FanHouse CarlosRuiz

World Series MVP Hideki Matsui was an absolute monster (Godzilla?) in the 2009 Fall Classic. In 13 at-bats, he pounded eight hits -- including a double and three home runs -- eight RBI and three runs scored. His OPS for the series was an obscene 2.027.

As he was accepting the MVP trophy, there were many items swirling around in my head (there always are, it's a burden, I tell ya!). He's a free agent, the Yankees likely can't justify bringing back both him and Johnny Damon if they want to shore up their starting pitching, etc. There were several more ... and then I arrived at this one: man, he's really gonna be overrated in fantasy baseball drafts next season.

Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action, with a quick nod to what is ahead.

You Oughta Know ...
That Brad Lidge problem is back again.

Lidge on Wednesday blew a save for the 11th time -- most in the NL in 11 years -- as the Phillies lost 7-6 to the Marlins.

He entered for the bottom of the ninth, after Ross Gload's leadoff double, got two outs. But Hanley Ramirez walked, Jorge Cantu singled and Brett Carroll singled to hand Lidge the loss.

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Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action with a quick nod to what is ahead.

You Oughta Know ...
That the Rangers could not have fallen out of the playoff race any more quietly than this. Not only have they been losing, but their bats have fallen silent. Including Friday night's 2-0 loss to the Angels, the Rangers have scored just one run in the past five games, a first in franchise history. The last team to score once in five games was the Braves in June 2007.

Scott Kazmir handed them a critical defeat on Friday. The Angels, who had been scuffling themselves on a trip to New York and Boston, came into Texas and pushed the Rangers a season-high 7 1/2 games back in the AL West. The Rangers trail Boston by seven games in the wild-card race.

From the Angels side, Kazmir seems to have turned around his season with the trade from the Rays to Angels. Kazmir had a 5.92 ERA with Tampa Bay, but he's got a 1.42 ERA in four starts with the Angels.

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FanHouse continues its 2009 MLB Preview with a look at the Philadelphia Phillies.

The City of Brotherly Love's long championship drought came to an end when Brad Lidge struck out Eric Hinske in Game 5 of the World Series last October. The city exploded in appreciation of a team that's a blueprint for success in the modern game, with homegrown stars studding the lineup and top of the rotation, and a handful of savvy acquisitions, like Lidge, sprinkled around to fill holes.

Fantasy baseball draft season is coming, so you best be prepared by delving through every major player on each team. Fantasy FanHouse is here to help with a quick once-over.

Meet the ...
Defending World Series champions. I know, right? Repeating it doesn't make it any less bizarre. But that's what the Phillies are, at least for this year. For fantasy folks, though, they might be a little less than "championship" material. That's meant with all due respect, of course, because the Phillies play in a fantastic hitters' park and they do have a number of elite fantasy options.

Footprints in the Snow is FanHouse's look at the paths to be forged by MLB teams this winter as they look ahead to 2009.

As you could probably tell from the parade down Broad Street, everything came together for the Phillies in 2008. Cole Hamels made the leap from No. 1 starter to shutdown ace, Brad Lidge didn't blow a save from April to October and the big three in the lineup kept on churning until the Rays were dispatched and Philadelphia rejoiced for the first time in 25 years.

Hamels, Lidge, Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley will all be in their familiar roles when next season opens. No matter what the Mets do, that nucleus should make the Phillies the favorites in the NL East, not to mention the two steps beyond that, before next season. That doesn't mean there isn't work to do.

You don't need to look any further than Pat Gillick's retirement and Ruben Amaro's ascension to general manager to see how little time there is to celebrate a title before thinking about next year. The Phillies don't need any wholesale changes, but they can't stand pat either. Like sharks, baseball teams need to keep moving or they'll die where they sit.

In the Playoff Pulse series, our MLB editor takes on a hot October topic.

It took two whole games, then another two hours for the World Series to really get interesting. Boy, was it ever worth the wait.

The upshot of Game 3 is that the Phillies are suddenly looking extremely formidable, needing just two wins to capture a championship and with at least one more start from Cole Hamels -- a seemingly guaranteed win -- still in the offing. But that's just the fallout from the first real classic of this series, and maybe the best World Series game outright in the last five years.

The devil is, of course, in the details.

