AFTER ALLOWING MY MIND TO WANDER A BIT ON THURSDAY, AND with our series with the Phillies scheduled to begin on Saturday, October 1, Friday was a time to focus on our opponent. You’ve probably heard and read about the meetings that go on prior to a postseason confrontation. You might imagine that like in the NFL, where coaches end up sleeping in their offices after marathon nights of viewing film, noting tendencies, and developing game plans, we must have done something very similar. Good assumption, but a wrong one.
We’d faced the Phillies in that big series just fourteen days earlier, and we’d already played them nine times that season. Not a whole lot had changed between that last meeting and this upcoming one in terms of personnel. We both had to set our rosters, and that was going to require some sound strategic thinking, but that was a matter of elimination mostly, and no new, significant additions to the roster were going to be made. It wasn’t as if the Phillies had gone out and gotten Joey Votto or some other stud to add to their lineup. I’m sure they would have liked to, given that Ryan Howard, their star first baseman and terrific run producer, was slowed by a leg injury. When we saw them in mid-September, and then later on as they finished out their run to the division title, we could see that Howard was essentially trying to hit off one leg. But we weren’t feeling sorry for the Phillies. They had picked up Hunter Pence from Houston, and he was a valuable midseason addition, making their already strong lineup even tougher.
For our part, we were wondering how effective Matt Holliday would be with his finger injury. We had some questions about whether he’d even be on the roster. All teams are banged up by the end of the year, but if we were looking for an edge in terms of injury and availability, one didn’t really exist. A diminished Howard and an injured Holliday essentially canceled each other out. Also, Chase Utley, their All-Star second baseman for so many years, wasn’t himself. Placido Polanco, who had been dealing with an abdominal problem all season, wasn’t all there either. They were a club that had won more than a hundred games, but they weren’t at their peak going into the series.
Postseason history is replete with teams that were banged up, and I believe one of two things happens with these teams. Number one, the team overcomes it, like the Dodgers did against our Oakland team in the 1988 World Series when Kirk Gibson hit that game-winning homer in Game 1 in the only at-bat he had during the Series. Most sports fans have a vivid recollection of him barely able to drag himself around the base paths on his injured legs. The opposite can also happen: the healthier team is gung-ho and going after it, so the team that’s hurt loses an edge.
We had no doubt of this: the Phillies weren’t feeling sorry for themselves. We had so much respect for the Phillies and what they had done, especially in their last series of the season at Atlanta when they’d won all three games to help keep us alive. They deserved the ultimate respect. As banged up as they were, and with the outcome of the series having no effect on their standing, what they did was historic in terms of preserving the integrity of the competition. In similar situations, I’ve seen clubs take care of themselves by resting frontline players and not making sure that the competition is as even as possible. The Phillies made a decision to play to the max for those three games, and that was classic. That’s what we should all do.
Also, by winning those three games to end the season, they’d given themselves some much-needed momentum. Despite being banged up, Philadelphia appeared to have one potentially decisive edge going in, at least on paper. Their starting pitching staff, with Roy Halladay, Cole Hamels, Cliff Lee, and Roy Oswalt, was outstanding: the first three had combined for fifty regular-season wins. Not many clubs can trot out three top-of-the-rotation guys like the Phillies could. In fact, any one of their top three could be a number-one starter on nearly every major league roster. Add in Roy Oswalt as a number four, and you’ve got one formidable starting staff. That was one of the reasons why they’d gone to two World Series and been one of the dominant teams in the National League the last few years.
By contrast, Lohse, Carpenter, Jackson, and Garcia, our projected starters, had won forty-three games. That’s a bit deceptive, since Jackson had been with us for only half a season; if you add in the wins he had with the White Sox, seven, our five guys had as many wins as their four. Throwing out the numbers completely and just going with the gut, however, you’d have the same initial impression—the Phillies’ strength was their starting pitching edge.
From our perspective, it wasn’t so much about those wins and losses. We felt like we had some vulnerabilities in Jaime’s and Kyle’s stamina—the same questions that we’d faced late in the season when we’d decided to give them more rest. Jaime was still young and developing the necessary arm strength, and Kyle was approaching two hundred innings for the first time since 2008.
