Halfway Point

The season is now through 82 games. You know what that means?!

It means I'm pissed at myself for ignoring the exact halfway point yesterday (thinking I could get away with it), only to get a text from an excited reader about the "halfway blog tonight."

For the record, I'm not pissed at the person who texted me this at all. I thought about this last night - we were 81 games in...that's a perfect spot to post something! Plus I only have 11 posts in June, and I had 13 in each of April and May. This could surely get me to 13 if I did a post for the halfway point and one reacting to the series today! And if you haven't noticed through the first 2 years of this blog, my mind only really works in numbers. And I teach social studies why? Don't worry about it.

Off the record, though, I hate Steve.

(Kidding! That is, as long as you're actually reading this, Steve. If he's not, let the hatred begin!)

There are about a billion different things that I could possibly do for a halfway post. Unfortunately for you, I can only think of about 4 of them.

1) At this rate
No one wants this. Sure, I can throw in a joke or 2 about bin Laden dying again, but I already did that at the illustrious 1/5 mark of the season. I'll probably end up doing some of this anyway, though.
2) Revisit my predictions
This one I just really don't want to do because those things are embarrassing. And I did that at that famed 20% mark as well. I'll probably end up doing some of this anyway, though.
3) General thoughts about the season so far
This has no structure to it whatsoever! I could be typing for days. No one wants to read that. Seriously, that post will be somewhere around 4,000 words. I'll probably end up doing some of this anyway, though.
4) What can we expect the 2nd half of the season?
Who freakin' knows?! You saw my predictions for this Red Sox series. I clearly have no faith in this team and think they are all a group of big majokers who only succeed with luck and the best starting rotation in history. I'll probably end up doing some of this anyway, though.
And a 5th, unforeseen direction I could go:
5) Complain about people I don't like associated with the Phillies
This is what most every other post ends up being anyway, so let's just count on this to be the majority of it.

So here is my attempt at a post summing up the season for the Phillies, past, present, and future.

I will start (a little late to start, yes?) by saying that the All-Star Break is not the halfway point in the season. I hate the All-Star Break for this reason alone. We still have another 2 weeks or something weird probably until the All-Star Break. See? I don't even know! And I'm too lazy to check because why should I have to check? Just make it July 1st every year. That's so much easier for everyone to remember. And we play baseball every day of the week anyway, it's not like it needs to be worked around a weekend or anything like that. It's not like this works out better with the way series' line up either, because every team has such a weirdly different schedule throughout the season and we end up playing stupid 2-game series' with the Cardinals in the first half anyway. And another thing about the All-Star Break. The Home Run Derby participants should just be the best home run hitters, not necessarily All-Stars. If someone is hitting .197 but every one of their hits is a home run, then let's go for it. And I don't really want Phillies pitchers in the All-Star Game because it'll just mess up their rest between starts. We should end up having 3 starters in there. If Uncle Chuck's head doesn't explode during the week before or after the All-Star Game, I'll put my life savings on the Phillies winning the World Series this year (don't hold me to that, although it's not much money anyway).

I have yet to even really talk about the Phillies, and I feel like this is already getting a little lengthy. I warned you...

So right now we are probably on pace to have the worst offensive season in baseball history. Definitely the worst for a team that will win 100 games (on pace for 102). Ryan Howard is our only player who will hit 20 home runs or get 80 RBI. That's such a joke. In 2008? 4 20-homer guys, 3 80-RBI. 2009? 5 and 5. Including Pedro Feliz having 82 RBI. We currently have just one player who is as productive as PETER HAPPY was for us in 2009. He batted .266 in the 7 spot in our order with 12 home runs and still got 82 RBI. So I think it is safe to say that we need to get another bat in our lineup. Can we just trade to get Jayson Werth back? And make the Nationals continue to pay him? Ok, good.

Look at this. Thinking about being halfway through the season and all I'm doing is getting angry. Why? Why?!??

If you were to look back at my season preview, you will see that I made 7 predictions for this season. Five of said predictions are not worth me mentioning right now because they're just sort of embarrassing. But a few of them are fun to look at. I said that Ryan Howard would win a Gold Glove this year. I'm sticking with this one. Pujols is hurt, Adrian Gonzalez is in the AL, and who else is there that really stands out defensively or has a big enough name for them to give a Gold Glove to (oh, politics)? No one, I don't think. And Howard only has 2 errors thus far this season, probably neither of which were his fault (because I said so). I would encourage you all to join in the campaign and yell "Gold Glove" every time a ball gets hit to him.
I also picked us to win the World Series against the White Sox. The White Sox were horrible just a month or so ago, but they've since gotten to within 4.5 games of the Tigers in the AL Central, and we all know the Indians aren't actually going to stay respectable. It's almost too easy for us to make the playoffs at this point (not even going to knock on wood, it's just true), so I am going to stick with that prediction. We're up 4 games in the East right now, so we will win it by 8 games (duh, math). At that point, the playoffs are generally about pitching and defense, and we have both of those. (But my God do we need an offense)

This season has generally been pretty enjoyable through the first 82 games now. It is much of what I expected, so I could never get too upset at our lack of scoring runs. As a matter of fact, I would encourage you to go back and read that season preview that I linked to earlier in this post. It's basically all the same feelings that I have right now. I talked about how bad it sucked to not have Utley, how much Ben Francisco bites, how old Ibanez is, and how good our starters are. A few things have changed since then, though.

