Open Letter to the Phillie Phanatics

I figured if some blog about a ship influenced the pitching style of Felix Hernandez then I thought maybe my letter here to Curt Schilling and Terry Francona might git 'er dun as well.

Curt, your stuff is terrible. And this isn't a recent development, it started in your late 30s, just around the time when you tried to eliminate us from the '04 players by pitching with no ankle. You gave up 121 hits in 93 1/3 innings in '05. In your big comeback year in '06 you gave up 220 hits in 204 innings. And this year 118 hits in 101 innings. This year opponents are batting .300 off your fastball. Three hundred. Everyone is a good hitter when you throw any pitch besides the split. Josh Beckett has a good fastball, opponents bat .250 off it. You don't have one anymore. Unless you change your style you will continue to get hit.

After mowing down minor leaguers and proclaiming how amazing your shoulder felt (as you struggled to hit 90 on the gun), you returned last night and gave up a crucial home run to Maicer Izturis. Who? I know what you mean. You probably didn't spend more than 5 minutes going over the guy with a .388 slugging with Tek beforehand. You probably thought "I'll just throw strikes and let him get himself out." That might work if you had good stuff. Keep in mind however that you don't have good stuff, you have crap. You have the leftovers from over 3000 career innings. And when facing a team with 6 guys in the lineup who swing at everything, it might be a good idea to throw one in the dirt every once in a while. Since you'll never risk actually walking a guy then I suggest you retire effective immediately and let Buchholz perform better in your place.

Terry, picture this, down 3-2 to the Angels in the 7th, runner on 2nd for them, no outs. Despite having seen Curt Schilling dominate in the mid 90s with the Phillies, the evidence is mounting that he's A. Old, and B. Out of gas. Merely 10 pitches after all viewers have realized both A. and B. you decide to act! Here are your choices out of the pen: flamethrower Delcarmen, set up guy and one of the best closers ever Gagne, a man with an ERA just over 1 Okajima, one of the best closers in baseball Papelbon, mop up man Snyder, mop up man Timlin, or the worst pitcher on the team Tavarez. Now if we wanted to win this game instead of worrying about having one of our 3 setup guys pitch an inning while we are trailing, then the answer would clearly be one of the good pitchers. But that wasn't the question. Since you went with Tavarez, I'm almost certain the question you asked yourself was "how could I most reduce the Red Sox's chances of winning this game tonight, right now?"

Terry, it's not easy to win baseball games. We'll be lucky to be in as good of a position to win as we were Monday night in either game 2 or game 3 of the series. Even if we did play 2 more close games however, you still don't have to go with the absolute worst option just because you want to save your best option for this perfect scenario you are so sure will happen the very next night. If you weren't watching the game Tavarez let the inherited runner score and almost many more. Had it remained a 1 run game you could have bunted the tying and go-ahead runs over in the 8th, and the tying run would have scored. FYI. Good managers try to win games. You are not a good manager. Please let David Ortiz make all the decisions from now on.