That meant that we’d have to utilize our bullpen to a greater extent. When it came to the bullpens, we believed we had the edge. Even though we’d had our struggles early on, we’d pulled it together a bit, and based on what we’d seen down the stretch, our bullpen was coming in with a lot of weapons and a lot of confidence. On the other side, we felt like the Phillies were at a disadvantage there. Injuries figured into that. Jose Contreras, who’d been effective in a relief role, was hurt and wouldn’t be on the roster. The key, then, to getting to those starters was for our guys to string together tough at-bats every time in every inning, so that one of two things would happen: we would break through and score, or we’d run up their pitch count and tire them. Would that be enough? We’d have to wait to see if their starters and our relievers canceled one another out.
We also had Dunc’s book on our side. For years, he’d kept detailed notes on every game and every at-bat an opposing team took against us. What he kept track of evolved over the years. On the front side of the opening page of the book, he had the results of the team’s last 100 at-bats against our pitchers. Dunc demanded that the pitching chart Chad Blair assembled from watching the video be as accurate as humanly possible. The next day, Dunc took that chart and transferred data from it into his book. Prior to meeting with the starting pitcher, Dunc reviews the information, considers the stuff our starting pitcher has, what that particular pitcher’s temperament allows him to do or not do. Then he meets with the pitcher.
The book is invaluable. In 2009 against the Reds, we had a one-run lead in the ninth, with runners on first and second and one out. Ramon Hernandez, since coming to the National League, had hit us well. Ryan Franklin was on the mound. Dunc made a trip out there to talk to him. Dunc came back in. Franklin threw one pitch and we got a double play and we won the game. I asked Dunc, “What did you tell him?”
“If he throws a breaking ball on the outer half, he’ll roll over it and hit a ground ball to short.”
That’s exactly what happened. That book provides us with all we need to know about how to pitch to and defend the opposition’s hitters.
We’d won six out of nine meetings with the Phillies during the regular season, and that was a plus. The Phillies owned home-field advantage, and you’d think that was in their favor. I didn’t. At least not entirely. Yes, there is the strategic advantage of being able to bat last, but in most other ways I didn’t see us being on the road as a terrible disadvantage. It put certain pressures on us—particularly that idea of scoring early to take the crowd out of the game—but playoff baseball raises the intensity level to a high degree. In my mind, that fact offset whether we played at home, on the road, or even at a neutral site. Playoff baseball is just different. Add to that our emphasis all year long that road games are a lot about projecting the attitude that you think that this is your house, but we actually own it. That means that the players’ body language and behaviors from the moment they arrive at the ballpark to when they go out to stretch, take batting practice, or fire the ball around the infield after an out should be an expression of our belief in taking control of their own minds and taking the crowd out of the game. Baseball is a sport, but it’s also entertainment, and playing on the road gives you a chance to strut your stuff in front of people who normally don’t know you and your abilities that well. That may sound cocky, but that’s the swagger you need to adopt in a hostile situation.
In 2011 we had identical home and away records of 45-36, demonstrating that we put those thoughts into practice and didn’t let away games slip out of our grasp. That toughness edge was one that we prided ourselves on having on our side. We could also fall back on a bit of history. In ’06 we opened the playoffs on the road in every series—San Diego, New York, and Detroit—and won that Series. In ’02 we started the National League Division Series against Arizona at their place and won. We’d also won three of four from the Phils in September at Citizens Bank Park during the comeback. All those positives gave us a good feeling.
In order not to let this postseason opportunity slip away, we had to get the players to turn the page. We wanted those good things from the comeback to carry over, but we also didn’t want to think too much about what was now the past. We needed to feel good about ourselves and what we’d done without getting too caught up in that. Obviously, that’s a fine line. You feel like you’re “hot” coming in, and you want to build off that, but you can’t expect that things are going to pick up right where they left off. You have to make that happen, and the way to do that is to focus.
Our challenge was this. We’d made a historic comeback. If we weren’t careful, we could have celebrated the fact that, no matter what we did in the postseason, people would remember us. We needed to acknowledge that we’d made history and then put that in our confidence bucket as a reminder of what we were capable of. Most important, though, we needed to analyze how we’d done it and then put those same practices into play against the Phillies. That’s what we did.
