Turning back time in picking the Phillies All-Decade Team

The Infield

Catcher: One player on the Fightin’s all-decade team who didn’t peak in the previous decade, when the team won three division titles, two NL pennants and the World Series in 2008, was Carlos Ruiz, the durable, beloved, starting catcher in Philly for nine years.

Many Phillies fans may, in a default way, consider the Phillies great run of 2007-11 to have ended all their starters great achievements in 2010 or ’11, but this isn’t the case. In fact, Ruiz’ career peaked in terms of individual achievement and recognition after the Phillies pinnacle years at the end of the previous decade.

From 2010 to ‘12, “Chooch” garnered votes for MVP, and in 2012 he was an All-Star when he slashed .325/.394/.540. Because of the bigger stars on the field a decade ago for Philadelphia, not even that many in the City of Brotherly Love likely remember that Ruiz hit .325 for a season once. For the six years he started at catcher in the decade, he slashed .276/.358/.404, and was often credited by his starting pitchers for their success, which before 2013 was considerable. He caught three no-hitters for Philly, one a perfect game.

The runner-up here is J.T. Realmuto, despite having played only one season with the Phillies in the decade. Realmuto just won the 2019 NL Gold Glove and Silver Slugger awards at catcher.

First Base: As all Phillies fans know, Ryan Howard was never the star he once was after tearing his Achilles tendon on the last play of the team’s season in ’11, but Howard is the obvious choice for first base. All other starters at the position in the decade were negligible as candidates except for Rhys Hoskins, who just doesn’t have the numbers at the position yet to be named to this team.

Once one of baseball’s most feared sluggers, Howard remained the starter at the only position he ever really played, excepting DH, until the end of ‘15. In his seven decade years there (splitting time in ’16), he slashed .240/.314/.452, averaging 23 home runs a season. These numbers reflect a steep fall-off from his early years, but by most accounts he worked very hard to stay in his job.

Second Base: The past decade at second base for the Phillies was split right down the middle between Chase Utley and Cesar Hernandez. The first five years were Utley’s, the second five Hernandez’, and the choice here is seemingly simple. Seemingly.

Utley was playing in his age-31 through 35 seasons, Hernandez in his age-25 through 29 seasons, and their numbers were not as far apart as a casual observer would assume. Utley was past four of his six All-Star selections by 2010, and all of his Silver Slugger awards.

Utley’s slash line as the nominal starter was .270/.355/.435. Hernandez posted .278/.355/.388 and had two years in which he hit .294, a figure Utley never touched or surpassed again after 2007 (.332). However, Utley brought a passion to his play even in his declining years with the Phillies that Hernandez has never matched (although stories of his loafing are overheated sometimes).

Additionally, Utley brought an intelligence onto the field and into base-running few others ever have. And in ’10 and ’11, the Phillies did win the division. Chase Utley gets the nod.

Third Base: The choice here is Placido Polanco over Maikel Franco even though Franco is considered by Baseball-Reference the starter in five seasons and Polanco only three, and the fact Polanco was playing in his age-34 through 36 seasons while 2019 was only Franco’s age 26 season. Polanco hit .298 in ’10, and was an All-Star in ’11 while winning the Gold Glove. Franco, simply put, has been a terrible disappointment since 2016, when he hit 25 home runs and drove in 88 as a 23-year-old.

Shortstop: No discussion – Jimmy Rollins. Three years past his MVP season in 2007, Rollins began a run of five seasons before departing for Los Angeles that saw him slash .252/.323/.390 and win his fourth Gold Glove at age 33 in 2012.

The Starting Pitchers

Once again, we must turn back the clock for all but one of the selections here, and we’re going to pick only four starters because for most of the past sorry decade, the fifth Phillies starter has not been a happy subject, if he could even be named after picking a year randomly.

Roy Halladay, RHP: The big right-hander finished his career with the Phillies, coming from Toronto in 2010 at the age of 33 and immediately winning the NL Cy Young award after leading the league in wins (21-10) and innings pitched, posting a 2.44 ERA. That first year he threw the 20th perfect game in MLB history. He followed up the regular season campaign with the second ever post-season no-hitter, a win over Cincinnati in his career first post-season action. He was an All-Star and finished 6th in the MVP vote in ’10.

That was one year. In 2011 he lowered his ERA and WHIP. Enough said.

Cliff Lee, LHP: Weirdly, Lee may have been more of a Phillies fan favorite than Halladay, partly because, while Halladay pitched surgically, Lee’s approach seemed to be: “Hey, here’s another damned strike – I just moved it a foot away,” or sometimes: “Here’s another damned strike in the same damned spot!” This didn’t always work, but Lee appealed to Philadelphia.

