Giants Preview: Revenge

EDIT: This preview now means very little because the Giants just scratched Tim Lincecum due to a stomach illness. Stomach illness...yeah right. My money says we just traded for him

There is an odd connection between this series against the Giants and the Pirates-Braves series currently happening down in Atlanta.

-Our last NLCS (2010) was played against the Giants
-The Pirates last NLCS (1992) was played against the Braves
-We are currently "battling" the Braves for the NL East (6 games is hardly a battle)
-Every one of these teams is currently in first place (Braves for the Wild Card)
-The Phillies and Pirates are both from Pennsylvania (assuming that you still agree with the rest of the world that Pennsylvania is one state. I, for one, prefer that we go way of the great state of Virginia (shameless plug) and throw the crappy part out. Pennsylvania and West Pennsylvania)
-The Giants and Pirates are the 2 teams that Barry Bonds played for, who has the home run record over Hank Aaron, a former Brave. (Yes, a huge stretch, but this is baseball. If I wasn't manipulating facts to make them work for me, what kind of a baseball fan would I be?)

While all of these things are cool, interesting, fun, irrelevant, and totally pointless, I would rather focus on just our series. Specifically, I want to look at what the heck happened in the NLCS last year for us to lose and what we need to do to fix that this year. I was just on the phone with my friend Dert, who knows way more about baseball and the Phillies than I do, and said that I was going to do this. Here's his list of things that went wrong:

1. We didn't hit
2. They pitched better than us
3. "Cody Ross had a freakin' bonfire under his ass"

So what was the deal with that?
1. Us not hitting is mostly true, but more that we just didn't hit at the right times. If you look at our regulars' batting averages, they certainly aren't pretty: Rollins .261; Polanco .250; Utley .182; Howard .318; Werth .222; Victorino .208; Ibanez .211; Ruiz .167. We batted .216 as a team with just a .294 on base percentage. Along with that, we wasted opportunities. Looking at just Game 6, the clinching game for the Giants, we had Polanco and Utley on 1st and 2nd with no one out to start the 3rd inning with the game tied at 2. The Giants took out their starter at that point, and we had Howard, Werth, and Victorino due up. Strike out, fly out, ground out. Not getting at least 1 run out of that is huge. It wasn't just a lack of hitting, but a lack of timely hitting

2. I will argue with Dert that this is actually not true. Although he has more knowledge of the Phils than I do, I am a bigger nerd obsessed with statistics. The pitching numbers are disgustingly similar over the 6 games of this series.
Innings pitched: PHI 52.2 SF 53
Hits: PHI 48 SF 41
Earned runs: PHI 18 SF 17
Walks: PHI 14 SF 21
Strikeouts: PHI 56 SF 56
ERA: PHI 2.91 SF 3.06
The only noticeable disparity there comes in terms of hits and walks, except we gave up 7 more hits than them and they gave up 7 more walks than us, essentially evening things out. How do we explain that?
Well that's easy, they had a better bullpen than us, right?
No, no they didn't. Their bullpen had a 2.79 ERA versus our 2.40 ERA. Our starters had a lower ERA, too. What the crap? It once again came down to timely pitching, which doesn't seem like a real thing. The Giants won 3 of their 4 games by 1 run, though, and the other win was a shutout. We won by scores of 6-1 and 4-2. We seemed to save our best pitching (and hitting) for two games. Of course, that's actually pretty obvious. Every team should win the games in which they pitch and hit better.

3. Cody Ross, a majoke of a player who looks like Rob Corddry and once played for 3 teams in one season, is the Antihalladay (much like the Antichrist, but I'm not willing to go so far as to call Roy Halladay Jesus). How do I know this? Well, his career batting average is .265. He hits a home run every 24.5 at bats. He has a career .784 OPS. Against Halladay in the NLCS last season? He batted .500 with 1 double, 2 home runs, 3 RBI, and a 2.167 OPS. Oh yeah, and his name backwards is Ssory Doc. I just threw up

That's what went wrong last year. How do we fix it this year?

