotony” and “Turn Around”.
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Bravo, Saxby’s – Lansdale. Bravo.
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This jam is the opening track New York Dolls‘ 1973 self-titled debut album. The Dolls were glam/punk pioneers who influenced many groups, including the Sex Pistols, Blondie, and, perhaps most noticeably and visually apparent, KISS. The song was ranked number 267 on Rolling Stones’ Top 500 Songs of All Time and among Morrissey’s favorite tunes. The Dolls got one of their biggest breaks by opening up for Rod Stewart on his 1971 tour. I was jamming to Rod The Mod last Thursday.