I learned this the hard way in ’83 when the White Sox were my first playoff team. We’d caught fire from June through the end of the season, and when we wrapped up the division, we kept on going. I don’t think I did a good job of leading the guys after that. I should have stressed more the need to forget about the regular season and move on to focusing on the next task at hand—beating the Baltimore Orioles. That ’83 club was a tremendous group of guys, a great mix of veterans and newcomers, guys with previous postseason success and others hungry for their first taste of it. Chicago fans had to be convinced that the dreaded June swoon or a late-season collapse wasn’t going to break their hearts again, but they came around. We became the toast of the town, and we had a lot of fun. Even Carlton Fisk, who’d seen his share of playoff frenzy with Boston, told me that the most fun he’d had was with that ’83 White Sox team. Jerry Koosman and Greg Luzinski both said the same thing. In some ways, we had been like the 2011 Phillies. Our top three starters that year, LaMarr Hoyt, Richard Dotson, and Floyd Bannister, had gone something like a combined 42-5 the second half of that year. They were all young pitchers, fearless and ferocious, and we went into that postseason expecting that things would go our way.
They didn’t.
Baltimore, the eventual World Champions, beat us in four games. We could have made a better showing. We failed to put the satisfaction of having achieved so much in the regular season behind us. In every postseason since ’83, my staff and I have been vigilant about delivering that message about enjoying the success and celebration and then moving on. We did the same with the 2011 Cardinals.
As I said, no elaborate and lengthy preparations went on as we got ready to play the Phillies. The preparations for how we would hit and pitch against them were very similar to what we’d done during the regular season. We had one team meeting beforehand. We held it on Friday before Saturday’s Game 1. I always wanted those meetings, even during the regular season, to be on off days because I needed their full attention. Also, on game day you don’t want to interrupt their game preparation with needless confusion or distractions.
I had a three-point agenda. The first two had to do with potential distractions.
I said to the players, “I’ve only got three things to tell you. Number one, find somebody to help you take care of the tickets. The ticket situation will drive you nuts, and you don’t need that.”
Depending on where a guy is from and other factors, regular-season free tickets for friends and family can be a royal pain in the ass sometimes. You want to accommodate everyone if you can. Just like the intensity on the field gets ratcheted up during the playoffs, so does the ticket headache. There’s so much more interest in those games, and if they let themselves, the players can get so wrapped up in meeting requests, checking with teammates to see who has extras, etc., that they wear themselves out. Message delivered, and I trusted that they would act on that suggestion.
“Number two, at each level you go to, you’re going to have more and more media around. The media is a part of it. They want to know about us. They want to know how we got here. You should be cooperative, but don’t let them get in the way of your work.”
The media have their job to do; they are the conduit for delivering information to the fans. We tell our players to think about interviews as a way to talk to the fans, but also never to let that fact get in the way of doing their job. Major League Baseball rules are fair to both the media and the players. Journalists are allowed access as needed and at scheduled times and locations. All the players have certain requirements they have to meet, but generally how they choose to deal with that element of the game is up to them. I just didn’t want them to allow the media to detract from their concentration and performance.
In the postseason the clubhouses are closed to the media before the game. A media room is provided, and the manager and a few key players are required to speak to a pool of reporters after the game. That is both good and bad. The clubhouse is more private, but the television rights–holders and the local media are under more pressure to get something different from what everyone else gets. As a result, they make a lot of requests for so-called private time with players and staff. The networks have paid for the broadcasts, so they have a right to expect access to the players. We want the players to be helpful, but in every playoff series I’ve been involved in, a player has agreed to do an interview at some time when he was supposed to be in a hitters’ meeting, or during team stretching, or when he should have been shagging balls during batting practice. That competition for players’ time gets more intense the further you advance.
Those first two issues can take away from your ability to have fun and to compete. They also took far longer to talk about than what was the most important point of all.
After watching the last thirty-two games, the coaches and I agreed that that this club had already been playing like every game was the last game of the World Series or of their lives. That had made us tougher to beat and won us games. All we asked of them now was that they continue to do that. We wanted them to continue to have fun competing in this next series against the Phillies.
