The 50-50-60 Rule
An old and as far as I know unattributed piece of baseball folk wisdom is that of the 162 games of the season, for 99 percent of the teams (excluding only the all-time worst and best), you'll win 50 games and lose 50 games just by showing up. It's what happens in those other 60 (really 62, but poetic license is taken), which stay close into the later innings and "could go either way," that show you how good of a team you have.

The Phillies are 5-6 this afternoon, but I think a maybe more revealing way to think about their first couple weeks of play is to break the games down into that 50-50-60 structure. The team's first six games, which they split, seemed to include three "win 50" contests (the lopsided Opening Day win against the Nationals and the two against the Cardinals) and three "other 60" games--the two against Washington and one in St. Louis in which the Phils squandered late-inning leads and wound up losing. The frustration was that the team could have been, arguably should have been, 6-0.

Of the five games since then, in which the Phils are 2-3, I think the trend has reversed: they lost three games that weren't close--the two complete games thrown by Burnett and Willis--and won two that "could have gone either way, a 4-1 victory last Monday in Miami in which the bullpen threw three-plus scoreless, and today's hair-raising 2-1 win against the Braves in Philly.

From a pure fan perspective, this was a satisfying contest: both starters throwing darts and working fast, turning points in the field and on the basepaths, clutch hitting on both sides. John Smoltz pitched one of the better two-loss weeks you'll ever see from a starter, getting nicked for two runs in seven innings today after tossing 15 strikeouts against the Mets last Sunday in a game he lost at the end. Jon Lieber, though, did what an ace is supposed to do--break losing streaks--in throwing eight sharp frames. Strike one on batter after batter, using his defense, always around the plate. The Braves had two runners thrown out trying to steal by backup catcher Todd Pratt--one immediately preceding what would have been a run-scoring double. Smoltz in seeming big trouble in the sixth, giving up a solo homer and back-to-back walks, only to reach back and dominate Thome and Burrell. On the verge of escaping trouble when Utley, smart-aggressive at the plate, jumps on the first pitch and seeing-eyes it through for the eventual game-winner.

The Phils preserving it with one defensive gem after another--Thome spearing a potential triple, Lofton quickly learning the park, Wagner laboring in the ninth, getting squeezed. Nemesis after nemesis coming up: Estrada, mocking the Millwood trade, then Franco, dealt away in a hubristic move almost a quarter-century ago, and then Jordan, who never, ever seems not to hit the Phils. Wagner behind in the count, throwing a seed, Jordan turning it around on a line seemingly bound for right-centerfield pasture, and Utley ("not known for his defense") leaping from literally off the screen to snare it--preserving the win.

This was grace; this was something we know at a cellular level DOESN'T HAPPEN TO THE PHILS. That the script was flipped, feels like the clouds suddenly parting, God's heavenly light (or a similarly beneficient natural process) shining down on us. I could all but hear the seraphic choir, just in from Boston.

But certainly a game that could have gotten away at any number of points, determined by some fraction of an inch around where the bat struck the ball. Not a game we perceive the Phils as likely to win. And they won it.

Would they have won it under Bowa? The instinct is to say no, no way, though I'm sure that if you went through linescores, they won a dozen or two games like this, probably every year; that's the essence of the "50-50-60," you'll win enough of those to finish above .500. Some teams seem to win a freakish number of them, like the 2003 Royals; this is how teams get described as "clutch," "disciplined," "well-coached." Sometimes, as with the Twins under Gardenhire, this happens to be true--but the bigger factors (and, likely, those are correlated with being "well-coached," etc) are high-quality relief pitching and a lot of dangerous hitters. Over time, those people performing the way you'd expect them to perform seems to translate to "clutch."

So for the year, they're about back to even in the "60". That bodes well, though another piece of baseball folk truth is that "momentum's only as good as tomorrow's starter," and we're still not sure whether Brett Myers is just teasing, or has really raised his game.