The Philly Phaithful are hating pretty hard on Ryan Howard:
I don’t really disagree with the main point of his contract being one of the worst ever given, but Howard was one of the few phillies to hit at all in the series.
In the mean time the Mets decided hire Sandy Alderson, which is like upgrading from Tommie Aaron to Hank Aaron. For the first time in a long time I look forward to our off-season moves as opposed to dreading them.
I’m not surprised that Howard is being made the goat in Philly. His final line in the postseason includes 1 run scored, 0 RBIs and 17 strikeouts. And as for that last pitch, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been called Ball 4, because it was very, very close, but with the entire season literally depending on that one pitch, you can’t just watch it whizz by you. There was really no excuse for him not swinging at that pitch.
It’s not Howard’s fault that the Phillies lost. It was a team effort. They just were never able to get the key hit in the key situation, and the Giants were. But when you make $19,000,000, part of the deal is that the fans get to blame you personally when you watch the series ending pitch go by you with your bat on your shoulder.
Let’s see. Howard had a post season OPS of .819, including .900 against SF. The guy who wrote that is simply an idiot. Howard’s offensive numbers were better than anyone else’s on the team. Sure, he didn’t drive in any runs. But that’s clearly due to the ineptness of the every other Phillies batter with the possible exception of Werth. The reasons the Phillies lost are Utley, Ibanez, Rollins, Polanco and Ruiz. In the LCS against SF, Roy Halladay had 1 single in 3 at-bats. He ended up with the 4th best OPS on his team.
Tell that to Carlos Beltran.
I’ve been listening to the World Series buildup on KNBR, the Giants’ radio flagship station. The folks there seem to be broadly but caustiously optimistic about the Giants chances against the Rangers. This is in marked contrast with the Phillies series, where a number of the commentators did pick Philly to win.
The emphasis, as you might expect, is on the pitching. They seem to be giving Cliff Lee an appropriate amount of respect, but the consensus seems to be that overall the Giants starters are superior, especially when you get to starters 3 and 4. And I think everyone in the Bay Area feels that the Giants bullpen is head and shoulders above Texas’.
Focusing on tonight’s game, it’s obvious that the Giants are up against a very good pitcher. Lee, from what I understand, is a strike thrower; he gets people out by putting the ball in the strike zone and making them miss it. That’s actually good for the Giants, as their big weakness is with pitchers that keep the ball out of the zone. They will swing and miss at pitches out of the zone, and a pitcher with good control can get them out without ever throwing a strike. But if you put the ball over the plate, they’ll eventually figure out how to hit it.
The line in San Francisco this morning is this: We beat Roy Halliday, we beat Roy Oswalt, we can beat Cliff Lee.
I just hope tonight’s game is half as entertaining as the last game. Though even that may be setting the bar awfully high…
So we had all that conversation about the playoffs (and the spectating Yankees)…and now that the WS is here everyone’s out raking leaves? 
Well, did anyone actually watch the first game?
Not exactly the pitchers’ duel that was predicted, with even the winning pitcher giving up 4 runs and not making it out of the sixth inning.
Vlad Guerrero is out of the Rangers’ lineup tonight after his fielding errors in last night’s game. He’s had a good season this year, although he hasn’t exactly set the world of fire during the playoffs.
There’s another thread about it.