The Greatest Game Ever Played.

No, I'm not talking about golf. And I'm not naive enough to say that last night's 19 inning Phillies game was actually the greatest game ever played. But the sport of baseball in general is. Nothing is as unpredictable as this game. 2,430 of them are played each year and the game has been around since 1846, and yet at any given point in time there's a distinct chance you'll see something you've never seen before. There is no clock, there is no sudden death, and there is no tie. And that's what makes the game so special. So when the Phillies take the field at 7:05 on a Wednesday night and I'm hoping that I can get home and get my first decent night's sleep in over a week, I have no idea what kind of a treat I'm in for.

• Second longest (continuous) game in Phillies history timewise (6 hrs, 11 min). Four minutes shy of the record! 45,706 people started out there, but I'd estimate about 1/3 of them were gone by the 10th, and another 1/3 left on the Bruce HR. All in, if I had to guess, I'd say less than 10,000 were there to see Ibanez drive the ball to center and Jimmy trot home. If you know someone who claims to have been there, chances are they're lying (except me, you know me!)

• A bad day from Roy Halladay beats a good day from just about anyone else. The Reds were a singles machine for much of the first 7 innings which ran up Roy's pitch count and did some damage to his WHIP, but not a single ball was hit all that hard. A handful of well placed slap hits through gaps led to 3 runs, which was only the 3rd time all year that Roy had let up more than two.

• In 2010, that Jay Bruce HR is the straw that breaks the camel's back. In 2008, the Ryan Howard return shot is a foregone conclusion. It's nice to see shades of 2008 again...

• The stolen bases are a bit concerning. Three guys stole 2nd off Chooch last night and none of the plays were really all that close. 

• 9 1/3 IP, 5Ks, 1 Hit. That's the combined stat line of Kyle Kendrick, JC Romero, David Herndon, Danys Baez, and Wilson Valdez. The crowd groaned as each of them ran in from the bullpen, but collectively they got the job done. 

• Defense saved this game. Jimmy Rollins, whose defense has been questioned on more than one occasion this season, makes no fewer than 3 plays from short that completely save the game. Ryan Howard stretches and scoops everything that comes near him at first base. David Herndon makes a play in the 11th with the bases loaded that goes down in the scorecard as (1-3), but is far from routine and he's the only guy on the field with a shot at getting the out. 

• As the innings wear on, you go through a roller coaster of emotions. 1-3: Well, the offense is hitting tonight, that's certainly better than the last time we saw Travis Wood! 4-9: Man, Roy is really getting dinked and dunked here. There's a good chance this one get's away from us! 10: That HR is the game... no wait! 11-13: Come on! It's been almost an hour since the last time either team got a hit! 14-17: This could be something special. 18-19: This IS something special. Confidence --> Pessimism --> Annoyance --> Optimism -->Pride --> Feeling like you witnessed history.

• The Upper Deck was completely cleared by the 15th. The Rooftop wasn't far behind. Doc's Patients came down from their perch and parked right near us. Another two or three innings and I could have seen them closing Ashburn Alley and the outfield all-together just to get the place clean for the 1PM start today!

• Baez was told he was done after 3 innings, at which point he said "No." Usually that trick only works for Roy Halladays, but Charlie was out of other options. At that point, Valdez would have likely came in the game anyway as they were completely out of other options. The fact that Baez went the longest outing of his career, and threw 73 pitches earns him a complete reprieve from any negative comments until at least the All-Star Break. 

• Valdez throws 10 pitches, 5 for strikes. Romero throws 16, 4 for strikes. I would suspect that JC Romero is dangerously close to being cut... if he wasn't a lefty.

• Around the 11th inning, it became pretty clear that a position player was likely to pitch. Chances are Charlie had already sent today's starter, Cliff Lee, home for the night and with Oswalt coming off a recent injury, Hamels being a creature of routine, and Worley already complaining about tiredness, there were no other options. When Baez goes 5, it's only delaying the inevitable. My first thought is that Valdez is the likely candidate. He has a cannon for an arm at 2nd and there is literally no one else on the team who has pitched. I later heard on Twitter that Valdez had thrown a few years back in a Dominican League game and that Ross Gload had tossed one in 2008, but with a torn hip muscle he wasn't an option.

• Chooch moving to third was the surprise of the night, though. I thought I remembered hearing that he was a 2nd baseman in some past/minor league life, but BaseballReference only shows 1B and OF as positions he's played. Moving him to 3rd and putting Polanco at 2nd was a shocker for me. Watching him motor down the third base line after a foul ball was baseball at it's finest.

