The Rotation (28 page)

Roy Halladay snapped the losing streak with a 7-3 victory over the Pirates on June 5. Cliff Lee made his first start of the month the next night against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Citizens Bank Park, opening a season-high 11-game home stand. Lee entered June just 4-5 with a 3.94 ERA, which had not been the beginning everybody imagined when he slipped on his Phillies jersey during his re-introductory news conference in December. Some fans wondered if something was wrong with him, when in reality he had two awful starts that skewed his numbers. Erase a poor start in Atlanta on April 8 (six earned runs in 3⅓ innings) and a poor start in Washington on May 31 (six earned runs in 5⅓ innings) and Lee was 4-3 with a 2.90 ERA.

Not so bad.

Lee struck out 10 in seven scoreless innings in a 3-1 victory over the Dodgers. He entered the season with nine double-digit strikeout games in his career, but already had picked up his sixth in 2011. Lee, who was leading baseball with 100 strikeouts, couldn't explain why he was striking out so many more hitters than in the past. He didn't care to know. He just wanted to get on and off the mound as quickly as possible.

That wouldn't be a problem the rest of the month. Nobody knew it at the time, but it was the beginning of the best month of Lee's career and one of the best months for any pitcher in baseball history. The $120-million man was giving the Phillies their money's worth.

Oswalt followed Lee in the rotation throughout the month, providing a contrast of results. Oswalt allowed eight hits and four runs in six innings in a 6-2 loss to the Dodgers on June 7. His velocity showed no improvement, and this time he couldn't fake it. The Dodgers got him, giving the Phillies their sixth loss in nine games. The Phillies might have Halladay, Lee, Oswalt, and Cole Hamels in The Rotation, but they had just lost to pitchers Jonathon Niese, Jason Marquis, John Lannan, Charlie Morton, and Rubby De La Rosa.

Damn
.

Manuel spoke after the game about Oswalt's struggles, which were becoming more of a concern.

“How do I explain it?” he said. “Basically, he's not as sharp as he was.When we got him last year . . . he was very aggressive. He pounded the strike zone.”

Oswalt's back screamed with every pitch. And now the pain had started to shoot down his leg. Reporters asked him why he was allowing so many more base runners and why he wasn't striking anybody out. After allowing just 8.58 base runners per nine innings from his first start with the Phillies in July 2010 through April 15, 2011, he was averaging a whopping 14.90 base runners per nine innings. After averaging 7.8 strikeouts per nine innings from his arrival in Philadelphia through April 15, he was averaging a pedestrian 3.7.

“I look for wins,” Oswalt said. “I don't really look for nothing else. Strikeouts are nice if you get 'em, but if you get wins, that's what you shoot for.”

The grilling of Oswalt had begun and the pitcher began to bristle at
questions. A reporter followed by asking if a lack of sharpness was contributing to the increase in base runners.

“The reason for what?” Oswalt responded.

For all the extra base runners, the reporter repeated. Oswalt is as mild-mannered as they come, but after a couple weeks of being asked about his vanishing fastball and all those base runners, he had started to lose patience. He said he got caught up trying to throw too hard, “listening to you guys, trying to strike guys out and trying to throw a little harder than I needed to.”

Oswalt got another follow-up question mentioning Manuel's comments about how aggressive he was last season and if he felt he was close to being that pitcher again.

“Um,” Oswalt said.

He paused.

“I mean, I'm just trying to win.”

He chuckled dismissively. He was being asked why he sucked and when he thought he would stop sucking, and he knew it.

“What the other guys do, I don't try to pitch like them,” he said. “I try to pitch like myself. I've done it for thee hundred or four hundred starts. There's a big difference between pitching and throwing, and sometimes you get caught up in throwing, trying to get strikeouts and trying to do something you don't need to do. If I can get through six, seven, eight innings, and only strike out one or two and we win, that's all I'm looking for. I ain't looking to pad my numbers.That has nothing to do with it. I'm just looking to win ball games.”

Oswalt got another follow-up, trying to clarify the previous question.

“It ain't as easy as it looks,” he said, clearly annoyed. “I think I've thrown four games since I've been back. The other three games, there wasn't much said about it, but I've felt like I've put the team in position to win a lot of those games. We just didn't win them.”

Oswalt was frustrated. He wanted to scream,
“My back is killing me! You guys don't understand ! I thought I wiggled through the game pretty well for not being healthy.”
But he didn't want anybody to know, so he kept quiet and kept his cool with reporters.

That's not always easy.

Veteran baseball writers love to tell stories about how they used to grab a beer in the hotel bar with players, coaches, managers, and general managers. There was plenty of trust between the two sides. Stories were swapped as tongues got to wagging.

