The fates of managers and pitching coaches are tied to their pitchers, and when a pitcher starts to go bad, some staffers instinctively separate themselves from the failure as quickly as possible. I remember approaching a pitching coach about a guy on his staff who was struggling years ago. "You want to know what the [bleep] problem is?" the coach sputtered. "[The pitcher] is a piece of [bleep] who can't throw the ball over the [bleep] plate."
Actually, the pitcher was good and diligent and went on to have a pretty good career -- but he also was in the midst of a slump and trying like heck to dig himself out from underneath his problems, all while his pitching coach and manager provided little help or hope.
So although Phillies manager Charlie Manuel couldn't help
Brad Lidge throw his slider in games, he did, through all of Lidge's summer troubles, provide hope. Manuel and the other Phillies wear World Series rings because of the closer's dominance in 2008, and as he searched for answers to his problems -- physical, mental, whatever -- Manuel kept running him back out to the mound, kept giving him the ball. Along the way, the Phillies lost some games they should have won, but Manuel understood that the Phillies were at their best when Lidge was at his best, and he patiently waited for Lidge to find himself and his slider.
And that's what was missing from Lidge this past summer, some rival scouts believe; he just wasn't throwing his slider with the same conviction or consistency as he had in the past. He would throw two good ones and then a really bad one, and it would get whacked, and Lidge would get beaten.
Eventually, as the Phillies kept losing leads in the ninth inning, Manuel considered other closer options. But to his credit, he didn't bury Lidge, didn't dump on him in the newspapers, didn't distance himself from Lidge's failure, didn't send signals to the reporters that he thought Lidge was a piece of [bleep]. He made it clear to all involved that he was doing everything he could to win games, and Lidge would continue to get opportunities to close out games.
On the day the Phillies clinched the National League East title, Manuel made a point to bring in Lidge to get the last out in a one-sided game, to remind him what it was like to be part of a celebration, to remind him that he still believed in him. Manuel, in that moment, provided hope for his closer. This stayed with Lidge, the closer would say later. Lidge finished the Phillies' victory in Game 3, and with two outs in the ninth inning of Game 4 on Monday night, Manuel called for him again. The right-hander's slider spun tightly, and early in Troy Tulowitzki's at-bat, the shortstop's knees buckled. Lidge kept throwing slider after slider after slider, five in a row, until Tulowitzki swung and missed at a two-strike offering down and away.
The Phillies are moving on to the NLCS, and Lidge has that old feeling again, nurtured all the way back by his manager.
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Buster Olney