• I can't help but think that the Reds had another pitcher available. I haven't heard any word on it, but they only tossed 7 guys and they used 21 players total. Assuming 4 starters weren't available, was Carlos Fisher really the last guy they had left in the pen? When he stepped to the plate in the top of the 19th I was shocked that they were going to march him back out there for a 6th inning.  He was visibly done.

• Before stepping foot on the mound, Valdez is already having a career night. 3 for 6 with a double, and two amazing take out slides at second base. I give the guy crap all the time for his propensity to ground into a double play, but he's otherwise fundamentally sound. I could see him coaching somewhere when his career wraps up. 

• But then the guy threw 90MPH. 90! Tim Wakefield keeps finding work and I'm not sure he's ever sniffed 90! Valdez even shook off signs from catcher Dane Sardhina! According to his post game interview, he mixed a high 80s fastball with a low 80s sinker. He got the reigning NL MVP to fly out, he pegged Scott Rolen to much delight, and he got Jay Bruce (who was 3-7 with 3 RBI at that point) to pop up. Unbelievable and worthy of this T-shirt (coincidentally, it was available WELL before last night's game.)

• According to ESPN, Wilson Valdez is the first person to start a game in the field and earn the win as a pitcher since Babe Ruth. Yes, Wilson Valdez will forever find himself as part of a trivia question that includes BABE RUTH. 

It might be premature to say that last night's game will be the one to define the season, but my knee jerk reaction is to say it already has.

For even more tidbits of information and statistical oddities, check Jason Stark's column over at ESPN.com

Pitch Count, Schmitch Count.

Pitch counts are an interesting thing. Sometime about 20 years ago, a great pow-wow of managers must have occurred where it was decided that the100 pitch plateau was a nice round figure at which time everyone should start to cringe and cover their eyes for fear of injury. After all, no one in the history of baseball has ever been injured during pitches 1-99, right?

Obviously, this topic comes from a pair of weekend performances by Phillies pitchers Cole Hamels and Roy Halladay in which both pitchers crushed the imaginary 100 pitch plateau. In fact, Halladay's 130 and Hamels' 126 pitches represent the top two counts of the season by a starter from any club. But what does it all mean? Hamels' response to the media when questioned was that he looked forward to the challenge of seeing how his arm would bounce back for his next start. Halladay, on the other hand, was a little more candid, just saying that "You go as far as you can."

The fact is that as long as a pitcher is being effective, the difference between 90 pitches and 120 is minimal. Between starts, a starting pitcher will throw bullpen sessions, long toss, and warmups before the game. When we see Roy Halladay throw 130 pitches in a game we panic, but we ignore the 300 other balls he throws over the course of a 5 day stretch. Roy had thrown 113 balls prior to coming back out for the 9th inning. But he was throwing an overwhelming amount of strikes, his velocity was still up in the mid 90s, and he had just come through a streak where he retired 8 of 9 batters via strikeout. If you'd rather see Charlie go to the bullpen and "save" Halladay a few pitches, then I'm going to have to say you're out of your mind. If you want to save a few pitches, save them on that 3rd day of rest.

Which reminds me... prior to about 1980, most major league pitching staffs consisted of 4 starting pitchers. A pitcher was expected to go out every 4th day and get the job done. How did that work out? Well, in 1972 Steve Carlton threw 346 innings in 41 starts (31and more than 3/4 of them were on 3 days rest. He marched that stat line to a 27-10 record and a Cy Young Award. Was he the exception to the rule? Not really, considering that of the 300 Game winners in baseball's live ball era, over half of them played during the early 1970s.

But we find ourselves in the era of the babied pitcher. From Little League rules requiring inning limits and days off to the imaginary 100 pitch wall, today's pitcher has been engrained with the notion that once they hit that 3rd digit, their day is over. Which is more the reason why guys like Nolan Ryan, Jack McKeon, and Roy Halladay are such a breath of fresh air. McKeon, WS winning coach for the Marlins a few years back, told his pitchers that they need to be prepared to finish what they started every day. For every Todd Van Poppel, who claims to have had a dead arm by the time he reached the majors, there is a Tim Wakefield who threw 172 pitches in a game in 1990 and still pitches with effectiveness two decades later today. For every Gil Meche, who retired at the age of 32 after a 132 pitch performance derailed the rest of his season, there is a Randy Johnson who regularly reached 140.

