The Rotation (29 page)

“He's definitely different,” Dodgers catcher Rod Barajas said of Hamels. “The best I've seen him.”

Barajas knew Hamels well. He caught him during his one forgettable season with the Phillies in 2007.

“He was primarily fastball-changeup and the curveball could be out of the strike zone and you didn't have to swing at it,” Barajas said. “Now he mixes in the cutter and throws the curveball for strikes.You can't lay off it anymore or assume it's a ball.”

“He's grown up a lot,” Charlie Manuel said. “He's way more mature. He's been around guys like Jamie Moyer and Halladay and Lee and Roy Oswalt and guys like that. He has a better work ethic now. He's getting stronger. He's bigger than he used to be. If you see him with his shirt and stuff off, he's developing into a man.”

Manuel caught himself before he finished that last sentence and started to laugh.

What the hell was he saying about admiring Hamels with his shirt off?

But the Phillies were living dangerously. They beat the Dodgers because Hamels was fantastic, not because the offense did anything. The Phillies had scored three or fewer runs in 35 of their first 62 games, which was no way to live. Clearly, they had to do something. But even if they could make the finances work, they essentially could only upgrade in right field because they were not going to make upgrades anywhere else. If they did upgrade in right, they would be looking for a right-handed bat to replace Jayson Werth.

“You will not see a major move this year,” Ruben Amaro Jr. said. “I don't think we need it.”

Of course, it made no sense for Amaro to tip his hand or show panic less than two months from the July 31 trade deadline. A lot could change in that time. And he wasn't even sure what he needed most: a bat or an arm in the bullpen. The offense was struggling, but the bullpen was in a state of flux. The Phillies opened spring training with Brad Lidge, Ryan Madson, Jose Contreras, and J. C. Romero in the back of their bullpen. Lidge opened the season on the disabled list with an injured right shoulder and suffered a setback in early June when he felt soreness in his right elbow. Romero, who won two games in the 2008 World Series, had stopped throwing strikes and was designated for assignment on June 16. Contreras went to the DL for a second time on June 23 with an elbow injury, which would end his season. Madson went on the DL on June 28 with inflammation in his right hand. Left-hander Antonio Bastardo, who had made Romero expendable, and rookie right-hander Mike Stutes made more relief appearances than anybody else in June. Former Rule 5 Draft pick David Herndon was third.

Amaro could be patient. Halladay and Hamels were throwing splendidly, and after a couple bad starts the first couple months of the season, Lee was finding his groove. On June 11, Lee walked Chicago Cubs shortstop Starlin Castro with two outs in the third inning. Darwin Barney and Luis Montanez followed with back-to-back singles to score Castro to cut the Phillies lead to 2-1.

It would be the only run Lee would allow all month.

“Sometimes, you get locked in where things roll well,” Lee said. “I hope I'm getting into that.”

Lee was rising while Oswalt was falling. Oswalt sagged in his chair like he had just finished 12 rounds with Bernard Hopkins on June 17 in Seattle.
He labored through 6⅓ innings. He allowed eight hits, four runs, two walks, one home run, and struck out three. He had been trying to fool hitters, not bury them, for a month now. He had been trying to keep his back pain quiet. But now the numbers had started to betray him. He could no longer point to the sub-2.00 ERA. He was 1-5 with a 4.17 ERA in his last eight starts. He was drowning.

He had his right leg propped up as he stared into the back of the locker in front of him. Minutes had passed when he slowly got up and turned to face the handful of reporters that had gathered a few feet away. He made eye contact with them, his indication he was ready to talk. He said little. After answering the nuts-and-bolts questions about the start, a reporter asked him if he was having as much fun as last year.

“Yeah,” he said flatly.

He wasn't. He hated this. He was tired of the pain. He stepped onto the mound every five days just trying to survive. He started to have anxiety just thinking about his next start. He started to fear he would finish his career on the disabled list, just like former Astros teammate Jeff Bagwell, who retired because of a chronically injured right shoulder. Oswalt didn't want to go out like that, but he wasn't sure how bad the back was going to get.

He finally succumbed to the pain on June 23, when he left his start against the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium after allowing five hits, four runs, and one home run in two innings. This time, Oswalt came clean. He couldn't tell everybody that everything was OK anymore. He was 1-4 with a 5.81 ERA in June.

“I feel it when I sit down, stand up, walk, pitch, sleep,” he confessed.

He then acknowledged his worst fear. He might have thrown his last pitch in the big leagues.

“You throw as long as you can and when you can't throw anymore you don't,” he said. “Hopefully it's not to the point where I can't throw anymore. If it's at that point, you just have to accept it.”