We should have known right from the get-go that this was going to be wild one. It had the latest start time of any game in World Series history. Jamie Moyer threw the first pitch at 10:06 PM ET, and right from the start he was painting corners.

There was nothing normal about this particular World Series win for Philadelphia. For starters, Tim McCarver actually called the five-man infield for the Rays in the ninth inning, so you know things were straight up weird. It was a game that ended at 1:47 am EST on Sunday morning and saw the first Series win in the city of Philly since 1993.

Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Carlos Ruiz provided solo shots and Jamie Moyer provided an inexplicable six-and-a-third innings of one-run ball after playing the role of punching bag for most of the NLCS.

The game ended as late as it did because weather created more problems than we thought, and the first pitch didn't get thrown until after 9 pm EST.
Eric Bruntlett and his sickening beard provided the game winning run, sliding in under Evan Longoria's underhand grab/throw on a dribbler to the left side of the infield. It was eerily reminiscent of Jamie Moyer's earlier play on a Carl Crawford bunt single, in which a 47-year-old man made a grab and flick with his glove that should have forced Crawford out regardless of the bad call.

Matt Garza was good, but not great, and it was a night when youth got served by the elderly Moyer and the Philly bats really got going. But more importantly, it was a Philly win that didn't involve Cole Hamels on the mound -- we all know that the Phillies are good, but it seemed like a distinct possibility that the Phils might need Cole to pitch three times. That could still happen, but a win tonight at least means there will be options.

When you look at the Brewers on paper -- say like when you're trying to make your playoff predictions -- it's easy to get lost in the glare of all the power they possess. Prince Fielder. Ryan Braun. J.J. Hardy. Corey Hart. There's a lot of pop in the lineup, even outside of the middle of the order.

All that raw power makes it easy to ignore the things that Milwaukee doesn't necessarily do well -- like play defense. The Brewers are decent up the middle, but weak on the corners in the infield. Mike Cameron is the only plus defender in their everyday lineup.

The irony, of course, is that Cameron's miscue hurt Milwaukee most in Game 1. His awkward misplay of Chase Utley's sharp liner, which took off in the whipping wind at Citizens Bank Ballpark, led to two Phillies runs. That was all the Fightin's needed with Cole Hamels dealing.

But those runs were set up by a more unforgivable sequence earlier in the third inning. After a leadoff single by Carlos Ruiz, third baseman Bill Hall bobbled Hamels' sacrifice bunt attempt, blowing a chance to gun down the slow-footed Ruiz at second. Then Rickie Weeks dropped Hall's throw at first, spoiling the consolation out and setting up Cameron's gaffe.

The Brewers probably didn't have much of a chance with the way Hamels was dominating, but they made it a moot point with their poor defense. The pair of miscues cost them runs and probably cost starting pitcher Yovani Gallardo, who was on a tight pitch count, an extra inning on the mound.

It's cliche, but you can't give a good team extra outs and expect to win. Milwaukee doesn't have the type of defense or the type of pitching staff -- save CC Sabathia -- where it can afford to make fielding blunders. If the Brew Crew doesn't sharpen its glovework, it's going to be a very short return trip to the postseason.

There was a bit of a hubbub from the Padres clubhouse on Friday in Philadelphia when second baseman Marcus Giles was taken out by Carlos Ruiz who broke up a double play. The umpires ruled it a double play and called interference on Ruiz for going out of his way to break it up. Ruiz slid into Giles so hard that Marcus had to go on the 15-day DL with a sprained knee. As you can imagine, it's upset some of his teammates:

"You got a guy who can barely walk to the bus. That's serious," said Padres ace Jake Peavy. "When it happens as a result of a play some guy on the other side not playing the game even close to right, I have a problem with that. . . . That was a nasty shot, as dirty as dirty gets. You can look at that replay time and time again. Every time I see it, it upsets me. How do you be that big an idiot?"

Couple this incident with Milton Bradley's run-ins with the Philly fans following his home runs both Friday and Saturday, as well as Brett Myers' outburst following the game, and you can all but count on some fireworks in the series finale today. Meanwhile, I'd like to say the Padres could upgrade from the struggling Giles, but reality is, they don't have much else at second.

Previously at FanHouse:
Can Brett Myers Spell 'Retarded'?