For the first- and second-time participants in the playoffs, we took an opportunity to visit with each of them. We wanted to give them a heads-up about the atmosphere surrounding playoff games. I talked to Descalso, Craig, Freese, Chambers, Tyler Greene, Lance Lynn, Jason Motte, Salas, and R-zep. We included guys who weren’t even going to be on the roster for the NLDS, guys who’d be on the traveling squad, to help prepare them in case they were needed anywhere down the line this season or any future season.
I walked around the outfield during batting practice, speaking to each player individually. The message was the same: we’d faced the kind of playoff intensity in all the crisis games we’d had in the regular season—we’d experienced that kind of excitement level. Whatever their part was in each game, they had a real edge, because they’d already experienced it. Those thirty-two games were as close as they could get to actual playoff-game experience.
Those face-to-face meetings also gave me a chance to gauge the guys’ mind-sets. As with most of those personalized discussions, I wanted to conduct them outside my office. I reserved my office for meetings about more serious matters—disciplinary stuff, that kind of thing. I wanted these exchanges to be more mutual and more open, and my office wasn’t the place for that.
I could tell that all the guys were ready. The next question we had to deal with was deciding which of them would be on the squad.
PRIOR TO THE FRIDAY WORKOUT AND THAT BRIEF MEETING, THE staff had gotten together both with and independent of our general manager to determine the roster. Major League Baseball has certain rules about the composition of the postseason roster, and Mo made sure that we understood these before finalizing our choices. If a player is injured during a playoff series, he can be replaced, but only with a pitcher in the case of a pitcher, and only with a position player if another position player goes down. If an injured player is replaced on the roster, he can neither reenter that series to play nor play in the next one. That’s a lot of detail about a procedural matter, but it figured in our decision in regard to Matt Holliday and his finger injury.
In the old days, management and uniform staff made all kinds of decisions about a player’s status without consulting him. Because of how integral our personal relationships with the players were to our success, though, I couldn’t and wouldn’t want to make a unilateral decision and then inform the player. That Friday, while Matt was working out with the rest of the club, we were watching him with keen interest. At one point, I walked up to him to chat. You have to remember this about Matt. He was recruited to play both football and baseball at Oklahoma State University in his hometown. He chose to sign with the Colorado Rockies, so he didn’t play college football, but he has that football player mentality and toughness.
I said to Matt, “Listen, here’s the deal. We can replace your intangibles. We can’t replace your tangibles.”
Matt nodded, knowing that I meant that we could add someone else to the roster who could do a good job of cheerleading and being a good teammate, but we couldn’t replace what he brought in terms of offensive production. We needed to know if he could play full-time. If he could only pinch-hit, we would consider keeping him on the roster, but we weren’t sure yet if we’d go that way.
Next, I went through the eligibility and injury rules with him so that he understood fully the consequences of our decision.
“Basically, what I’m telling you is that if you’re on the roster, we need you to be able to play and keep playing.”
Matt looked me square in the eye and in his good ole boy Cowboy accent said, “I can throw. I can hit. I’m about to take BP, so you can see for yourself.”
We watched him take his swings, and he looked good to go. Matt had been with us long enough and done enough that he’d earned our trust and respect. We had to let him know our concerns and the consequences of this mutual decision.
I moved on next to talk with Kyle McClellan. This one was a bit different. I knew what Kyle was going to say. Of course he wanted to be on the roster, and I wanted him there as well. The problem was, as the season went on, and after having begun the year in the starting rotation, we’d seen the effects of those innings on his arm strength and velocity. He’d nearly doubled his previous season high in innings pitched. We’d also seen a general decline in the sharpness of his other pitches. Also, Kyle had been regularly undergoing various treatments for his arm and shoulder. I talked to him during his workout. I could see the concern in his eyes, and this was going to be tough news to deliver to him.
I used the “pat and pop” technique: I told him that he’d been a valuable contributor to our success all year. We’d asked a lot of him, and he had delivered. All very true. I then told him that we’d gotten reports from our team doctor and our trainer. Combine those concerns about the health of his arm with our observations about the decline in his performance, and we felt it was best for the organization, for him, and for his future if he didn’t pitch in this series. We would be taking too much of a risk with him and our chances of winning if we did.
