I think the big reason the Phils are beating the Rays is the Phils' starting pitching is not worse than the Rays' youngsters, as has widely been assumed by you and many others.

Overall, the Rays' pitchers have had better years than Phils' hurlers as measured by season metrics. But what is more important is the staff as it sits in October. And the Phils' starters are at least as good as the Rays' guys.

Sheilds, who only went 5 1/3 innings in his start, Kazmir, Garza and Sonnastine make a nice rotation supported by a very fine defense. But none of them are stud aces. Garza was very muchg helped by his home park and Sonnastine is not really the type of pitcher who can shut down a good lineup consistently, as we saw last night.

Meanwhile, Moyer was excellent nearly all year for the Phils. He had two rough starts in the playoffs but there really was no reason to believe he wouldn't pitch well vs. the Rays.

Myers was horrible early in the year and even went down to the minors for a while. But in the second half, he was mostly brilliant. The good Myers is better than any Ray pitcher most likely. Finally, Blanton has also been mostly good with Philly. He's not a really good pitcher but he is at least as good as Sonnastine. He is certainly capable of pitching many games similar to last night's effort.

I think some of then other reasons you and guys like Keith Law used to over rate the Rays in this series are also flawed. The fact that the AL is better than the NL is not relavent in my view. These two teams are very close in overall ability. The Phils may or may not be as deep as the Rays. But who really cares if the Rays bench guys that don't play are better than Clay Condrey and So Taguchi?

Here's a question about the blown call where Longoria tagged Rollins: is there any chance that Rollins should be safe on that play anyway, based on obstruction? It looked like Longoria blocked Rollins' path back to third (before he even had the ball), forcing Rollins to take a more circuitous path back to third. To get an obstruction (or is it interference?) call, would Rollins have needed to actually bump into Longoria, instead of going around him?

It's been awful this whole season. I don't see why anyone would be surprised to see it be awful in the post-season as well.

I find it kind of amazing that this is only one of many horrible calls in this series, and yet only this one gets talked about seriously. Many of us have been asking Joe and others here to discuss the umpiring; I guess we should have known it would take a call to go against the Rays for this to happen.

I think the Phillies need to send a bouquet of roses or some champagne over to the Boston Red Sox. Sure you can put this down to random variation, regression to the mean or the pitching of Jamie Moyer and Joe Blanton, but the basic fact is that the Rays have not been the same team since Boston came back on them in Game 5 of the ALCS. Although the Rays did eke out a Game 7 win (thanks primarily to Garza carrying them on his back), since the 7th inning of Game 5, the Rays have performed considerably more poorly by just about every metric you can think of - their power numbers are down, defensively they come nowhere near resembling the team that finished first in Defensive Efficiency, the pitchers have nibbled, etc. Only in the speed department (which is the most purely athletic and requires the least mental exertion) have they looked like the Rays of 2008 through October 16. Even their WS Game 2 win was pretty ugly - if the Phillies could have plated a couple of the 9 baserunners they put on in less than 6 innings against Shields, the series would be over now,

I have noticed on reading some of the previous roundtables that some of the BP writers get upset when most hard hit balls are attributed (at least by the tv guys) as hits off of mistake pitches, when they should rightfully be sometimes credited to the batter doing a great job of hitting the ball. It would be nice if we could also see BP write according to that balancing of zero's sum by attributing a game's outcome not only to the mistakes of the loser, but to the achievements of the winner. As a true zero-sum game, all events in baseball can be boiled down to one team beating another in any given game element (hitting/pitching/defense/base-running/management, etc.) I, for one, would love to read more about how the winner won.

"That Howard later ran into one off of Miller in the eighth doesn't mean a thing in terms of the fourth-inning decision."

When Howard gets in a groove, he can hit anybody, very much including lefthanders. I'll let someone define the statistical parameters of a groove, and I'll concede that that maybe hitting the bomb off Sonnanstine helped him get into one, since grooves are always made up of several parts confidence. And there's no question that, on the whole, he hits righties better than lefties, especially when he's struggling (when he's god-awful). But describing a shot like that off Miller as "running into one" sounds more like a dyspeptic Billy Wagner than Joe Sheehan.
I love Joe's writing, and he's written plenty of thoughtful, smart things about the Phils over the last few weeks, but the whole "Howard can't play for my team and is only a platoon player" sentiment ignores what a transformational player he can be, IMHO. I'd be interested to hear what some of the smarter GMs have to say about that.

