Spin Zone: The Phillies Avoided Disaster By Not Sweeping The Diamondbacks
Harry How. Getty Images.Everyone needs to take a deep breath. Just relax for a minute here. Contrary to popular belief, teams don't often sweep their way to a World Series title. They drop a game or two here and there throughout the postseason. And all things considered, we may have just witnessed the most important loss in Phillies history yesterday in Arizona.
What's the number one thing that baseball nerds have been bitching about this offseason? I'll give you a quick second to answer here….exactly. Good teams having too much time off between games and then getting their dicks stomped in the next time they play. Baseball nerds have caused a worldwide shortage of diapers after the Braves, Dodgers and Orioles were all bounced out of the postseason in the LDS. Multiple teams with over 100 wins on the season just couldn't get anything going after having "too much time off" between the end of the regular season and game 1 of the divisional series. Should all of those teams just played better if they wanted to keep their season going? Absolutely. Doesn't mean there might not be the slightest hint of truth to the complaint, though.
So if the Phillies won game 3 in Arizona yesterday, they'd be facing a completely demoralized and dead-in-the-water Diamondbacks team today. A team with no hope of coming back in the series throwing nothing but a bullpen game the Phillies' way. They'd wrap up this series a full week before the first pitch of the World Series, and now the Astros vs Rangers series is at least going to a game 6. Just enough time for everyone in the Phillies lineup to cool off while one of those teams coming out of the AL will be coming in as hot as ever. No thank you.
Now here's the thing--as much as I hate agreeing with Joe Giglio, there are definitely some changes that need to be made after yesterday. Alec Bohm has been an absolute demon defensively this postseason, but you can't have him hitting behind Harper the rest of the way. You're taking your most dangerous bat out of the game the longer he stays at 4. Also, I don't think that yesterday's 9th inning was as much of a complete disaster from Craig Kimbrel as most people probably think. It still wasn't great, but he got crushed by Dan Iassogna being a piece of shit behind the plate. He had a strikeout on Gurriel Jr taken away from him to start off that inning and it resulted in a leadoff walk.
With that being said…the Craig Kimbrel experience in never a good one. At no point is it ever a comfortable ride, and it's only going to continue to get worse as the rest of the postseason goes by. Hoffman, Strahm, Alvarado. Those are your dogs. You can give guys like Seranthony and Kerkering a spot here and there to try to redeem themselves. But Hoffman, Strahm and Alvarado are dudes. Kimbrel is just a lunatic at this point and the moment anyone gets on base, he's lost it.
But again. All things considered, a sweep would actually be worst case scenario for this team. So as much as it sucks to waste such a big dick start out of Ranger, yesterday might have just saved the season. And that's a masterclass on Spin Zone.