The biggest argument is the risk/reward that goes along with pitch counts. High salaries = risk, and limiting the pitcher's work is one of the more effective ways to assure health. Health = value. In 2000, 125+ pitches were thrown by a starter 160 times. Seven years later, that number was down to just 14! More than a 90% drop in lengthy starts and all because management is afraid of losing their investment. But high pitch counts is just one of the literally hundreds of things that can injure a pitcher. A game of pickup basketball (Zach Greinke), kicking a chair (Ryan Madson), holding back a sneeze (Mat Latos)... I'm no expert in sports medicine, but it would seem to me that the biggest reason for injuries to pitchers is poor mechanics, not overuse. Jose Contreras doesn't find himself hitting the disabled list because he's thrown too many pitches, but rather because his delivery puts a strain on his muscles. The straw the breaks the camel's back in that scenario can occur on pitch 1 or 123. Each and every pitch is a calculated risk in and of itself. For a well prepared hurler, those odds never change.

So I say, whenever a pitcher is being effective and has a history of being able to go deep into games, let him stay regardless of how many pitches he's thrown. Should a manager yank a 23 year old rookie in the 8th inning if he's thrown 110 pitches but has still kept the damage to a minimum? Absolutely. Give the kid a chance to earn a track record before rolling the dice. But the give and take between Roy Halladay and Charlie Manuel this season is EXACTLY what I like to see between a pitcher and his manager:

Manuel: "Well, here I am."
Halladay: "I got em!"
Manuel: "Okay, you got em."

And a pitcher of Halladay's caliber should continue to "get em" until it's obvious he can't. Sunday night, the magic tailed off at the end of the 9th inning and bringing in Antonio Bastardo for that final 1 pitch out was absolutely the correct move.

One theory I've read suggested that bringing in a 1-2 inning reliever to start the game, then letting your ace starter pitch the more crucial later innings is ideal. It's a bit absurd, but it stems from the disgust old school pitchers have with the way pitch counts are handled these days. More than one Hall of Fame starter is on the record saying that the lack of control a pitcher has over his own destiny is disgusting to them. 100 and done. The amount of pitchers that are groomed to pitch 9 innings is sadly dwindling. And yet guys are getting injured at almost exactly the same rate? Is anyone really being saved by the pitch count concept? Does an owner really save any money protecting his star pitcher if he has to go out and spend tens of millions of dollars on guys to pitch the 8th and 9th innings anyway?

Robin Roberts ended the 1950 Whiz Kids season by pitching in three of the final 5 games of the season (2 complete games). Rather than watching his arm fall off, he came back and threw 300+ innings in the next 5 straight seasons. It's a shame that baseball fans will never be treated to a feat like that ever again. And the pitch count is to blame.

Game's Easy... 9-3 Edition

Last time the Phillies threw back to back complete games? May 1999 with Paul Byrd and Curt Schilling (Oh, you saw that graphic at the bottom of the screen too? Good for you!) Is asking for back to back complete game SHUTOUTS being greedy? It's been said again and again, but this pitching staff is really good at baseball. Scary good. May never lose a series good. Might not lose back to back games good. GOOD.

Worried about the bullpen still? They've thrown 32.2 innings so far this season... out of 106. That means that even when you factor in the clunkers by Hamels and Lee and the two by Blanton, the staff is still averaging 6.1 IP and a 4.05 ERA. Which means even with 4 terrible games, they still basically average a quality start! It's comical to once you realize that the best is still yet to come from these guys. Who needs a bullpen? Rich Dubee has the EASIEST JOB IN THE WORLD!

The 1998 Braves rotation of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Denny Neagle, and Kevin Millwood are commonly referred to as the strongest rotation in baseball history. Through 12 games, their Braves were 6-6. 

Twelve games and four series into the season and the Phillies offense is just as impressive. 6 of the starting 8 are still sitting above .300. They lead baseball in OBP. They're scattering hits to all parts of the field, they're hitting balls hard, and they aren't striking out. And all of this without Chase Utley (who coincidentally started running drills today in the outfield at Nationals Park.)

While the pre-season favorite from the AL sits at 2-9 with and Red Sox Nation starts to panic, the Phillies march into a weekend series against the Marlins who toss Javier Vazquez, Anibal Sanchez, and Chris Volstad (combined 1-3 with a 7.23 ERA). Even with our arguably weakest lineup of Oswalt, Hamels, and Blanton I like our chances.