Posts for phillies

Here’s Why the Phillies Can’t Master the Mets

BWanksCB - September 19, 2018

Photo Credit: Gregory J. Fisher-USA TODAY Sports

According to FanGraphs, the Phillies enter play today with a 4.4% chance of winning the National League East.

I think we all understand at this point that – barring a miracle – the Phillies will miss the playoffs. When that inevitability comes to fruition at some point next week, their inability to beat up on “inferior opponents” like the New York Mets will be frequently cited as a reason why. With a disappointing 7-11 mark against the Mets this season, and only tonight’s game between the two teams remaining, the Phillies have already guaranteed themselves a losing record to the LOLMets for the seventh-straight year. It might be hard to believe, but they are what feels like an impossibly bad 49-82 against this bum ass team since 2012. Obviously, the Phillies were going through a transition and the Mets briefly flourished during this period, but the story was supposed to be much different this season.

The upstart Phillies spent much of the spring and summer as a viable postseason contender, while the Mets have been a fourth-place afterthought. How could the Phillies let a team they were so comfortably ahead of in the standings own them again? We asked ourselves this question in mid-August when they lost three of five at home, last weekend when they dropped two of three at Citi Field, and again on Monday night when the bullpen imploded late to lose the series opener.

It’s time to handle business against bad teams. Lesser teams. It’s the Mets, for fuck’s sake! What gives? I mean, how many times did we ask ourselves this question after each wasted opportunity?

Well, I think I’ve finally found the answer. A troubling thought: what if the Phillies can’t beat the Mets because the Mets are (gasp!)better than the Phillies? Let the repugnant stench of that statement waft gently from your screen directly into your face. Let it plague your being.

Continue Reading

Continue Reading

Phillies Fans: Do You Actually Want Gabe Kapler Fired?

BWanksCB - September 13, 2018

Photo credit: Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports

On the morning of August 7, the Phillies were comfortably positioned 15 games over .500 as owners of the National League’s second-best record.  Even then, the flaws of Gabe Kapler’s team were obvious and the warning signs were clear, but faults (and logic) be damned, it seemed like the Phillies were destined for seven late-season showdowns against the Atlanta Braves with a division title on the line. Of course, we know now that those games will serve as nothing more than a reminder of what could have been.

In the wake of this late-season death spiral, most followers of the Phillies feel what I would term as a blend of anger, disappointment, and acceptance. Whatever the emotion, Phillies fans are a resilient bunch and have already begun to look ahead at what should happen next. And what a question it is.

What happens when a team plays its worst when the games matter most? What happens when it goes 2-9 in September, ­­6-17 over its past 23 games, and 40 days without clinching a series win? When it loses 8.5 games to the young and imperfect Braves in the division standings in just over a month’s time? What happens is that some fans become angry, some apathetic, but almost all will move to assign blame.

Yes, it’s true that there exists a faction of fans and media members who are willing to agreeably deem this season a success simply because of an improved record, but that party shrinks daily as the Phillies’ prolonged freefall has jeopardized what not so long ago seemed like a certainty that the team would finish north of the .500 mark.

Continue Reading

Continue Reading

Sports Betting Updates

Best Sports Betting Sites

NJ Online Sports Betting

How To Bet on Sports

DraftKings Sportsbook Review

FanDuel Sportsbook Review

SugarHouse Sportsbook Review

betstars sports betting

BetStars NJ Launches With Insane $500 Free Bet Promo

September 19, 2018

BetStars NJ launched their sports betting app and they offer a pretty outrageous promo code and deposit bonus, which you should absolutely take advantage of. Owned by The Stars Group, a Canadian-based company that powers the popular PokerStars app, BetStars is targeting DraftKings and FanDuel directly, bringing its mobile-focused product to New Jersey with an AGGRESSIVE promo and deposit bonus. BetStars is offering new customers up to $500 in free bets and 100 to 1

Read More »
betstars sports betting

Bonus: $500 in free bets and 100-1 odds on any team to win the Super Bowl

Minimum Deposit: $10

BetStars NJ

BetStars NJ review

BET NOW

A Short Rant As This Phillies Season Approaches Its End

Tim Reilly - September 12, 2018

Photo Credit: Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports

I’m not sure how I came by my Phillies pessimism. Was it a product of nurture or nature? On one hand, one of my earliest enduring memories as a young Phils fan was watching Joe Carter launch a Mitch Williams offering into orbit. It was an abrupt and brutal ending to what had been a dream season for the upstart ’93 Phillies, and a bitter pill to swallow for a seven year old who was still unaccustomed to the fickle whims of the baseball gods.

The wound caused by Carter’s home run left a scab that would rip open as one lost season followed another. Curt Schilling’s dominance notwithstanding, the Fightins offered little in the way of hope that a return to the playoffs was on the horizon through the rest of the ’90s and well into the next decade.

On the other hand, I was introduced to the game by men who had internalized its hard lessons long ago. My grandfather, Mick, a Massachusetts transplant whose South Bostonese accent was almost as stubborn as his fervent devotion to the Red Sox, had learned how to cope with the constant disappointment of baseball fandom: he came to expect failure. It was a lesson he would pass down to his son, who shared it with me.

Mick died in September 2004, just one month before the Red Sox would improbably break the Curse of the Bambino and claim the World Series title. In one of his last moments of lucidity, Mick happened to be watching a Chicago Cubs game in his hospital room. He stared in disbelief as Nomar Garciaparra (whom he called Gaparra- he could never quite get that name right) took his place at shortstop for the Cubs. It would be the final in a long string of indignities his hometown baseball team imposed on him.