The people who had wondered if Oswalt would finish the season had to be thinking more and more that he would not. He had an MRI scheduled in a few days, and believed it would determine his fate. He seemed prepared for bad news.

And if he got it, what would he think about his career?

“I've had a pretty good one,” he said.

Pat Gillick had been in professional baseball for 54 years, so he had seen some of the best rotations in history. He also had one of the best eyes for talent in the business. He had been the general manager for the Toronto Blue Jays, leading them to World Series championships in 1992 and 1993; the Baltimore Orioles, taking them to the postseason twice; the Seattle Mariners, leading them to the postseason twice; and the Phillies, helping them win the World Series in 2008. Gillick's acumen earned him a spot in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in July 2011.

He knew what he was talking about. He looked at the rotation in Philadelphia and had every reason to believe it could survive without Oswalt and Joe Blanton.

“I think this one has a little more depth to it,” he said.

The Phillies had four aces. The other great rotations had three or two or one.The Phillies could cushion the blow as long as Halladay, Lee, and Hamels kept throwing well. And as a bonus, they were getting good performances from Kyle Kendrick, who went 1-1 with a 3.00 ERA in three starts, before rookie Vance Worley took his place and finished the month 1-0 with a 1.00 ERA in three starts, including a one-run, seven-inning effort on June 29 in a 2-1 victory against the Boston Red Sox. Phillies Pitching Coach Rich Dubee liked what he had seen from Worley, who had shown he wasn't afraid to compete.

Halladay finished the month 3-0 with a 2.00 ERA. Hamels went 2-2 with a 1.31 ERA, while Lee finished 5-0 with a 0.21 ERA. The rotation had a 1.96 ERA in June, the first time a rotation finished a month with an ERA under 2.00 since July 1992, when both the Cubs (a 1.72 ERA with Greg Maddux, Mike Morgan, Mike Harkey, Shawn Boskie, and Frank Castillo) and Braves (a 1.92 ERA with John Smoltz, Tom Glavine, Charlie Liebrandt, Steve Avery, and Mike Bielecki) accomplished the feat.

But Lee's June rightfully received most of the attention. Since earned runs were first recorded, Elias Sports Bureau found only six other starting pitchers who went 5-0 with an ERA that low in a calendar month in baseball history: Guy Bush in August 1926 (6-0, 0.19 ERA); Fernando Valenzuela in April 1981 (5-0, 0.20 ERA); Nolan Ryan in May 1984 (5-0, 0.20 ERA); Mike Witt in August 1986 (5-0, 0.21 ERA); Orel Hershiser in September 1988 (5-0, 0.00 ERA); and Cory Lidle in August 2002 (5-0, 0.20 ERA).

“I've had better stretches, I think, to be honest with you, but it's good,”
Lee said following his June 16 two-hit shutout against the Florida Marlins at Citizens Bank Park.

Coincidentally, the same night Lee dominated the Marlins, the Yankees and Rangers—who'd fallen short in the Lee sweepstakes—played each other a couple hours north in Yankee Stadium. Minor-league journeyman Brian Gordon pitched that night for the Yankees. He went 5-0 with a 1.14 ERA in 12 appearances for Triple-A Lehigh Valley before the Phillies released him to allow him to pursue a big-league job with the Yankees. It was his first appearance in the major leagues since 2008 and he was waived a week later.

“They got Cliff Lee, I got Brian Gordon,” Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman quipped in New York. “I don't think they have anything to worry about.”

Lee threw a six-hit shutout against the Cardinals at Busch Stadium on June 22, becoming the first Phillies pitcher to throw consecutive shutouts since Cory Lidle did it in 2004. Phillies fans had seen stretches like this before from Lee, and they loved watching this one. He went 5-0 with a 0.68 ERA in his first five starts with the Phillies in 2009, and 4-0 with a 1.56 ERA in five postseason starts in 2009. In between those special runs, he went 2-4 with a 6.13 ERA, pitching so poorly at times Phillies fans wondered if Lee or Hamels, who had his own struggles that season, should start Game 1 of the 2009 National League Division Series against the Colorado Rockies. But when Lee was on? Forget about it.

“When he's hot, he's smoking hot,” Ruben Amaro Jr. said. “He's as good a pitcher as there has been in the history of the game when he's hot.”

Lee throws darts at the strike zone, making hitters look foolish with his cutter, often waiting until the later innings before unleashing his curveball, giving hitters just one more thing to think about before stepping into the batter's box. He was fulfilling the Phillies' expectations, and suddenly October couldn't come fast enough. If Lee, Halladay, Hamels, and Oswalt were on, what team was going to beat the Phillies in a five-game or seven-game series?