The Rotation

by Jim Salisbury

  “I know people will say, ‘Well, you’ve got the starting pitching. You’ve got the pitchers,’ ” Manuel said. “Yeah, that’s part of it, too. But at the same time, usually when you talk about a World Series team or something like that you’re talking about a top-notch team. I’m not saying we don’t have that. We could have it, but it’s going to take some work.”

  The Phillies beat Arizona, 8-4, on April 27 at Chase Field to prevent a Diamondbacks’ sweep. A victory on getaway day—the last game of a series when the team packs its bags and heads elsewhere, in this case, back home to Philadelphia—is a victory worth enjoying. But the clubhouse that afternoon felt different. All month long the Phillies seemed to have trouble hitting their stride. Maybe it was the injuries. Maybe it was the inconsistent offense. Maybe it was the expectations. And now, more health concerns emerged in The Rotation and elsewhere. Joe Blanton cut short a bullpen session before the game because of a problem with his right elbow, an injury he had privately dealt with since spring training. And catcher Carlos Ruiz had strained his back on a swing and left the game early.

  There was no music after this victory. There was no laughing. There was no chatter.

  It was strangely quiet.

  The players seemed tight, the mood heavy.

  The expectations of a new season seemed to be weighing on them. They seemed to be running in place.

  “Hey, we’re in first place. Anybody notice?” Bullpen Coach Mick Billmeyer told a reporter as the Phillies packed their bags in Arizona.

  “I’ve never seen a first-place team have less fun,” the reporter replied.

  “Don’t worry,” Billmeyer said, throwing a bag over his shoulder. “It’ll turn around. We’ll start having fun. You watch.”

  MAY

  May began with a stirring show of patriotism at Citizens Bank Park, but between injuries, poor run support and the occasional gopher ball, the weeks that followed caused several bouts of indigestion for The Rotation. It all culminated with Cliff Lee’s belching in front of his locker after having his lunch handed to him by the Washington Nationals on the final day of the month.

  That May 31 start ended up being Lee’s worst of a stellar season. He gave up a pair of home runs, including a three-run blast to Washington second baseman Danny Espinosa, as the Nationals did something they had rarely done against the Phillies: win a series.

  After games, it is customary for the starting pitcher to stand in the middle of the clubhouse or in front of his locker and take questions from reporters. Lee was clearly perturbed after this game. Not only had he given up the two damaging long balls, but he had walked three, raising his season total in 80 innings to 19, a number that stood out like a belch in church because he is traditionally one of the game’s best control pitchers. In fact, he’d walked just 18 batters in 212⅓ innings the year before. Lee wasn’t happy with his performance, nor was he particularly enthused about having to rehash it with reporters. As he arrived at his locker, he let out an audible belch. Must have been the meatballs he served up to Espinosa.

  Lee was spectacular—everything the Phillies thought they were buying—in June and August, but May was a month of highs and lows for the left-hander. There were games in which he pitched brilliantly, such as his 16-strikeout effort against the Braves in a 5-0 loss on May 6. Lee’s mates let him down offensively and defensively in that one. Later in the month, he pitched eight shutout innings against his former club, Texas. There were games in which he was knocked around, such as the one in Washington, and games in which he thrilled the fans with his work as a hitter, such as his win over Cincinnati on May 26, when he drove in three runs in a 10-4 win.

  That was a rare offensive explosion for the Phillies, a team that on many nights in May didn’t score enough runs to fill one of Betsy Ross’ thimbles. On April 30, Roy Halladay went the distance to squeak by the Mets, 2-1. That April finale pushed the Phils to 10 games over .500, but it was a foreshadowing, as the team scored three or fewer runs in 15 of its next 22 games, wasting some pretty good pitching along the way. Pitchers get frustrated when their teammates don’t score runs, but they are loath to admit it. They know things even out over the course of 162 games, that there will be nights when they allow six early runs and the offense will bail them out. They know negative emotion can unravel a pitcher on the mound and lead to a beating. So it’s best not to whine, best just to focus, as the tired cliché goes, on what you can control, even when runs are scarce.

