August 13, 2015
Phillies vs. Boston Braves
Athletics @ New York Yankees
Hello, there! It’s
been awhile without any 1915 Phillies info.
I was barely home for the past few weeks, running all around the
Mid-Atlantic and, due to my mistake with timing posts, I was not able to keep
up with the daily goings on of the blog.
Today happens to coincide with the Phillies returning home from a long
western road trip, so I think it’s the perfect place to jump back into the swing
of things. This post will catch us up on
what was happening to the Phillies and baseball as a whole. As a side note, I’m preparing an update on
the Federal League. The FL season isn’t
super relevant to the Phillies per se, but the league was important in the
history of baseball and I want to make sure it gets some time later on in the
season.
Let’s start with the American League. Sadly the Athletics do not factor into this
season’s pennant race like it had done in five of the previous six
seasons. They were 3-15 since we last
spoke and were entrenched in last place, 33.5 games back of first. Almost from the beginning of the season the
class of the AL in 1915 were the Red Sox, White Sox, and Tigers. Detroit jumped out to the early lead but gave
way to the White Sox in late May.
Remember when the Cubs were running away with the National League? Well the White Sox did the same thing in the
American League during the same stretch.
Chicagoans were abuzz with an early summer flirt with a North Side/South
Side World Series. But, just like the
Cubs, the White Sox began to fade back due to inconsistent pitching. Oh, also the Red Sox got incredibly hot. In late May Boston came to Philadelphia and
put a whooping on the A’s. Since that
series the Sox were 53-21 and in first place, three games up on the Tigers and
4.5 up on the White Sox. No other club
in the league was within 13 games of Boston.
As they did all year, Boston will rely on their star pitchers that
include Rube Foster, Ernie Shore, Smokey Joe Wood, Dutch Leonard, and some
20-year-old kid named Babe Ruth to try to hold the top of the league. Detroit and Chicago will both put up a fight
during one of the greatest AL pennant races in history. Stay tuned.
In the National League, the Phillies remained in first
place, but the club took a turn for the worst after their late July hot streak.
After closing out their home series with
the Reds with a doubleheader on July 24, the Phillies went on the road for
their third western jaunt of the year.
It didn’t go great. The bottom
feeders of the NL, St. Louis and Cincinnati, almost managed a split with the
Phils, while the on-coming Cubs and Pirates took five of six. The trip resulted in a 6-9 record for the
Phillies, 2-6 in August. Every team in
the league except St. Louis gained ground on the Phillies. At one point Philadelphia had a nice 3.5 game
cushion over the second place Dodgers, but as of yesterday Brooklyn sat just
one game behind the Phils.
The trouble with the Phillies came from all aspects of their
game. The team pitching on paper looked
great, but the poor performances were masked by Grover Cleveland Alexander’s
excellence. Erskine Mayer, the number
two on the staff, allowed over four runs per game in his starts during the
stretch. Al Demaree and Eppa Rixey
pitched fine, but neither was as good as they had been earlier in the
year. Even Alexander, who pitched to a
1.10 ERA and 1.02 WHIP, was unable to pull the staff out of the tailspin. At one point he lost three starts in a
row. Three! Can you believe that? It was a full 15 days
between wins for Alexander the Great, by far the biggest gap between victories
for him in 1915. That’s unbelievable
because he didn’t lose even two games in a row at any other point this season. One positive thing did happen to Old Pete: he
won his 20th game of the season on August 8. In his fifth year as a professional pitcher,
this was Alex’s fourth 20-win season (and 1912 when he didn’t get 20, he won
19). Earlier in the year scribes
wondered if Alexander could reach the 40 win and 3,000 innings level that only
a few pitchers had ever reached. Those
numbers are out of the question now, but it goes to show how highly the ace was
regarded that the thought of such lofty numbers wasn’t a crazy idea. Still, with a little more than 50 games left
to play, Pete had a real chance to join the 30-win club if things broke just so
for him.
If the pitching bottomed out, the Phils needed the hitting
and fielding to come through. But errors
in the first two games of the road trip cost the club wins. The guys shored up the defense over the next
couple of games and actually performed especially well, but it seemed to be at
the expense of the offense. Only Gavvy
Cravath and Dode Paskert had OPS’s over .665 and most players were below .320
in on-base percentage. This pitiful
hitting display gave the club problems on the occasions when the pitching
managed to keep the other team’s runs low, going 1-4 when neither team scored
more than four runs. At one point
Pittsburgh shut them out in three of the four games in the series. There were occasional offensive bursts, like
when they scored 14 against the Reds on August 9, but even that exception
proves the rule as Gavvy Cravath hit four doubles, had eight RBIs, and scored
three runs in the game, which meant he accounted for almost 80% of the
offense. Only four other players managed
a hit in the game and one was Alexander.
This 1915 Phillies club was streaky, as we’ve seen, and this road
stretch may have been their worst of the entire year.
Now, that brings us to today. The Phillies are one game up on Brooklyn, 2.5
up on Chicago and Pittsburgh, and 3 up on Boston. Boston came to town for a series that was
touted as a make-or-break for both clubs.
The Braves were in the process of repeating their miracle run of 1914
and every other team in the NL looked over their shoulder to keep tabs on
them. This was the closest they had been
to first place since they were 2.5 games back in mid-June.
The best matchup in professional baseball today took place
between Grover Cleveland Alexander and Dick Rudolph at the Baker Bowl. Two of the games best pitchers toed the
rubber to set their teams on the pennant-winning trajectory. Supporters of the Phillies watched as their
club performed nervously, almost paralyzed by the pressure of the moment, for
half of the game. Sure, they jumped out
to a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first, but then Alexander surrender the
tying runs in the top of the second. The
tension must have been palatable, as it appeared that this was going to be his
fifth bad start in a row. The Phillies
took the lead in the third only to have Alex blow it in the fourth. Yikes.
That’s not good. If anyone is
going to lead this club out of the hole they’re in it almost has to be Grover
Cleveland Alexander. But if he keeps
blowing leads and losing games, there’s no telling how far the club could
fall.
Both pitchers held their opponents scoreless in the fifth
and Alex, especially, looked to be rounding into form. The bottom of the sixth saw the Phillies push
two more runs across the plate. Everyone
in the stadium held their breath and they waited to see how Alexander would
handle the situation. Luckily, he passed
with flying colors. From the fourth
inning on he only allowed one hit and three total base runners. In his 26th complete game of the
season, Alexander pushed his win total to 21 and started the home stand off on
the right foot.
The 12,000 in attendance went home feeling they got their
money’s worth. Alexander pitched
Alexander-like, even if it was only for two-thirds of the game, and the
Phillies managed to score five runs and ten hits off of the Braves top
pitcher. The win kept the club in first
and dealt a blow to Boston’s chances. Up
in Brooklyn, the Dodgers kept the pennant race close with a win over the
Giants, so the Phillies had to remain vigilant if they hoped to keep the top
spot over the weekend. Most importantly,
though, was the confidence the win infused in the clubhouse. Another poor performance from Alexander,
especially in a game where the offense actually showed up, would have been
devastating to the morale of the club.
But the win meant they remained in the class with some of the best clubs
in the league, and if they played up to potential could win any game. Tomorrow is game two of this pivotal series
and the Phillies have burgeoning star Al Demaree on the hill. Come back tomorrow to see how the Phillies
performed.
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