Excuse me, is the Doc(tor) in?

"I am THE most dominant pitcher in Major League Baseball, bitches."

Okay, so you had to know this was coming, because every person with a pulse in the tri-state area is talking about it, so lets dive right in. Should Charlie Manuel have left Doc Halladay in the game in the ninth last night? The answer is… Maybe. We want everyone in the tri-state area to shut up. Everyone’s opinion is good, bad, wrong, and right. As they say, hindsight is 20/20, and that’s exactly what every "experts'" analysis of last night was. So, lets take a close look at the two major options and what could have happened:

Option 1: El Bastard/Mad Dog come into the game

"Mira! Un beisbol!"

It doesn’t matter whether you argue that one of these guys should have come in for the whole 9^th, after one hit, or after two hits, because they could have all come out the exact same. If one of these guys comes in, we could have seen a rested bullpen player come in and possibly dominate the competition. It could have been a 1,2,3 inning or one of these guys could have come in and gotten out of the trouble Roy had gotten into and looked like geniuses. It would have been nice to see Bastardo get into a REAL pressure situation and see if he can get his way out. He has been great all year, but those pressure situations are what really earn a reliever the big money and it would have been nice to see just how much we have with this kid. Can we rely on him in the playoffs? Is he the closer of the future that can handle the pressure? These are things we need to know before Mad Dog becomes a free agent. The other possible outcome could have been the complete opposite, in which we see one of these guys fall apart and today we are still all chewing out Charlie Manuel for making a bad decision. If this happens, who knows how Bastardo or Madson react (broken toe?) and it could hurt our bullpen for the rest of the season.

Option 2: The Doctor is in.

"What the hell did you say? It goes like this, 'Look! A Baseball!'"

This is what happened, and this is how the game ended. Roy stayed in the game and we all know how it unfolded. He made some bad pitches and ended up giving up the lead in the 9^th inning. Lets break down that decision a little bit though. Even though we all got on Charlie for the decision, does anyone remember how well Halladay pitched prior to the 9^th? He had retired 12 batters in a row and 8 of those 12, he struck out. Which is pretty dominant, he was cruising at that point. Then, lets talk about the second point, his pitch count. After 8 innings, he had thrown 100 pitches exactly. Yeah, and your point? This is THE Doctor. He has thrown more than 100 pitches so many times in his career, what is one more time? No one is crazy about the possibility of Roy getting hurt, but he could just as easily get hurt throwing a curveball in the first inning than throwing a fastball in the 9^th. And what if Halladay had finished that masterpiece and walked away with another complete game win? Today every talk show or sports show would be laughing about how good ole’ Uncle Cholly stuck with his man and it paid off yet again. How Cholly’s loyalty to Roy is amazing and unmatched. This is something that could have happened and based on past performances, was very likely to happen again.

After all of this, it comes down to one truth: How many World Series have you won for the Phillies? Exactly, so shut up and lay off old Uncle Cholly. The man may not always make the best pitching decisions in the world, but it has done him right so far in his career as a manager, at least we think so. Hindsight is 20/20, but since you can’t tell the future, and neither can we, let the manager manage, the players play, and the chips fall where they may as we all take a ride through this amazing Phillies’ season.

Better to be lucky than good?

"That's it boys, we only get Hawaiian pizza for the postgame from now on. Shane has spoken."

Here is a look at what we learned from the “important” weekend series versus the Ginas (San Francisco not New York)

1. This is becoming one of the most intense rivalries in, not only the National League, but in Major League Baseball. If the Ginas keep acting like a bunch of crybabies every time they are losing by more than a couple of runs than these series could become all out wars. If Brian Wilson ever comes up to the plate, I hope Madson drills a fastball right between his legs (I know that really doesn’t have much to do with this part, but I just can’t stand that bearded asshole). And, if this becomes another postseason meeting, look for more exciting fireworks like this to keep happening.
2.  As the Ginas can attest to from last year in the playoffs, it may sometimes be better to be lucky than good. Last year, we can all be completely honest when we say, we were the better team and we should have won the World Series. However, Cody Ross got hot at the right time and our bats just got lost in a deep, dark cave never to return. This weekend was a similar occurrence. The Phillies did pound the 3^rd and 4^th pitchers, but look at the last two games of the series. In the 3^rd game, Cain pitched very well and could have come away with the win if they weren’t forced to play with a Single-A catcher for the remainder of the season.  The game could have gone into extras where it would have been anybody’s game. Finally, the last game of the series was a classic game for San Fran, hang on by a thread due to some great pitching and some situational hitting. If this were the playoffs, we are looking at a 2-2 series and it is still anybody’s to win. We did play extremely well, but still it could have gone very differently if Whiteside could catch a baseball.
3. This series in all honestly meant absolutely nothing. It was a lot of fun to talk about and see how both teams stacked up, but when it gets to October, we don’t care if we swept the Giants in the regular season or got swept by them. In October, the real baseball is played and the games really matter. For the fans that jump up and down and claim that this is the most amazing thing ever, get over it. This was just another series that we won, like we did so many other times this year and last year, but if this year ends the same way last year did, we spent a lot of money for nothing.

On a side note, Shane Victorino is by far the heart of the Phillies. There are a lot of titles to give out: Jimmy is the Catalyst, Howard is the Big Piece, Chase is the Unquestioned Leader, but Shane is the Heart.  A clear example of this was the pitch that Ramon Ramirez threw at Shane. Remember when Hiroki Kuroda did the same thing? When teams have a problem with the Phillies, they go after one man and one man only, His Airness, the Flyin Hawaiian, Shane Victorino. They do this because he is the heart of the team, a juice guy that is connected with every member of the team.  (This was something that we learned this weekend also, but it wasn’t team wide, it was a solo person so we made it a side note instead of a number.)

These are a couple of the most important things that we learned this weekend. Let's hope that in the postseason, if we face the Giants yet again for the NL Crown, that we are just as lucky then as we were this weekend, or just as good, whatever gets us the Pennant.