Major League Baseball

Bob Ford: For Phils, it's been all about pitching

Published Oct. 15, 2010 10:10 a.m. ET

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Everyone is talking about pitching, and as the Phillies begin the league championship series against the Giants on Saturday night, you can't really blame them.

The hype machine for the opening matchup of Roy Halladay vs. Tim Lincecum is working overtime, with music blaring, balloons flying, and breathless hyperbole that this is the greatest pitching duel in baseball playoff history since . . . since . . . well, what could possibly compare?

I don't know, maybe Cliff Lee vs. CC Sabathia in Game 1 of the World Series last season. Cole Hamels vs. Derek Lowe to start the National League Championship Series the previous year. Those were great matchups, and - this just in - teams that get this far tend to have very good starting pitching. So, finding a compelling matchup at the beginning of this series is great for business - and Halladay's no-hitter in the division series adds to the mystique - but it isn't that surprising.

What is surprising is that the Phillies have a dominant pitching staff. The conventional wisdom when the Phils moved into hitter-friendly Citizens Bank Park was that top pitchers would not be that interested in coming here, either as free agents or by approving trades. This was a team that had to be built on offense, on simply outscoring the opponent, and that seemed to be what the Phillies had not that long ago.

Winning changes things, and players like to go where they can win and make money, although not always in that order. In the last 18 months, the Phillies were able to get Cliff Lee, Halladay and Roy Oswalt, which turned the conventional wisdom on its ear. Now, the Phillies are being carried by their pitching staff, and their offense, hampered by injuries and a tendency to nod off at times, isn't the focal point of the team.

"I would not have predicted that," Charlie Manuel said, asked if he thought he'd manage a roster here dominated by the pitching. "This is the best pitching we've had since I've been here, and our pitching should be good for the next two, three years."

The rest of the team might still be hanging around, too, but the organization is scurrying against the clock. Among the core players being counted on for this postseason, four homegrown prospects and one nearly so, Carlos Ruiz, Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins are all 31 and will be 32 before next season. Ryan Howard turns 31 and Shane Victorino 30 in November.

That group isn't done, of course, but it can begin to see done out there in the wavering distance. It is actually the other three regulars, third baseman Placido Polanco, leftfielder Raul Ibanez and rightfielder Jayson Werth, for whom this postseason might represent a last chance or at least a turning point.

The assumption is that Werth, who is 31, will become an unrestricted free agent and leave for a huge contract somewhere. Despite the overall impression that Werth had a weird season - show up looking like Sasquatch and then get picked off a few times and that'll do it - he actually had a decent season. It wasn't far off his usual production, and he had a very good year in the field.

Just as the Phillies moved past Aaron Rowand after 2007 and Pat Burrell after 2008, they seem prepared to move past Werth and insert Domonic Brown, their only majors-ready prospect, into the outfield. They would like to keep Werth, but he's going to be out of their price range.

The other two cogs who are not certain to see the end of this run are Polanco, who turned 35 last week, and Ibanez, who is 38. Polanco had a good year of moving the runners over and hitting for average, but he also missed more than 30 games because of injuries, and the team has to ask itself if he can be depended upon for another full season. Has moving back to third after playing exclusively at second in the previous four seasons put an extra strain on his body? All possible.

Then there is Ibanez, whose work with the Phillies for two seasons has been a little bipolar. He was great in the first half of 2009 and pretty good in the second half of 2010. If you put those two halves together, you get a whole season of Ibanez hitting .308 with 35 home runs and 108 runs batted in. If you put together the other two halves, you get .236 with 15 home runs and 68 runs batted in.

The question is whether when Ibanez puts together a consistent season, which one will it be? That could be answered in 2011 when Ibanez is in the last year of his contract.

Polanco and Ibanez might stick around to enjoy the pitching a while longer, and perhaps to make another postseason run. For Werth, this seems like the exit stage. They are the Other Three, pieces added along the way to the homegrown core of the team, and this season it has all fit together once again.

Everything isn't about the pitching, after all, even for the Phillies, who once thought it would never be about the pitching. Some of the magic, as this next round begins, is saved for the guys who actually try to hit that stuff, and especially for the ones who might never get this far again.

Contact columnist Bob Ford

at 215-854-5842 or bford@phillynews.com. Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/bobford.

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