Kyle tried to convince me that he was okay, that he wanted the ball. He said all the right things, and I knew this was really painful for him. Finally, I spelled it out the best way that I could.
“Kyle, you know that the Phillies stagger switch-hitters and right and left throughout their lineup. Plus they have rights and lefts coming off the bench. You’re our most effective reliever against both righties and lefties. Nobody else can go after both like you can. So if that’s the case, can you tell me why we’d make this choice if we didn’t feel it was in your best interest as well as giving us the best chance to win?”
My lawyerly, irrefutable logic was fighting with his passion and desire to compete. I wished that we could have kept him on the roster, but the reality was that we couldn’t. The thing about personalizing is that even as you get close to the players, you can’t ever get so close that you allow your judgment to be clouded. This time the pat on the back was followed by a punch to the gut.
My thinking about the rotation for the Phillies series began in the forty-five minutes following our victory over Houston in game 162. While the guys were agonizing over those final innings between Atlanta and Philly, I was in the office going over some stats and messing around with some ideas about how to get the most Carp for our buck. I knew one thing without a doubt: we had to have Carp pitch in two of those five games. Had to.
I came to that conclusion immediately, even when I was still in Houston before the champagne was uncorked. While we hadn’t fully committed to the idea of him starting on three days’ rest, I know that I first considered it back then. After we were sure we were in and we were headed back home on the plane, I looked at the rotation again. What we had found over the years about the best-of-five Division Series was that pitching your two best pitchers twice gives you the edge. Ideally, you’d like to have your number one go in games 1 and 4 and your number two in games 2 and 5. We couldn’t do that. Carp obviously wouldn’t start the first game on Saturday because he had just pitched on Wednesday. That meant that the soonest he could go was the second game on Sunday. If necessary, he could then start the fifth and deciding game, assuming there was one.
The night we clinched the wild card, we were on our way back to St. Louis. The guys were still celebrating, but some of that initial jubilation had quieted. I was still sitting there with a pad and pencil taking notes about the possible rotation for the upcoming series. I got up and walked back a few seats to where Carp was. I held out the paper and tapped the space on the page where I’d penciled in his name.
Carp smiled and nodded. “I’m good to go.”
“Not yet. We’ll wait and see how you are Friday.”
“I’ll be ready.”
I walked back to my seat. Carp’s response was no surprise. Of course he’d want the ball. I already knew that. I just wanted to let him know that we were going to wait a bit before fully committing to see how he felt. I was sure that some people were wondering why I’d kept him in for as long as I had in such a lopsided game. Two reasons. First, whether Carp threw eighty or a hundred pitches really wasn’t going to matter in terms of his ability to bounce back and pitch on three days’ rest. Second, Carp had been throwing as loose and easy as I’d ever seen him in carving up Houston that night. There’s pitches and then there’s pitches. Particularly toward the end, Carp wasn’t throwing high-effort strikes and balls. He was in as stress-free a mode as you can have while still making quality pitches. Why take him out? In each of the last two innings, if he had any hiccup, I would have bagged him for a reliever. That wasn’t necessary; he was relentless.
With Carp unable to pitch in the first game, we had a number of points to consider along with a number of pitchers. The first candidate was Kyle Lohse. He’d had success against the Phillies during the regular season. He split a pair of decisions and had a good 1.76 ERA against them. More important, pitching with six days’ rest during the comeback, he had beaten Halladay. Kyle would be on six days’ rest this time too, and though he didn’t like having his turn skipped—and there was a lot said about it—Kyle pitched a lot better down the stretch when he got more rest.
The same was true with Garcia. Jaime’s win-loss record against the Phils wasn’t great. He’d had no decisions in the two games he started, but in fifteen innings against them he had an 0.60 ERA. Anytime you average less than one run a game in two starts against a club, you know you’re doing well. Carp had also been really effective against Philadelphia, going 2-0 with an 0.60 ERA.
It was clear that Carp, Lohse, and Garcia would be three of the four guys to start, but in what order? Based on keeping everybody in the rotation pitching with regular or extended rest, the first option was to go with Lohse in game 1, Garcia in game 2, and then Carpenter in game 3 in St. Louis. Edwin Jackson would go in game 4 if needed.