Times have changed. The world has changed. The 24-hour news cycle has made players and club officials a little more guarded around reporters. A player really has to trust a reporter before he opens up to him or her. That guardedness extends to his life in the community, where a player steps out for a night out on the town with the realization that he could be on YouTube in an hour. Some players have talked about entering an empty restaurant, bar, or club, and the place suddenly filling up because somebody tweeted their location. OMG, CHASE UTLEY IS AT MORIMOTO'S!!

In the Internet age, everything has become a big deal. On-field mistakes are analyzed and criticized
ad nauseum
, and innocent off-field events are blown out of proportion. Ryan Howard sprained his ankle in 2010 and took his son to Dorney Park in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on an off day. A fan snapped a photo, emailed it to the Philadelphia sports blog Crossing Broad, and suddenly Howard was being ripped for the sin of... taking his son to an amusement park! It didn't matter that the ankle was immobilized and in no danger of being aggravated.

In some cases, reporter-player relationships have suffered because of this changing world. Don't misunderstand—solid working relationships can be forged between reporters and the people they cover. It's just tougher than it used to be.

Regardless of the era, there are always times when the best of relationships can get a little offtrack, as first-year
Philadelphia Inquirer
beat writer Todd Zolecki learned in June 2003. The Phillies had won 10 of 12 games that month when Zolecki wrote about a possible reason for why they were playing so well: citing an anonymous source, Zolecki reported the front office had sought the opinions of players following a tough road trip and one player told the front office it would help if Manager Larry Bowa was more positive in the dugout. The story was accurate, but the timing did not sit well with Phillies Third-Base Coach John Vukovich, who grew up with Bowa near Sacramento, California. The two were like brothers, and Vuke was fiercely protective of Bowa—not only because they were close friends, but also because Vuke, who was widely admired and respected in the organization, was old-school, and old-school coaches always protected their managers.

The next afternoon at Veterans Stadium, Vukovich confronted Zolecki in
the middle of the clubhouse before batting practice.

“Oh, big man with your anonymous source,” Vukovich bellowed. “Big fucking man. If you're a real man, you'd name your source. Name your goddamn source!”

“You know I can't do that,” Zolecki said.

Vukovich started screaming, inching closer and closer to Zolecki's face. Players, reporters, and coaches stopped to watch. Bowa listened intently from his office.

“Name your goddamn source,” Vukovich demanded.

Zolecki had been on the beat for only a couple months and had never been reamed out like this, not even as a kid.

“Uh, I . . .” he stammered.

“You know why you won't name your source?” Vukovich said, moving even closer.

Vukovich lifted up his right hand and curled his index finger and thumb into the tiniest circle he could make. He put the circle in front of Zolecki's face.

“Because your nuts are this fucking big,” he shouted. “Your nuts . . . are this . . . fucking . . . big.”

Vukovich walked away.

The next day Vukovich and Zolecki passed each other in the tunnel leading to the Phillies' dugout.

“How are ya, Todd?”Vukovich said with a friendly smile on his face.

“Uh, good, Vuke. How are you?”

“Great, thanks.”

It was over. Vukovich made his point. He defended his manager—strategically in front of the players—and let off some steam and was ready to move on. Vukovich was hard-nosed, which rubbed some players the wrong way, but he was a golden-hearted man that cared about people. He especially cared about the Phillies. Vukovich died in 2007 from brain cancer, but he and Zolecki often joked about that afternoon at Veterans Stadium. It always brought a smile to Vukovich's face, and a hearty laugh. And for good reason. It was one of the all-time chew outs with one of the all-time kicker lines.

Years later, Roy Oswalt was clearly getting tired of answering questions about his health and his desire to keep playing. He wanted to scream as he spoke with reporters that night in Philadelphia, but chose to suppress his inner Vuke, and the reporters were happy for that.

Davey Lopes, who had some old-school in him like Vuke, chuckled as he thought about Cole Hamels' true spot in the Phillies rotation.

“I don't think I need to answer that,” he said.

He tried anyway.

“Let me put it this way,” he said. “I don't think you'd rank him fourth.”

Lopes had been the Phillies' first-base coach for four seasons before leaving to join the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2011, so he had seen Halladay, Lee, Oswalt, and Hamels up close. He had watched Hamels progress over the years, and what he saw on June 8 was a mostly finished product. Hamels struck out nine in eight scoreless innings in a 2-0 victory over the Dodgers. Hamels was quietly developing into one of the best pitchers in baseball, not just one of the best left-handers in the game. From June 9, 2010, through June 8, 2011, he had a 2.58 ERA, the third-best ERA in the big leagues over those 12 months. Only Florida's Josh Johnson (2.16 ERA) and Seattle's Felix Hernandez (2.16 ERA) had been better. Falling immediately behind Hamels were the Los Angeles Angels' Jered Weaver (2.63 ERA), Roy Halladay (2.64 ERA), and Roy Oswalt (2.66 ERA).