Philadelphia Baseball History

Bucking a trend for the 2017 season, the Phillies beat the Mets last night in a resounding way, posting 6 runs to the Mets' 2. With two games left in the season, both of them at home against the Mets, the Phils have gone a total of 6-11 against New York. Up until yesterday, only one of those wins had come at Citizens Bank Park, due to the Mets sweeping the Phillies in a CBP series in April, and taking 3 out of 4 in August. While in general, the Phillies have a better record at home than on the road, the Mets just seemed to have the Phillies number.  Many Phillies contributed to last night's win. Ben Lively pitched six innings, giving up six hits, including two solo home runs which accounted for the only runs the Mets scored. Lively showed good control, walking no one. Maikel Franco got the Phillies offense off to its start in the second inning, hitting a two-run blast that scored Odubel Herrera. Herrera joined the offensive punch, with a sacrifice fly in the third, sc...

Going into the last month of the season, it looked as though the Phillies had a difficult task ahead of them. At 50-83, in order to avoid 100 losses on the season, the team had to win 13 of their final 29 games. That would be a winning percentage of .448 for a team who came into the month with a .375 winning percentage for the season. Plus, the Phillies faced the division leading Nationals seven times, the league leading Dodgers four times, and the Mets, who seemed to have the Phillies' number this year, six times.  Yet here we are, just three games left for the season, and the Phillies are winning. Not only are they winning, but winning against teams that matter. When the Dodgers came to town, they had yet to clinch their division. The Phillies took three of four from them. When the Nationals came to town, they were playing for a 100 win season. The Phils won two of three from them, and ensured that there would not be a 100 wins in Washington. In fact, the Phillies have a win...

Octavius V. Catto was honored today when his statue was unveiled in front of Philadelphia City Hall. Fans of the Ken Burns documentary "Baseball" will recall Catto as being a civil rights leader who attempted to integrate baseball before the professional leagues were founded. Catto worked as an educator. His friend, the principal of the Roberts Vaux Consolidated School, Jacob White, founded an African American baseball team, the Philadelphia Pythians in the 1860s. Catto was the star shortstop of the Pythians.  In 1867, White first attempted to join the Pennsylvania Base Ball Players Association, but was persuaded to withdraw that application on account of racism. Later that year, the Pythians applied to join the National Base Ball Players Association, but was again infamously rebuffed due to the team's racial make-up. This did not deter Catto, who used baseball as a tool to educate African Americans on civil rights. After a game, Catto would take the opportunity to ...

A somewhat unlikely hero emerged from the Phillies' shut-out of the Braves yesterday: Maikel Franco. After showing promise in the 2015 season, and being the recipient of praise from Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt during the 2016 preseason, Franco's performance at the plate has been disappointing.  With 304 at-bats in 2015, Franco hit .280, with 14 home runs and 50 RBIs.  In 2016, with 581 at-bats, his average fell to .255.  Despite his 25 home runs and 88 RBIs, Manager Pete Mackanin exclaimed that he wanted to see improvement in Franco in 2017.  Instead, Franco's average fell to .231.  With six games left in the season, his home run total is 21 and his RBI total is 70. Franco's sub-par offensive performance, and Freddy Galvis' impressive play at shortstop, caused the Phillies to experiment with rookie J.P Crawford.  Known for being a shortstop for most of his minor league career, Crawford played a few games near the end of the AAA season at third base. ...

How quickly things can change in just three days. Three days ago, Phillies fans were celebrating. The Phils had taken three in a row from the Dodgers, the team with the best record in baseball. The Phillies needed only two more wins, out of ten games remaining, to avoid a one hundred loss season.  But now the Phillies have lost three in a row. Twice, the team has blown a lead after five innings and eventually lost by one run. This is a familiar refrain for Phillies fans, because the team has lost a league-leading thirty-six one run games. Worse, in one game, pitching prospect Ben Lively was blown out with five runs in the first inning, demonstrating that consistency remains a problem for the young pitching staff.  Still, there have been signs of hope in those last three games. Henderson Alvarez, whom the Phillies are giving an end of the season try out after two shoulder surgeries, pitched five scoreless innings last night. The Phillies' rookies continued to shine. Nic...

In a season marred with over ninety losses, a heroic pitching performance stood out for the Phillies. But the man who through a no-hitter for an otherwise dismal team did not return the following season. Instead, he was dealt in a trade that turned around the franchise.  No, I'm not talking about Cole Hammels and the 2015 Phillies. This is the story of Rick Wise and the 1971 Phillies.  When you look closely, there are a lot of similarities between the Phillies of the early 1970s and today's Phillies. 1971 marked the first of three seasons in a row when the Phillies lost more than ninety games. Likewise, the Phils lost more than ninety games in each season from 2015 through 2017.  But even in the early 1970s there was hope. After obtaining Steve Carlton in the Rick Wise trade, the Phillies began to inject new life into the major league team from its farm system. Larry Bowa debuted in 1969. He was followed by the Bull, Greg Luzinski, in 1971, and Bob Boone and M...