Love your comments, Joe, but please lose the "off of".

The argument that Ryan Howard can't hit lefties strikes me as odd. Howard is a streaky hitter, plain and simple. In 2006, before teams started to employ the shift against him full time, he penned a .279/.364/.558 line against LHP in 225 PA's. What did that prove? That he could hit lefties? In 2007 his line dropped to .225/.333/.493 against lefties. His ISO against LHP was still .268. A .268 ISO against LHP. In 2008, he really struggled. .224/.294/.451 v LHP in 265 PA. Howard was also 3rd in the majors with 14 HR v LHP.

So teams have obviously made adjustments. The single biggest adjustment is the shift, which takes away lots of would be base hits on sharp line drives to RF. But Howard is far from the only lefthanded batter who struggles against good LHP. Carlos Pena's 3 slash against LHP this year was .190/.302/.352. I haven't read that he's a platoon player, or in Joe's words "He can't play for me".

I think what this comes down to is pretty simple. Lots of folks here believe Howard doesn't deserve MVP consideration. Because people feel he'll get undeserved votes for the MVP award, they go out of their way to attack Howard's shortcomings. They point to his defense. Yep, his defense is bad, but he actually scores close to average in Dewan's system, moreso than FRAA or FRAR. Again, not a good defender, and his throwing is terrible. But the fact remains, when Howard is locked in, hes one of the best hitters in the majors, vs lefties or righties. Albert Pujols deserves the MVP. Most Phillies fans won't argue against that. But don't let that argument enter into the "Ryan Howard is a platoon player" argument. One more bonus stat. From August 1st till the end of the season, Howard's 3 slash v LHP was .276/.370/.638. He's a streaky hitter.

If Ryan Howard is a platoon player, so are the following guys;

Carlos Pena, Adrian Gonzalez, Justin Morneau, James Loney, Prince Fielder, Grady Sizemore, Carl Crawford and Curtis Granderson.

You can't really blame Joe for the analytical perspective that he adopted for the WS. Tampa Bay came from the toughest division of the stronger league, and still had a better record. They had a deeper starting rotation, a deeper lineup (though perhaps with 2-5 hitters a notch under Philly), and their bullpen was as good as Philly (and tactially it matched up well). The Rays were the favorites by leaps and bounds, and if there were another 10 games to play, they still would be. That's not a narrative he's inventing, it's just the position he adopted after analyzing the data. He shouldn't shift that because the games didn't play out that way, precisely because he's not writing the narrative, he's writing the analysis.

BP beat up Torre for using the 2 relievers in the wrong sequence when they both got stroked for HRs.

now Joe is beating up Maddon for not using Miller even earlier to get stroked by Howard

"That Howard later ran into one off of Miller in the eighth doesn't mean a thing in terms of the fourth-inning decision."

I thought I read somewhere at BP that the strategy should be to not let Utley or Howard face a righty in the 6th inning on. Seems this decision was entirely consistent with that.

If starting pitching was the advantage the Rays had versus the Phillies, how does removing the starter at the very first sign of trouble serve that advantage? Then Joe could have questioned why Maddon had to use Wheeler or Balfour (given they've already been dismissed by BP staff) in a important moment later in the game.

And if the game goes 10-8 and flips the lineup 3-4 more times, who faces Howard in the 9th?

No manager in the majors would remove his starter down 1 run, with two runners on base, this early. If anything argue Sonanstine's pitch selection.

If Joe was managing the Red Sox, Matzo man might have averaged 3 1/3 IP per start.

Frankly the comment about the Rays not being the same since the Red Sox rallied in game 5 is more observant than anything. But then Joe might have to revisit that chemistry and momentum thing. And you know he doesn't want to go there.

I think the bigger picture point here is that in a best of 7 series it doesn't matter which team is "better" The luck factor is so huge over such a tiny sample that it overwhelms any objective analysis.

The fact that people are surprised that either of the teams is winning just shows the lack of fundamental understanding in very small sample data.