Well, my best advice actually comes from Katie Brinker at around 4:21 of this clip. All we have to do is just be better than we were. And, in all seriousness, that's mostly going to be about hitting. Our bats are hot right now, and we just need to keep that up. With the trade deadline getting closer and closer every day, everybody seems to be playing for their job right now. We have stayed hot in July. The Giants have been known to cool us down in years past, and, at first glance, the matchups in this series make it seem like that trend could continue.

Game 1: Tim Lincecum (8-8, 2.90 ERA) vs. Vance Worley (6-1, 2.02 ERA)
Lincecum (whose name looks even weirder now that I have to type it) has surprisingly believable numbers against the Phils in his career. He's 2-1 with a 3.17 ERA. I can't remember us ever doing really anything against him, other than this game, where he actually shut us down for 8.1 innings before Jayson Werth doubled home 3 runs with 2 outs in the 9th off of Brian Wilson. He has absolutely killed our individual players over the years though, giving up just 22 hits while having 33 strikeouts. Our .193 average against him is not encouraging despite him having just 2 wins in 7 starts. His kryptonite seems to be Ryan Howard, who has 3 home runs in 19 career at bats against him. But even Howard has struck out 7 times in those 19 at bats. Worley, on the other hand, has no experience against the Giants (shocking, I know). With his last start, though, he continued on his unbelievable streak. In his first 6 starts, he was 2-1 with a 3.75 ERA and 1.54 WHIP. Since then, he is 4-0 with a 0.94 ERA and a WHIP of 0.97. The fact that the Phillies are reportedly unwilling to trade him tells me that he may have more potential than I initially thought. This game should line up to be quite the pitchers' duel.
Prediction: Phillies 2 Giants 1
Keep an eye out for: the runs coming late in this game. And for Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka, who was in the Phillies clubhouse today. Beware of extremely awkward conversation about professional wrestling led by Thomas McCarthy. I am truly dreading this.

Game 2: Barry Zito (3-2, 4.78 ERA) vs. Cole Hamels (12-5, 2.62 ERA)
Zito and Hamels are both pretty average against their opponents in this game. Neither really has an advantage in terms of a matchup against the opposing lineup, so I think it will just come down to the fact that Hamels is truly a better pitcher than Zito. My one hope for this game is that Polanco will be back (I don't know how possible that is) because he is a career .750 HITTER AGAINST BARRY ZITO. IN 16 AT BATS. That's not even fair. Hamels will need to keep an eye out for...Cody Ross. He's a .300 career hitter against Hamels with 4 home runs. Kill me.
Prediction: Phillies 8 Giants 3
Keep an eye out for: Hamels striking out double digits. And Ibanez striking out 3 times. Loser

Game 3: Matt Cain (8-6, 3.06 ERA) vs. Kyle Kendrick (5-4, 3.45 ERA)
Matt Cain is a very good pitcher, and he proved that last year by dominating us in the NLCS. The regular season, however, has been a different story. He is 0-3 with a 6.23 ERA against the Phils in his career. Initially looking at this matchup, I would've preferred to switch our pitchers for Games 2 and 3. Looking at Cain's numbers, though, I feel much better about our chances. Most notably, Jimmy Rollins is 6 for 10 in his career against him with a double, 3 triples, and a home run. Kendrick has little experience against these hitters, but a Giants lineup filled with lefties and switch-hitters worries me with Kendrick. He could end up getting hit around by the likes of Nate Schierholtz, Aubrey Huff, Andres Torres, Brandon Belt, and Pablo Sandoval.
Prediction: Giants 7 Phillies 5
Keep an eye out for: Jimmy Rollins. You know who's never hit for the cycle? Jimmy Rollins. You know who the last Phillies player is to hit for the cycle? David Bell. It's about time both of those things changed