Continue Reading

Continue Reading

Phillies Get Rained Out Without a Drop Falling

Philip Keidel - September 10, 2018

Photo credit: Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports

One of the worst beatings I narrowly avoided in my insufferably mouthy twenties came at a South Philadelphia bar after a Flyers playoff win when my friends and I were standing next to some of the guys who worked at the Center taking care of the ice. None of the jokes I told were especially funny, but at least they weren’t very clever, either.

“So, if you guys don’t show, does the ice just melt?”

“When you apply for that job, do you submit a resume or just a picture of your hosing down your back yard in January?”

“Have the Flyers ever ended up playing in roller blades on the hard wood because you guys messed up?”

And so on. I definitely should have lost some teeth that night.

Anyway, this story popped into my head tonight as the condition of the field mere hours from the start of tonight’s scheduled game with the Washington Nationals led to some pretty interesting scenes: Continue Reading

Continue Reading

Ryan Howard Announces Retirement in Players’ Tribune Article

Kevin Kinkead - September 4, 2018

Photo Credit: Howard Smith-USA TODAY Sports

Thirteen seasons, 1,475 hits, 382 home runs, 1,194 RBI, three All-Star selections, and a World Series titles.

Not a bad career for Ryan Howard, who contributed much more to the Philadelphia Phillies beyond those six things I picked out above.

The 38-year-old longtime Phil officially announced his retirement today in a Players’ Tribune article titled, “Thank You, Philly,” which is even more of a mandatory read than last week’s fantastic Joel Embiid piece. 

Howard covers a lot of topics in the article, explaining how he wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from fans on his Phillies debut:

It was basically the same advice from everyone, over and over: Philadelphia’s tough. And if you want to survive there? You have to get tough, too.

But you also have to understand: Things were a little different back then. The “drought,” man, that was real. When I came up, it had been over two decades since a Philly team had won a title in a major sport. There’d been more than a few heartbreakers over the years. And so those fans, you know…. to me, I’d always thought they were maybe a little misunderstood. Because if there’s one thing that I was always able to relate to as a player, it was hunger. From Little League, to college ball, to the Draft, to my path through the minors, and feeling like I was ready for my shot at the majors before that shot would come: I came up as a player with a sort of permanent hunger inside of me. The hunger to prove people wrong.

That fervor was nothing but positive when Howard stepped up for the plate for the first time, batting for Vicente Padilla in the 5th inning of a September game against the Atlanta Braves in 2004:

Continue Reading

Continue Reading

The Phillies Move Up Aaron Nola’s Start to Sunday, Promptly Unveil a Nola Promo for Sunday

BWanksCB - August 30, 2018

VIA TWITTER

Aaron Nola is 3-0 in seven starts since the All-Star break with a 1.53 ERA and 0.94 WHIP. He has a 1.06 ERA in five starts this month. By every measure, he is unquestionably one of the game’s elite starting pitchers. So when the Phillies announced before Wednesday night’s game that Nola’s next start would be moved up to Sunday afternoon at home against the Cubs, it made perfect baseball sense:

Hard to argue with Kapler there. I would do the exact same thing.

The Phillies went on to lock down an impressive win last night. They showed a pair by erasing an early 5-2 deficit to salvage a game in what had been, up until that point, a completely disastrous series with the Nationals. Carlos Santana, look at you, bringing back your team from the dead with a big-time grand slam. Jose Bautista, whose acquisition many scoffed at (myself included) reached base four times and delivered a go-ahead RBI single in the seventh. Tommy Hunter got the job done with an impressive two-inning save. It was easily one of the Phillies’ best wins of the year.

Continue Reading

Continue Reading

The Phillies Have Money, Questions, and Baseball’s Worst Defense

BWanksCB - August 28, 2018

PHOTO CREDIT: BRAD MILLS-USA TODAY SPORTS

Let’s say that you are really good at your job. Maybe nobody does construction work the way you can. The precision. The efficiency. Others both cower and stare with admiration in the presence of your rugged manliness and ability to build.

Maybe nobody makes a PowerPoint the way you do. Your knack for selecting just the right predesigned layout and incorporating unnecessary slide transitions is simply unrivaled. The whole office marvels at your use of clip art. You know just how to make a corporate mandated 24-slide presentation on business ethics pop.

Maybe you can sell. That 2007 Toyota Corolla which will soon cost the sucker who bought it $1,500 in repairs? It didn’t just sell itself. That’s why you’re the best in the game. Swell with pride, and swing it all about. You’ve earned it!

Each day, you are out there just crushing it at your job, even if you spend some of it stopping by this site while on the clock to read the stories or check in for comments about “The Cuz” and thick ropes.

Now, imagine that you are so good at your job that quite literally every business in your field of work wants a piece of you. They are willing to pay your price. They will give you almost any position you want. Just name your number, make your demands be known, and boom. It’s a done deal. You know what that would be like? That would make you exactly like Manny Machado and Bryce Harper.
Continue Reading

Continue Reading

The Phillies Traded For Jose Bautista. Yippee.

BWanksCB - August 28, 2018

Photo Credit: Andy Marlin-USA TODAY Sports

While it is unfortunately true that the Phillies have lost six full games in the standings to Atlanta since July 27 and now trail the Braves by 3.5 games after last night’s comedy of errors, fear not, Phillies fans – Jose Bautista is coming to save the day:

Let us rejoice. This is the move the Phillies needed to make. Total game-changer. Adding Bautista not only helps to repair Major League Baseball’s worst defense and a rotation that is suddenly springing leaks when Aaron Nola isn’t on the mound, but it should also help a bullpen that has failed to protect several late-inning leads in recent weeks. Move over Max Scherzer and Aaron Nola – Jose Bautista is coming to town. Should be pure electricity.

Anytime you can go out add and add a .196 hitter, I mean, you’ve gotta do it, you know?

I hate this team right now. They have broken me.

*Deep breaths*

Continue Reading

Continue Reading