  “You just go out and pitch, one pitch after another,” Halladay said after taking a 2-1 complete-game loss in Miami on May 10. “Jack Morris told me that. When you bring emotions into it, it makes it difficult.”

  At one point during the month, the Phillies went 27 innings between runs while Lee was on the mound. He followed the Jack Morris ideal and kept emotion out of it, shrugging as he always does while employing his favorite expression.

  Whatever.

  “There’s nothing we can do about that,” Lee said of the lack of run support after a 3-1 loss in St. Louis on May 16. “We hit once every nine hitters. We’ve got to do our job with the bats and so do the position players and everyone else. It’s a complete game.You’ve got to hit, play defense, and pitch. If one of those things are lacking, you’re going to lose. So whatever. It’s not my job to worry about runs scored. It’s my job to focus on preventing other teams from scoring and I’m going to keep focused on that.”

  Runs remained scarce throughout the month, but there was no stopping Halladay and Lee on May 20 and May 21. They got just enough support to beat Texas by scores of 3-2 and 2-0. Roy Oswalt wasn’t as fortunate in the series finale, which he lost, 2-0, despite allowing just a run over seven innings. After that game, Oswalt, who pitched with a sore back, described what it’s like working with the slim margin for error that a lack of run support creates.

  “You’ve kind of got to dance between raindrops out there and not give up too many hits in one inning,” he said. “One or two here and there, but you have to make big pitches at big times.”

  Halladay knows all about making big pitches at big times. He and Lee are both strike throwers who don’t let hits bother them. They dare hitters to hit their pitches, and rely on their defense and ability to manage an inning when they do. Nobody manages an inning better than Halladay. You can almost see him bear down, raise his intensity, and put a little extra on a pitch in a threatening situation. He did plenty of that on May 29, 2010, when he survived seven three-ball counts on his way to pitching a perfect game against the Marlins in Miami.

  Halladay’s opponent that night was Josh Johnson, the Marlins’ ace. Johnson was really good that night, allowing just an unearned run in seven innings, but Halladay was better. At 27, Johnson is one of the most talented young pitchers in the game, a big, strong right-hander like Halladay.

  In the pitching fraternity, Halladay is considered the best in the game, a total package superstar from his preparation—both mental and physical—to his unshakable mind-set, to his prowess on the mound. It’s not uncommon for Halladay’s pitching teammates to confer with him, trying to integrate some of what makes him special into their games. Kyle Kendrick seemed attached to Halladay’s hip when Halladay arrived in Clearwater in the spring of 2010. It’s no coincidence that Cole Hamels’ development of an assassin’s mentality blossomed when Halladay became a teammate and frequent dinner partner.

  Even opposing pitchers want to know what makes Halladay tick.

  Several weeks after Halladay outpitched Johnson in that 2010 perfect game, the Marlins were in Philadelphia. One day Johnson and Halladay were both scheduled to throw between-starts bullpen sessions at Citizens Bank Park. The bullpens in Philadelphia are two-tiered structures beyond the center-field wall. The visitors’ bullpen sits above the home team’s bullpen, and they are separated by a staircase. Johnson had finished his session as Halladay was arriving on the mound to begin his. Halladay’s bullpen sessions are serious exercises. He’s not out there goofing around. He works on p
olishing his mechanics, refining his grips on the baseball, and trying to locate every pitch with a sniper’s precision. Pity the poor sucker who gets in Halladay’s way during one of these work sessions.

  “The concentration and the effort he applies out there, the focus and the attention, it’s amazing,” said Pitching Coach Rich Dubee, who, along with a catcher, is usually the only one to get an up-close look at Halladay in his bullpen operating room. “He’s out there trying to make pitches. He doesn’t just flip it up there. There’s a purpose to everything he does. He wants to do his work and he doesn’t want to be bothered.”

  Johnson finished his workout that day in 2010 and slowly descended the bullpen stairs at Citizens Bank Park, stealing a glimpse of Halladay as he began to limber up. Johnson lingered.

  “I was waiting for the blowup,” Dubee recalled a year later. “I’ve seen camera guys wander up there and . . . oh, boy.”

  Zap.

