Everybody has a first playoffs experience: it might be for their home team or just seeing the World Series and realizing it's something special. For me, it was 50 years ago, not the World Series but a couple of afternoon games between the Milwaukee Braves and the Los Angeles Dodgers to decide who would go to the 1959 World Series and face the Chicago White Sox. I was only in my first year of following baseball and I knew most of the players' names from their baseball cards, since baseball was seldom on TV and I didn't own a radio. So baseball cards and boxscores was almost all I knew about the game until Monday, September 28th when the Braves hosted the Dodgers and I got to see most of the game when I got home from school that afternoon.

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I was going to wait until later this weekend to post this, but today's game is/was so boring I've got the time now. Let me also say I'm not saying the playoff lineup is set or that the Phillies will be in the playoffs, just basing this on what appears likely.

I became curious how often the set of teams returning to the playoffs was the same or nearly the same from year to year, since a number of people have commented about the possibility of a Dodgers-Phillies rematch in October. So, I decided to look at the year-to-year lineup of the eight teams that made the playoffs each year since 1995, the first year for the wild card format. A couple of interesting points appeared, plus the general theme that on average two teams in each league will be repeaters from the previous year, but the American League has significantly more repetition among its playoff participants. Right now, the odds favor each league having two repeaters and two teams that didn't make it last year - although saying the Yankees' making it is a change sounds a bit misleading.

Each league has been dominated by one team as far as playoff appearances go: the Yankees have been in 13 of 14 years so far, with another appearance virtually assured. The Braves were in the playoffs 11 years in a row. No one else is that close in either league. The Red Sox appear headed to their 9th playoff spot; the Indians have been 6 times; and the Angels will make it 6 this year. Runners-up in the NL are the Cardinals, headed to their 8th playoff spot. Next highest, surprisingly, is Houston, with 6 trips to the post-season.

Only once has a league had a complete slate of four new contenders that hadn't been there the year before. That was in 2007 in the NL. And only once have all four teams repeated: 1999 in the AL. Because the Yankees and, to some extent, either the Indians or Red Sox were so consistent in making the post-season, the AL average for repeat teams per year is 2.43. The NL average is only 1.79.

Finally, as the Phillies close in on their third straight playoff appearance I thought it might be worth noting the few teams besides the Yankees and Braves that have done that: Indians, 1995-99; Astros, 1997-99; A's, 2000-03; Cardinals, 2000-02; Twins, 2002-04;  Red Sox, 2003-05; and Cardinals, 2004-06. The Phillies, Angels, and Red Sox could all make it three straight this year.

I was watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia the other night and when Mac (Rob McElhenney) first came on I thought for a second, isn't that Brad Lidge? The pictures below may not be the best, but if they couldn't pass for twins I bet if you put Rob in a Phillies uniform and put him on the mound he'd blow a three-run lead in the ninth.

via sportscomplex.blogs.citypaper.net

via www.zap2it.com

Looking back on the recent bad spell in June (sometimes referred to as three weeks of sucking) when the Phillies went 5-13, I was reminded of a couple of other similar bad periods. The fact that the 2008 Phillies were playing exactly .600 ball beforehand (39-26) was probably what made me think of the 1964 Phillies, who were playing exactly .600 ball (90-60) before their infamous 10-game losing streak. So, I thought now during the All-Star break it might be interesting to compare those bad spells. Also, after I checked out those two years I thought of another similar bad streak, the 1976 Phillies' late-season struggle to finish first for the first time in 26 years.

These are the basic facts:

2008:

End of day 6/9/08:

Team                   W     L      GB

Philadelphia     39    26    ---               (.600)

Florida                34   29      4

Atlanta                32   32       6 1/2

New York           30   32      7 1/2

End of day 6/29/08:

Team                   W     L      GB

Philadelphia      44   39    ---              (.530)  Went 5-13

Florida                42    39      1               Went 8-10/gained 3 games

New York           40    41     3                 Went 10-9/gained 4 1/2 games

Atlanta                40    43      4                Went 8-11/gained 2 1/2 games

Phillies - Runs Scored in 18 games = 74 (4.1/game)     Runs Allowed = 80 (4.4)

Take away the 20-2 game vs. St. Louis, and the average drops to 3.2 runs scored per game and 4.6 runs allowed per game. Obviously, the biggest problem was scoring runs, as the runs allowed is only slightly higher than it's been in the other games this season.

Notes: 0-5 in one-run games, 1-0 in two-run games, 0-1 in extra innings.  Lost six in a row. Were shut out twice (but won two shutouts among the five wins).

1964:

End of day 9/20/64:

Philadelphia      90    60     ----        (.600)

St.Louis              83    66      6 1/2

Cincinnati          83     66     6 1/2

End of day 10/4/64:

Philadelphia      92    70      1        (.568)   Went 2-10

St.Louis              93    69     ----        Went 10-3/gained 7 1/2 games

Cincinnati          92     70     1           Went 9-4/gained 6 1/2 games

Phillies - Runs Scored in 12 games =  48 (4.0/game) Runs Allowed = 68 (5.7)

Take away the 10-0 final day victory and the average drops to 3.5 runs scored per game and 6.2 runs allowed per game, a very poor defense for a team that allowed only 3.9 runs per game for the year.

