The “Why” of last night that you won’t hear from a Charlie-Manuel-loving sports media

The formidable lineup of Derek Jeter, Mark Teixeira, Alex Rodriguez, and, apparently, Hideki Matsui slugged their way to another World Series trophy last night with apparent ease against a meek Phillies team that didn’t seem equipped to put up a fight. Too much power in the batter’s box for the Yankees, and too much movement coming off the mound for the Phightin’s to handle. Or so it seemed. But don’t those Phillies have Chase Utley? Ryan Howard? Jimmy Rollins? Jayson Werth? And what about reigning Cy Young winner Cliff Lee? And did you know they have a rookie starter whose ERA was better this year than any that of any member of the Yankees’ rotation? You might not have even heard of J.A. Happ because he simply didn’t get to see much of the field.

The Yankees’ depth makes them the best team in baseball. Everyone knew it, from the moment they signed Mark Teixeira in the offseason. But we’ve seen the Phillies play, and their all-or-nothing style makes them a team that can not just beat, but pummel any other team in the league. Against the Yankees in the regular season, the Phillies won 2 of 3… and the loss was a result of a Brad Lidge 9^th inning. Shouldn’t beloved manager Charlie Manuel have figured something out there? (Lidge, by the way, blew two saves in that 3 game series, but was helped out by Carlos Ruiz in the 11^th inning of a win).

Here’s where we are going with this. Yes, the Yanks have the talent, but as we said in our prediction, the Phils had momentum, and a hot Phils team is nigh unbeatable. So what happened? Well, if you read our thoughts before the first game, in which we erroneously predicted that the Phils would ride a wave of success to another championship, you would see that we also gave ourselves a sort of safety valve, the second very likely scenario, and one that the Yankees would use to win. Eerily, pretty much everything came true—Ryan Howard was shut down. In a disgraceful way. Martinez and Hamels blew up and got destroyed by bad innings. And Brad Lidge contributed to perhaps the biggest moment in the series, a tie-game in the 9^th inning.

All of these things happened as any smart Phillies fan might have expected—but Charlie Manuel is not a smart Philly fan. He’s Charlie Manuel. While Howard’s struggles are not his fault, the pitching decisions that doomed the Phillies certainly were, and we put most of the blame for the loss (any that is left over after all of the praise that the Yankees deserve, and they really do deserve a lot) squarely on his down-home shoulders.

He stuck with an awful, terrible, disgustingly hittable Brad Lidge all year, despite the closer’s best efforts to lose his job. Manuel’s loyalty to his former star was laughable. Charlie’s managing style is essentially that of a player’s manager. He trusts his guys to get it done. While this nice, feel-good sort of managing may be heartwarming for some, trusting in a beat-up old geezer like Pedro Martinez to slow down the biggest bats in baseball is just plain foolish. Rather than starting Cliff Lee on short rest, Charlie opted to give his best pitcher only two chances to show his stuff—meaning that the Phillies would have had to win two games without him. Sounds doable when you have the starter with the second highest win percentage in the NL (J.A. Happ) right? Not for Charlie. Happ didn’t even pitch 3 full innings in the whole series. Instead, Charlie went with the aforementioned Pedro (who had been couch-sitting just months before) and badly struggling starter Cole Hamels. Much like Brad Lidge, Cole proved himself to Manuel last year with a stellar late-season campaign. But this isn’t last year, is it? Charlie Manuel’s refusal to adjust to his players’ failings and utilize the talents of others (J.A. Happ, for instance, or dear God, ANYONE but Brad Lidge in the 9^th of a Game 4 that might have tied the series) is what really doomed the Phillies. Even when Lidge was getting saves, he was putting runners on and getting of jams with hard-hit balls—any scout will tell you that a save of that allows two or three baserunners is not a good predictor of future saves. But Charlie stuck with his guy, just like he stuck with Pedro well into a debacle, rather than allowing some of the other talented members of the staff to take over.

Chase Utley’s world-beater performance might have overcome Howard’s whiffs with more competent pitchers on the mound, but those pitchers were instead sitting in the bullpen.

Again, we’ll reiterate that the Yankees are the better team. Their pitching depth put them over the top. For all the criticism he gets, Joe Girardi apparently knows his pitching staff pretty well—exactly what Charlie, who claims to know them “better than anyone,” failed so badly at. But that Philadelphia lineup is built to take on anyone and the pitching staff has some guys with the stuff to get outs even with the best of them. Unfortunately for the Philly Phaithful, those guys didn’t get enough chances to do their thing. And when a team’s talent isn’t used to the best of its ability… well, that one’s on the manager.