The Giants did so much more than crush the dreams of
Philadelphia when the teams met last postseason. They also moved
into the collective head of the Phillies’ lineup.
That has to be in mind of Phillies manager Charlie Manuel.
With Philadelphia visiting AT
&
amp;T Park on Thursday for the first of four games this weekend,
Manuel’s ambition has to be humanizing and demystifying the
Giants.
By Monte Poole – The Oakland Tribune
The Giants did so much more than crush the dreams of Philadelphia when the teams met last postseason. They also moved into the collective head of the Phillies’ lineup.
That has to be in mind of Phillies manager Charlie Manuel.
With Philadelphia visiting AT&T Park on Thursday for the first of four games this weekend, Manuel’s ambition has to be humanizing and demystifying the Giants.
Ace lefty Cliff Lee gave Philly a good start, going the full nine in a 3-0 shutout that surely warmed his manager’s heart.
Pardon Manuel for believing the Giants last season stole Philadelphia’s World Series parade, and are trying to do it again – after the Phillies over the winter outspent the Giants to reload.
When the Giants walked into Citizens Bank Park last week and strangled Philly’s potent lineup, silencing a roaring crowd anticipating payback, Manuel felt the need to respond. Transparently seeking to break the spell cast by Giants pitching and buff the esteem of his own lineup, he pronounced San Francisco’s rotation as less than legendary.
They’re not great, Manuel said, reminding all there is plenty of book left to write in determining the all-time status of young pitchers such as Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain.
He’s right. Yet there was Manuel on Thursday afternoon, sitting in the visitor’s dugout before the game, clarifying and amending.
“Let me tell you something: I have all the respect in the world for the Giants,” he said. “We played them in the playoffs last year, and they beat us. Not only did they beat us, but they beat Texas (in the World Series). I watched every pitch of all those games in the World Series. They earned everything they got.
“Their starting pitching . . . they have a very, very, very, very good staff.”
Well, yes. The Giants have the second-best staff in baseball.
That the Phillies are No. 1 – signing Lee to a five-year, $120 million deal was part of the plan to get there – partly explains Manuel’s fixation with the Giants.
The last two times the teams have met, San Francisco emerged victorious, four games to two in the NLCS last October and two of three last month. The Giants have managed this with a statistically inferior roster, by shutting down and exasperating the most imposing lineup in the league.
It’s as if the Giants, certainly their young arms, own the secret to locking up the likes of Jimmy Rollins, Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Shane Victorino.
For an old-school salt like Manuel, who built a reputation as a longtime hitting coach before becoming a manager, watching your guys step in to take so many fruitless hacks has to grate on the nerves.
It’s all the more annoying to Philadelphians that San Francisco’s feeble offense has a knack for scoring just enough runs to slay the beast. It’s a cat-and-mouse game, with the cagey rodents in black and orange developing a habit of thwarting the testy cat.
And it all makes for juicy undercurrents when these teams meet.
“I look at it as I think we can beat them,” Manuel said. “And if we’re going to win it all, we’d better beat them.”
Chasing the Giants is what drove the free-agent signing of Lee, which came after Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro traded for former Houston ace Roy Oswalt last season, which came after he traded for Roy Halladay before the 2010 season.
Philly’s front office, searching for answers, scrambling to respond to the disappointment of last October, stacked the deck. Yet the Giants won’t slink away.
It’s why, as pure theater goes, Giants-Phillies is as good as it gets in the N.L. It’s the defending champs against the team that never sleeps in its determination to dethrone them. It’s the Giants not forgetting that Manuel left Pablo Sandoval off the N.L. All-Star team in 2009. It’s Philadelphians noting that Giants manager Bruce Bochy used both Lee and Halladay for relatively extended appearances in the All-Star game last month.
More tangibly, it’s the Giants making an impressive midseason move to get Carlos Beltran, only to have the Phillies go out the next day and acquire Hunter Pence.
If Manuel is edgy, let’s remember his team was favored in 2010 and lost, is favored again this season, has baseball’s best record – and, still, the Giants won’t go away.
“I didn’t mean anything about their team,” Manuel said. “I just meant our team is good and we should feel like – and we’d better think – that we can beat them.”
Manuel then offered an apology. He didn’t need to. He spoke his mind. He wants to motivate his troops while reminding them the Giants are mortal.
They were Thursday. Lee made sure of that. But three more games remain, and maybe they’ll provide clarity.
