Phillies flip on the switch, drop Cardinals

By Les Carpenter
October 2, 2011

PHILADELPHIA — A few days before the playoffs began and the Phillies were to wade into yet another October that has become so familiar, center fielder Shane Victorino stood by his locker at Citizens Bank Park looking for an imaginary circuit he would not find.

“There’s no switch here that you can just turn on,” he said. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, wow, it’s the postseason and now we have to start playing better.’ ”

He pretended to be flipping the invisible switch. Then he laughed.

“We do have a lot of guys who have a knack for it, though,” he said.

For the season’s final two weeks the men who make the heart of the Phillies’ lineup wobbled. Shortstop Jimmy Rollins fought leg injuries. First baseman Ryan Howard limped on bad ankles. Second baseman Chase Utley looked like a poor facsimile of the player who was once one of the league’s most feared hitters. Their frailty gave hope to any opposing scout advancing the playoffs, eager to race back and deliver the news that maybe, if their team could just get a couple runs off Philadelphia’s vaunted starting pitchers, the Phillies might be toppled.

Maybe, oh just maybe, the Phillies would be vulnerable.

It must be so deflating to believe this the way the St. Louis Cardinals did Saturday night in the first game of the National League Division Series. They scored three runs off Roy Halladay in the first inning, shocking Citizens Bank Park into a dull silence, and then watched in giddy anticipation as Kyle Lohse taunted the Phillies’ hitters for five innings with 84 mph sliders and dainty 79 mph changeups.

There is, of course, a hopelessness to this. For in these series somebody always rises for the Phillies – whether it’s Rollins smashing the double against the Dodgers in 2009 or Utley pretending to be hit by an Aroldis Chapman pitch in last year’s first round. Something happens and the dream dies. As Victorino says, they have a knack for it.

“I think we have a team that is mentally tough,” said left fielder Raul Ibanez, who hit a two-run home run in the sixth that put the game out of St. Louis’ reach. We have a lot of guys who are fighters that don’t quit. And it’s not by accident, it’s by design. It’s how our team is built. They talk about character and not quitting and that’s what we have.”

So much of the narrative about this team starts with the pitching. It’s told in the story of Halladay, who threw a no-hitter in last year’s playoff opener, and in Cliff Lee, who becomes more and more dominant as the days grow short. It thrives on the right arm of Roy Oswalt and the left arm of Cole Hamels. But three of them pitched well against San Francisco in last year’s NLCS and the Phillies still lost mainly because the switch never got flipped and the core of the Philadelphia lineup didn’t rise against Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain.

The critical piece to Philadelphia’s success is the hitting. Everyone pretty much knows the Phillies pitchers are only going to give up a run or two a game. It’s the offensive bursts, when they come, that make the difference.

The Cardinals don’t have Lincecum and Cain. They have Chris Carpenter, who is not the pitcher he was even three years ago. They have Lohse, whose magic act would not last forever in a tiny ballpark against a lineup awakened from a stupor. Their chance to win this series depended on Lohse somehow managing to dazzle the Phillies’ hitters and hope a Lance Berkman home run in the first inning would be enough to carry them.

St. Louis manager Tony La Russa understood this. In addition to being short a starting pitcher, he does not have a reliable bullpen. Like the rest of the Cardinals, he knew he had to watch Lohse lob his changeups and curves at the Phillies and pray the stumbles of September would last. He had to know the futility of this as Rollins singled to start the sixth and Hunter Pence hit another single to put two men on with one out and Howard walking to the plate. He didn’t have a pitcher warming up. There was no one to trust.

Later he justified his failure to have another pitcher getting ready by saying the ball Rollins hit wasn’t struck hard and that Pence’s single was a “hopper” that “found a hole.” Any explanation seemed empty after Howard crushed a home run to give the Phillies a 4-3 lead. Two hitters later Ibanez made it 6-3 with his blast. After that, the Cardinals were broken.

St. Louis might win a game in this series. It might even win Sunday in Game 2, but hope was crushed in a matter of moments Saturday night. The Cardinals can handle the 21 straight batters Halladay retired beginning with the first out of the second inning until he left the game following the eighth. This, after all, was what they expected. But it will be hard to rally after the home runs by Howard and Ibanez. These were the dream breakers. These are the home runs St. Louis will remember the rest of this series when it dares to believe.

Over and over the Phillies talked about “grinding,” about battling through at-bats until something happens. They say they believe something will always happen. Once again it did.

The switch was flipped.

And once again Rollins, Utley, Howard, Ibanez and the rest were back on.

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