  Johnson asked if he could watch Halladay at work. Halladay motioned that it was fine. Johnson was no camera guy. He was a member of the pitching fraternity, a gifted All-Star and Halladay was OK with him taking mental notes, even if Johnson could use the knowledge gained to someday beat him.

  “I would be interested, too,” Dubee said. “Johnson’s no dummy. Doc’s a special guy. Johnson’s special, too, but Doc has done it for a long time. You have an opportunity like that, you take advantage of it.”

  Johnson watched with laser-like intensity as Halladay branded the catcher’s mitt, time and time again, with darting sinkers, sharp cutters, biting curveballs, and changeups that disappeared as they reached the plate.

  Halladay did it all with the seriousness of an anesthesiologist.

  “I stayed for the whole thing,” Johnson said. “Really, really impressive.”

  What impressed him most?

  “You can go up and down the list,” Johnson said. “His attitude. The way he goes about it on the field. The work he puts in. He’s somebody you want to model yourself after.”

  The funny thing about Johnson’s little study session in 2010 is it probably would have never happened if not for Phillies fans and the team’s relievers in 2004. When Citizens Bank Park opened that year, the home bullpen was on the top tier and the visitors’ bullpen was below. After a preseason exhibition series, Phillies relievers complained to management that they were being heckled by fans hanging over the bullpen from above. Phillies relievers complained that it was difficult to concentrate.

  Management moved the Phillies to the lower bullpen and threw the visitors to the fans. Raw meat, meet the Philadelphia lions.

  Fans above the visitors’ bullpen are so close to the visiting relievers that in April 2004, Cincinnati reliever Danny Graves asked one of them if he waxed his eyebrows.

  “I could tell that he did, but I asked anyway,” Graves said. “It’s pretty wild out there. They’re ruthless.”

  A few weeks later during that inaugural season at Citizens Bank Park, Montreal Expos relievers timed a fan as he booed for 13 minutes straight.

  Six years later, Johnson was glad the visitors had been moved upstairs. If they had stayed on the bottom tier, he would have finished his session that June day in 2010 and walked out of the bullpen possibly without knowing Halladay was above him. He can thank the lions and those whining Phillies relievers of 2004 for his up-close look at Halladay’s workday.

  Fans’ interacting with relievers in the bullpen has long been part of the game. Former Boston Red Sox reliever Bob Stanley used to hose down sunbaked fans in the Fenway Park bleachers on hot days. More than a few phone numbers have been exchanged between pretty girls and relievers—bachelors, of course—and an occasional hot dog from the concession stand has made it into a bullpen. One classic bullpen moment in recent Phillies history came when sharp-tongued closer Billy Wagner was warming up in the bullpen in San Francisco. The bullpens in San Francisco are practically in the box seats and a fan was going to town on Wagner, who stands just 5-9.

  “Hey, midget,” the fan shouted at Wagner.

  Wagner, the hardest-throwing lefty on the planet at that time, kept firing pitches.

  “Hey, Frodo,” the fan shouted.

  Wagner kept firing.

  “How tall are you anyway?” the fan shouted.

  Wagner seized his opportunity.

  “Five-nine,” he drawled between pitches. “Six-six when I’m standing on my wallet.”

  Since the day the Phillies signed Cliff Lee, there was a tendency to think of the club as the Big Four starters and a bunch of complementary players. While the impact of the team’s star-studded rotation couldn’t be disputed, there was more to the club than four guys named Halladay, Lee, Hamels, and Oswalt.

  As everyone from the front office to the clubhouse had mentioned since this campaign began on Valentine’s Day in Clearwater, it takes a full team to win a championship. All the pieces matter, as Lester Freamon said in The Wire. Whatever the case, the first home stand of May was a good reminder of all this. The Phillies went 6-3 on that home stand, even though Joe Blanton and Roy Oswalt were hurting. Two of those wins came from Vance Worley, who went from being farmed out in March to a double-digit winner by Labor Day. The other came from Kyle Kendrick. The right-hander replaced the sore-backed Oswalt on May 7 and, in his first start of the season, pitched five shutout innings in a 3-0 win over Atlanta. Worley and Kendrick pitched 17 innings as starters on the home stand and allowed just one run combined.

