SAN DIEGO'S Jake Peavy won 19 games this season and is going to win the Cy Young award, but he was just the latest victim of what has been a truly remarkable run into the postseason by the Colorado Rockies. Held back from his regular turn Sunday in case a one-game playoff was needed, Peavy was hit hard in Monday's play-in game by a lineup that clubbed through the National League this September like Huns.
Nothing suggested this kind of performance from Peavy, and that should add to the anxiety of Phillies fans heading into today's Game 1 matchup at Citizens Bank Park.
After sitting out most of the previous month with a sore elbow, Cole Hamels, today's starter, has strung increasingly impressive outings together. His 116-pitch, 13 strikeout masterpiece last Friday had as much to do with the Phillies' first division crown in 14 years than anything that happened Sunday.
But while that was a big event, even a window into his competitive soul, the first entry of his national resume will be logged sometime after 3 p.m. today.
The bigness of the event, the bigness of the crowd will play a part, one way or another. There have been times this season, usually early in games, when Hamels has seemed to be within a pitch or two of unraveling. There have been other times, when the crowd seemed to ramp up his fastball and put added break on those offspeed pitches of his.
"Everybody's going to deal with this in their own way," Jamie Moyer was saying before yesterday's workout. "I think
he'll handle things very, very well. But will he maybe be wound up a little bit more than normal? Of course he will be. And I would expect that. And that's part of it. That's part of the maturing process in dealing with this. How you handle it. How you stay in your character and who you are."
No one is sure whether Peavy's performance Monday night was an inability to stay in character or just the result of a long season in which he logged 223.1 innings. "I think Peavy just ran out of gas a little bit," Phillies scouting director Mike Arbuckle said yesterday, and there seemed to be a twinge of hope as he said it.
Shut down with elbow stiffness for almost a month, Hamels has made three starts since his return, each monitored oh so carefully by the Phillies brass. For the season, Hamels, 15-5, has thrown 183.1 innings - but just 16 since Aug. 16.
Which begs the glass half-full question: Was Hamels extended too long in Friday's eight-inning outing? Is it reasonable to anticipate that a guy who was held to 76 pitches in his previous outing may feel a little fatigue today?
Especially with all those people, all those towels, all that noise?
Or is this a case of having all his bullets loaded at the right time? "You never want to lose pitching during the season," said Arbuckle. "But sometimes that short breather he had plays big later. Sometimes that factors into the equation. Instead of 200 innings, it's 170. That can be significant."
So can this: Hamels' makeup has been lauded as much as his stuff. Arbuckle says he's been the same guy through all types of situations dating back to high school. There was a time when the self-induced troubles he got himself into - breaking his hand while going to the aid of a friend in a barroom fight comes to mind - seemed to bring into question some of that, but the guy who sauntered to his first postseason, national media press conference yesterday seemed to have left that impetuous kid behind.
The guy yesterday spoke of how he "learned a little bit more last year, just because I lost more." And that, "I learn more when I lose."
"In baseball," he said moments later, "inches go a mile."
In the postseason, that ratio becomes even larger. The Detroit Tigers struggled with a few bunts last October and it cost them a World Series. As Moyer said, no one knows how they will react until they get there.
Hamels, 23, dips his toe in for the first time today.
"For myself, I love being able to go out there with a sellout crowd on their feet," said Hamels. "That's baseball. You know, when you're dreaming of making the major leagues, you dream of a sellout. You don't dream of . . . fans booing you. It's going to be something, you know, spectacular. I know everybody's been talking about it as the days have been going on, and you can see it in the streets and the signs that they have when you drive home. You know, I think after tomorrow, it will definitely put everybody in a very good place on where they see our future . . . "
"We kind of see it going all the way to the World Series." *
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