Notes: 1-1 in one-run games, 0-5 in two-run games (including 4 straight early in the losing streak), 0-1 in extra innings. Lost ten in a row.  Were shut out once (1-0, Chico Ruiz steals home) and won behind a Jim Bunning shutout to end the season.

Extra notes: The rotation really was Bunning and Short and somebody else. In those12 games, Bunning went 1-3 and Short went 0-2 with two no decisions. Bunning opened the four game series vs. Milwaukee on Thursday night and pitched the fourth game of the same series on Sunday afternoon. The attendance at Connie Mack Stadium on a Saturday afternoon, game #156 of the season, was 14,330.

1976:

Compared to the '64 collapse, the 1976 stumble appears in retrospect as just a minor correction in an otherwise fantastic regular season. When they opened a four-game series at Cincinnati on August 26th with an extra-inning victory the standings looked like this:

End of day 8/26/76:

Philadelphia      83    42     ----        (.664)

Pittsburgh          68    57     15

To all observers, the NL East race appeared to be over, but things changed starting in Cincinnati where they blew back-to-back games with 9th inning leads and went on to lose 8 straight. By  the end of play 15 games later, another extra-inning loss, the standings looked like this:

End of day 9/11/76:

Philadelphia      85    55     ----        (.607)   Went 2-13

Pittsburgh          81    59     4             Went 13-2/gained 11 games

Phillies - Runs Scored in 15 games =  33 (2.2/game) Runs Allowed = 60 (4.0)

This was clearly an overall collapse, but the offense was the big culprit, scoring less than half as many runs per game than overall for the season.

Notes: 0-6 in one-run games, 2-1 in two-run games, 0-2 in extra innings. Lost eight in a row.  Were shut out twice, back-to-back 1-0 games. Lost a doubleheader to Pittsburgh. Six games after this period the Phillies'  lead was down to 3 games, having steadied themselves and gone 3-3. But after that they went 13-3 to finish the season  at 101-61, and they ended with a 9-game margin over Pittsburgh.

Nothing major to be learned from these examples except that there have been worse periods by first-place Phillies teams - and the 2008 team definitely benefited by having its closest pursuers playing at a mediocre level while the Phillies stumbled.

After seeing the fortunes of Cole Hamels and Brett Myers the last two nights, I took a look at the schedule from now until the All-Star break. If the Phillies stay on schedule with no rainouts or postponements, they will play 96 games before the break; and if they stay with their current five-man rotation that has held up all season, we will end up with the extra game for the first half being pitched by Brett Myers, not Cole Hamels.

However, there are three scheduled off days between now and July 1st, giving an excellent opportunity for Charlie Manuel to make a switch from Myers to Hamels as the number one guy in the rotation without having to pitch Hamels on anything shorter than his usual every fifth day. I doubt that an extra day of rest will mess up Myers - and Hamels should be the top of the rotation guy, in my opinion. It just seems strange this season to keep going through the intact rotation and coming back to the top and seeing Myers there. As far as I can see, the only changes Manuel has made to the rotation this season were the two flip-flops with Eaton and Kendrick - once when Kendrick got shelled by the Mets and Manuel wanted to get Eaton lined up for the next Mets series, and then after Kendrick had the short outing because of the rain, against Toronto. Manuel probably thinks that as long as the rotation is working, why change it.

Well, what would the Phillies get by flipping Hamels and Myers on Saturday June 21st (after a day off at home between the Red Sox and Angels series) - or after the off days on June 23rd or June 30th (which one of the three doesn't affect Hamels' and Myers' slots at all)?

Without going through all the matchups, the end result is that moving Hamels ahead means he pitches against the Braves and Diamondbacks and misses the Mets series (the one drawback to the switch). Myers would basically get Hamels' start against the Mets and would miss the Braves and Diamondbacks.  What's more, if they don't move Hamels ahead of Myers, at this point he would pitch a Wednesday game against the Cardinals and then sit until after the All Star game, and he'd be a prime candidate for multiple inning use in the All Star game if he's selected and hasn't pitched in nearly a week. I hope Charlie Manuel can see the benefit of making this switch.

After Sunday's frustrating loss did anyone else notice how poorly the Phillies are doing on weekends this season - especially compared to what they're doing Mondays through Fridays. Seven weekends into the season and they have a grand total of four wins on Saturdays & Sundays - and ten losses - while they were doing great with a record of 20-11 on other days of the week. Maybe it's just a quirk - or is there something like a letdown going on after the excitement of Fridays, when the only game they've lost all year was the Hamels-Santana battle. (This weekend vs. Houston should be a good way to check the day of the week theory - Adam Eaton is scheduled on Friday and Cole Hamels on Sunday.)