Option two was to flip-flop Garcia’s and Carp’s starts. That would mean using Carp on three days’ rest in game 2. He’d never done that before, but I didn’t really worry about how he’d respond. He’d been so efficient against Houston in game 162 that I didn’t think his arm would be that stressed. That option would also put him in line to start game 5 on regular rest.
Another factor in our favor with this choice was that Jaime Garcia pitched much better at home than he did on the road. That third game might also be an elimination game, and it was good to have that edge in mind. I don’t know why Garcia pitched better at home—and there are too many factors to consider in order to explain it—but the results spoke for themselves. He was 9-4 at home and 4-3 on the road, with an ERA of 2.55 at Busch Stadium and 4.61 elsewhere.
Along with all that analysis, we also had to check in with Carp on Thursday to see how his arm was responding. He’d iced up after the Houston game, of course, and we wanted to see how he was feeling one day later. I sought him out and said, as I do very frequently when asking guys these kinds of questions, “Put your hand on the baseball bible. How are you feeling?”
“I’m good. Normal tightness. I’ll be ready.”
“Not yet. We’ll check with you tomorrow.”
Many times a pitcher does feel good the day after a game and then lousy the next day after that. Maybe it’s part of the euphoria that comes from a start, the lingering effects of the adrenaline high that masks some muscle soreness.
On Friday I repeated the process with Carp. He raised his hand and swore on the baseball bible: “I told you, I’m good.”
You’re in there.
I faced a similar situation in 1990 with the A’s. We were in a tight race with the White Sox, and Dave Stewart, a guy who compares favorably to Carp in his attitude and ability, won one Wednesday going eleven innings. He knew that we had a key weekend series against the Angels coming up, and he said to me that he could go on Sunday. We had an off day on Monday, and he would have taken his regular turn on Tuesday but with an extra day of rest.
“Skip, I’m better on three days than I will be on extra rest. I’ll be too strong then.”
I’d said the same thing to Stew I said to Carp: “We’ll see.”
Stew swore on the baseball bible that he was ready. We gave him the ball on three days’ rest, and he beat the Angels 4–1. With guys like Stew and Carp, you trust them to do what’s best for the team and for themselves. You believe that they know enough not to put themselves and their future at risk.
When I’d made up my mind, I called Dunc. He had gone home to Missouri, briefly, to be with Jeanine, but at the insistence of his wife and their sons, Chris and Shelley, he was going to join us for the trip to Philadelphia and stay with us for as long as we kept going. He agreed with my thoughts: Carp was the starter.
In a lot of ways, Dunc and Carp are cut from the same cloth. Carp’s a lot more vocal—in fact, as our number-one starter, he takes on a leadership role in the dugout when he’s not pitching by being the most vocal guy on the bench—but he’s also a very serious guy with a good and cutting sense of humor that jumps up on you like a sneaky fastball. On August 22, just before he came to me to ask about having that players-only meeting, we were up 1–0, and I sent him back out there to start the top of the ninth. He hit the first batter, Juan Rivera, and I decided that was enough. I didn’t like the matchup against Andre Ethier. I went to get him.
“You’ve done a great job,” I told him. “I’m bringing in Arthur.” With that, I held out my hand for the ball, and he gave it to me. He started to move off the mound, and I said, “Hey, Carp. Wait here with me until Arthur gets here. We’ll walk off together.”
Without batting an eye and with no hint of malice or sarcasm, Carp turned toward the dugout and said, before taking his first step, “I’ll take the applause. You get the boos all to yourself.”
The boos got louder after a triple by Aaron Miles and a fielder’s choice scored two runs.
It’s true that you have to beat the best to become the best. Our road to a championship wasn’t going to be easy by any stretch of the imagination. I knew one thing. Our competitive nature had been tempered by the competition we’d gone through all year. We were going to compete hard. We were a long way from 2010, and I was hoping that we’d be remembered for more than just that simple fact of the passage of time. In 2011 we hadn’t just turned the page, we’d turned a corner. I liked how we’d come to the park ready to compete. So, while the Philly fans roared and the experts waited for the inevitable to unfold, we stood on the foul line knowing, and eager to prove to everybody else, that we belonged there.