Yes!  What a catch by Odubel Herrera!  Let the celebration begin!  That's three in a row against a team that was considered the best in baseball a month ago.  Wait, what?  Replay review?  You mean we can't celebrate just yet? Ugh! Replay review. A way to drag things out some more. A way to slow momentum and kill the spur of the moment emotional highs. Looked like a great play, but let's wait to see what the replay umpire in New York says.  Twice in the last eight days a replay review has interrupted a Phillies end of the game celebration. Last week, against the Marlins, replay took away a walk-off win and subjected us to six more late night innings.  I have to get my kids up and out to school in the morning for crying out loud.  Last night, the replay review was mercifully short. It was clear that Herrera made an incredible leaping catch right in front of the wall for the final out. But, hey. Let's give it a look just to b...

Watching the game last night, one couldn't help but think that Yu Darvish, who becomes a free agent at the end of the season, was putting on an audition for the 2018 Phillies. By the time Darvish left in the sixth inning, he had allowed only four hits, one walk and one unearned run. He struck out seven, including his 200th of the season.  Despite his short outing, he looked good.  A pitcher like Darvish just may be what the Phillies need in 2018.  For the 2015 and 2016 seasons, and the first half of the 2017 season, a major weakness for the Phillies was a lack of offense. But the second half of 2017 saw the promotion of young hitters, such as Nick Williams, Jorge Alfaro and Rhys Hoskins. Joining players such as Odubel Herrera and Aaron Altherr, the Phillies have shown that their young guns can hit and score runs. So much so that the conventional wisdom among Phillies fans is that the team should look for quality pitching in this off-season. The injection of one o...

While understandably, most of the attention has been on the incredible feats of Rhys Hoskins in the last two months of the Phillies' season, it has, to a degree, overshadowed the accomplishments of his teammates.  Take Aaron Altherr, for instance. In the first half of the season, Altherr was the Phillies offense, with speculation as to whether he would be the team's All-Star representative. Injuries cooled down his season, and forced him to the disabled list. Now that Altherr has returned, he has added to the explosive potential of the young Phillies line-up.  Last night, Altherr ripped Clayton Kershaw for the first ever grand slam against the Dodgers' ace, made possible, in part, by a Hoskins walk. It was the second grand slam in Altherr's career. Both have been historic; the first being a rare inside-the-park slam against the Nationals in 2015. Altherr's blast gave the Phillies all the runs they needed to give Nick Pivetta his sixth win of the season. The ...

Speculation about the 2018 Phillies starting rotation has so far focused on familiar names. Aaron Nola, Jared Eickhoff, Vince Velasquez, Nick Pivetta, Mark Leiter, Jr., Zach Eflin, Ben Lively and Jake Thompson have all made starts for the Phils this year, and all figure to be in the fight for major league roster spots in the Spring. One name that hadn't been mention so far is right hander Henderson Alvarez.  Alvarez made his first start for the Phillies last night, after being absent from the major leagues for over a year. Originally signed by the Toronto Blue Jays as an international free agent, Alvarez pitched a no-hitter for the Marlins on the last game of the season in 2013 and was an All-Star in 2014.  However, his career had been plagued by shoulder injuries.  After being named the Marlins' Opening Day pitcher in 2015, Alvarez's season ended early when he underwent shoulder surgery in July of that year. The Marlins did not tender him a contract at the end of...

After going 71-91 in the 2016, the Phillies were hoping that they were on the road to improvement. The team finished better than its 63-99 record in 2015, and were not even in last place in its division. The fans got an opportunity to see some of its promised young talent during the season.  Surely, the Phillies could show that they were on their way to rebuilding a contending team. In the off season, Manager Peter Mackanin expressed his hope that the Phillies could finish at .500 in the 2017 season.  He pushed General Manager Matt Klentak to go after more hitters, and shore up what had been a dismal offense in 2016.  Klentak seemed to respond, signing professional hitter Howie Kendrick and left handed hitter Michael Saunders. In addition to trying to strengthen the offense, Klentak went after veteran pitching, re-signing Jeremy Hellickson, who posted fairly solid numbers on a losing team in 2016, and obtaining Clay Buchholz, who had had some good years with Boston. ...