With Oswalt hurt, are we going to trade for another ace or what???

On a more serious note, our bullpen has been a pleasant surprise for the most part. I don't really want Brad Lidge to come back for fear that we may think he can close. Contreras I still have faith in and Madson I have more faith in than ever. The people who have surprised everyone, though, are Antonio Bastardo and Michael Stutes. It will be exciting to see how they handle such a big role on such a good team over the course of an entire season and into the playoffs. Today, Christopher Wheeler said that "they" (whoever they are) were referring to the Phillies bullpen as the "Pig Bullpen." Either "they" are complete morons, or you are a complete moron, Christopher Wheeler. Due to empirical evidence, I will go with the latter. It would be witty to call it the "Pigpen" due to the fact that most of these guys started in Lehigh Valley this year. It would be a waste of a built-in joke to call it the Pig Bullpen. Get a job.

And SPEAKING OF our terrible announcers, today I counted Thomas McCarthy saying "and the SIIIiiide...is retired" 9 times. That means throughout a game he says that once for every 2 times the side is retired. In the exact same voice like he's trying to sell me something. Please please please stop doing this. Don't make this into a thing. Is he trying to make it into a thing? Because that's not a good thing to have be your thing! (That's almost as annoying as asking questions only to answer them yourself all the time. Is that a good "thing" to have? Unfortunately, I don't think it is. Sorry everyone.) If I liked him or thought he was halfway decent, I would sit and watch and say it along with him in a fun way every time, like I'm at a Pistons game. It could be fun to take a boring saying and make it fun for all. But it's not fun. YOU'RE not fun, Thomas. You would be better off being the new spokesperson for Oxi Clean. Except a knock-off brand of Oxi Clean. Because you can't come anywhere close to Billy Mays.

Another thing that really bothers me about these guys is Christopher Wheeler's constant desire to tell me how competitive someone is. This is not unique to our horrible broadcast team, but I notice it all the time when they give a scouting report on a pitcher. "He's been around for a while and he doesn't have great stuff but boy is he a competitor." Of course he's a competitor! He's a professional athlete! If he weren't a competitor, he'd be doing anything else with his life. A lot of people are athletic. Unless they are competitive, though, it doesn't really matter. If you don't want to win all the time, your athleticism will lead you nowhere. I guarantee that every single professional athlete is the most competitive person that any one of their non-athlete friends knows (except for Jose Reyes). It's like saying that a basketball player is athletic. Or saying that a cornerback is quick. Calling a chess player smart. That's the equivalent of calling a professional athlete competitive. Please tell me when they are not competitive so I can call you a liar rather than a moron.

See what happens? This post isn't even about the season being halfway over. It's just rambling about nothing. This is why I try to stick to previews, so my posts can have some type of direction. I leave the ramblings for the Male Bags.

We should expect some good things from the second half of the season. I can't really analyze the schedule for you or anything because, well, it's baseball. But I do know that we are almost through with interleague play and have done so with a 7-5 record thus far. The series we just completed against the Red Sox was very encouraging. It had a playoff-type feel to it, and our pitchers stepped up in that atmosphere. That makes me feel so much better about this team as we go forth into the 2nd half and eventually the playoffs. Even though the bats aren't the best, they can give us just enough for our pitching to capitalize on.

Lastly, I will give you some things that will happen and won't happen in the 2nd half of this season. The following are statements of pure, indisputable fact:

Roy Halladay WILL throw a complete game shutout

Cole Hamels WON'T miss any starts because his non-throwing hand has a boo-boo on it

Chase Utley WILL get his average up to .300 and keep it there

Cliff Lee WON'T give up another earned run in 2011

Ryan Howard WILL hit 40 home runs

The Phillies WON'T get swept in a series this season other than that stupid 2-game majoke against the Cardinals

Thomas McCarthy WILL have a birthday this Tuesday

I WON'T celebrate that in any way. I probably won't even watch the game because of it

Ryan Madson WILL be our full-time closer once he is back

The Pirates WON'T finish with a winning record. Sorry, B Fresh. It's the only bad thing about your sports teams that can actually be talked about (other than how horribly annoying they are). It must continue

The Phillies WILL win the division by double-digit games

The Phillies WON'T blow it against an NL team in the playoffs

The Phillies WILL win the World Series

A pitcher WON'T win MVP of that World Series...Chase Utley will

I WILL continue blogging through the end of the season and playoffs

I remembered I wanted to say this but then went back and had nowhere good to put it (you know, like how everything else was so well-placed in this post). Ben Francisco is terrible. The only reason I don't give him as much crap as Ibanez is because he doesn't play every day. But we seriously cannot make our lineup or bench worse by putting Mayberry there instead of him. Or by adding Mayberry and getting rid of a pitcher. Our bullpen pitched on Saturday of this past week. The next time it pitched? Wednesday. Complete games on Sunday and Tuesday. And there are more of those to come. And more 7- and 8-inning starts. So why not get an extra bat (since we can't score) and leave Drew Carpenter down in the minors where he won't get shellacked by Jason Varitek (who is awful)?