  Not too shabby.

  “Those guys are on a different level,” said Kendrick, referring to the big-name starters. “But it is nice to help out.”

  Blanton struggled with elbow issues the entire month. He was scheduled to pitch against Colorado at home on May 19. Rain washed out batting practice and most of the players milled about the clubhouse before the game. Even the elusive Halladay, often tucked away watching video or riding a stationary bike to Europe, was there, his attention to his workout regimen interrupted by another passion—aviation. Kendrick was playing with a remote-control helicopter. A number of teammates looked on in amusement as the popular Kendrick, joystick in hand, struggled to get the delicate toy airborne. When he finally did, it stayed up for just a couple of seconds and crashed to the floor amidst the chuckles of onlookers.

  Halladay, who says he would have become a pilot if he didn’t become a ballplayer, picked up the helicopter and made some adjustments to the blades, as if he were tinkering with the grip on his changeup. He grabbed the joystick from Kendrick and flew the helicopter smoothly for 20 seconds before landing it softly and handing the joystick back to Kendrick. All that was missing was Halladay channeling fiddler Charlie Daniels and saying, “That’s how you do it, son,” but anyone who knows Halladay knows he’s way too humble to do something like that.

  “He’s good at everything,” one reporter said to another after watching Halladay pilot the toy helicopter, which was about the size of a middle infielder’s glove.

  Clearly inspired by Halladay’s flawless flight, Kendrick took the joystick and promptly crashed the helicopter into the back of a chair occupied by Blanton, that night’s pitcher. It was rather symbolic. Blanton experienced more pain in his elbow as he tried to loosen up and was scratched. He would not make another start until the final week of the season. Kendrick made the emergency start that night and was torched for a pair of home runs by Jason Giambi in a 7-1 loss to the Rockies.

  The defeat was the Phils’ fifth in six games and they scored more than two runs in just one of them. Their only win in that span was a 2-1 victory over Colorado behind Hamels.

  Where were the runs?

  It was a question Phillies pitchers asked all month, and, regrettably, would ask again.

  Back on May 8, Hamels could have asked, “Where are the runs?” He pitched seven innings and allowed just three runs, but the Phils suffered a 5-2 loss to Atlanta on that Sunday night.

  The Phillies began an eight-game road trip in Miami the next day. They didn’t reach t
heir hotel until after 3 A.M. Players and coaches arrived in the clubhouse the next day, bleary-eyed but upbeat. The hangover that comes with a difficult loss can’t last long when you play nearly every day for six months. Several members of the team’s traveling party had been relaxing at the hotel pool a couple hours earlier. One staff member spoke of seeing a 250-pound woman sunbathing.

  “Some people just shouldn’t wear bikinis,” he said.

  A few feet away, Bullpen Coach Mike Billmeyer, the team’s ambassador of laughs, perked up when he heard of the 250-pound bathing beauty.

  “Did you give her my number?” he asked.

  The Phils beat the Marlins that night, with Blanton getting his only win of the year despite pitching through the elbow injury that would eventually scuttle his season.

  The second game of the series was another matchup between Halladay and Johnson, and you couldn’t help but wonder if Halladay had given Johnson a little too good of a peek in the bullpen at Citizens Bank Park a year earlier. Johnson pitched seven innings and allowed just one run, lowering his ERA to a microscopic 1.63. Halladay and the Phillies lost the game, 2-1. Not only were runs scarce, the defense betrayed Halladay as normally sure-handed shortstop Jimmy Rollins made a costly error to put the go-ahead run on base in the eighth inning. Halladay followed with a rare wild pitch before Chris Coughlin broke the tie with a bloop hit to center. As Coughlin’s feathery blooper found the outfield grass, Halladay shouted a profanity. It was an uncharacteristic show of emotion for the stoic pitcher, but it was that kind of night—frustrating all the way.

  “WILSON IS PITCHING!”

  Danys Baez went 5-8 with a 5.81 ERA in 80 games over two rather forgettable seasons in Philadelphia.

  But he’ll always have May 25, 2011.

  So will Wilson Valdez.