His second stint with the team ran from 2011 through ’14, and in that time he posted a 41-30 record, 2.89 ERA, and 1.085 WHIP. He was twice an All-Star in Philly, 3rd in the Cy Young voting and 15th in the MVP voting in ’11.

Aaron Nola, RHP: Finally, a player who actually played for the Phillies in the most recent season can be added. Here’s the deal: One day we may all refer to Nola as “the poor man’s Greg Maddux,” or perhaps Maddux will be “the poor man’s Aaron Nola,” or they may be mentioned as equals. Nola is entering his age-27 season; he’s won over 50 games in five years in an era when idiot managers will, say, yank a starter after 68 pitches in his first start of the season. He has also won 60 percent of his decisions, and in ’18 posted a 0.975 WHIP on a team that has only reached .500 in one of his seasons.

Cole Hamels, LHP: The 2008 World Series MVP pitched his last partial season for the Phillies the year Nola first was listed by Baseball-Reference as a starter for the team. In his last game in red pinstripes Hamels threw a no-hitter. In the decade ending soon, he was 66-56 for the Phillies, and he may be coming back to the team. Entering his age-36 season, his career WHIP is 1.183, and he posted his career best WHIP (0.986) with the Phillies in ’11.

The Outfield

The next several paragraphs will be an adventure in silliness and memory loss.

Left Field: There is perhaps no greater indicator of the circus that was the Philadelphia Phillies in the second decade of this century than Baseball-Reference’s list of their starting left fielders between ’10 and ’19 – seven different people, including a fan favorite who hit 20 home runs and drove in 84 but was 39 years old, a very expensive guy who only played 59 games before tearing his ACL, and an All-Star who became one of the most maligned Philadelphia players in recent memory. In any sport.

These were, respectively, Raul Ibanez in ’11, Andrew McCutchen in ’19, and the infamous Domonic Brown in ’13. No one is listed as the starter for more than two years in a row, which means that no one, really, was the team’s left fielder of the decade.

Also, anyone who would have listed Juan Pierre and Aaron Altherr as starting Phillies left fielders this decade, yell out, “Yo!”

Shocker: I hear crickets.

So, we’ll name No One, Raul Ibanez, and Juan Pierre the Phillies co-left fielders of the decade because we’re definitely not picking Brown and can’t pick a guy who played fewer than 60 games. Also, in his singular season in Philadelphia, Pierre hit .307 and led the league with 17 sacrifice bunts. And you likely can’t give the year that happened even with those clues.

Center Field: The middle outfield position, at first glance, looks like a model of stability compared to the Phillies left field situation since 2010, but scratch it, and it doesn’t look so good, really. Of the four nominal starters, Shane Victorino, Ben Revere, Odubel Herrera, and Scott Kingery, little can be said besides this: Aside from flashes of brilliance from Herrera, this position was also a mess for most of the decade.

In the most recent season, for example, Kingery wasn’t actually the starter. The starts were divided up among him, Herrera, and Adam Haseley. Victorino was in decline for his three seasons (2010-12), and Revere might have been kept and been something if there were more power hitters in the lineup for his two years (2013 and ’14). Odubel Herrera wins because no one else does, the fact he was selected as an All-Star in 2016, and the rough four and a quarter years he started at the position. Too bad the Phillies are trying to figure out a way to dump him following his run-in with the law this spring and the suspension resulting from that.

Right Field: OK, send in the clowns again. In right field the Phillies employed no fewer than eight starters in the decade, running the alphabetic gamut from Bourjos (Peter) to Werth (Jason). It’s never a good sign when a team covers most of the alphabet with so many players in only 10 years, and especially so when one of them is the second most expensive player in the game and he doesn’t even get the nod as the decade’s star.

Bryce Harper has only occupied the position for a year, and he barely saved the team from a losing season. Therefore, the Phillies right fielder “of the decade” is Hunter Pence, who is currently two teams removed from Philadelphia.

Pence slashed .324/.394/.560 in half a Phillies season in ’11 and mysteriously came in 32nd in the MVP voting the following year for hitting 17 home runs and driving in 59 in another half-season before being shipped to San Francisco. That’s as good as it got in right field before Harper.

The Closer and Honorable Mention Relievers

Finally, it is perhaps fitting for a sorrowful Phillies stretch of time that their closer of the decade was Jonathan Papelbon, who left town one of the most hated athletes in the city’s history (largely for flipping off the fans while leaving the field once). Papelbon did put up some impressive numbers, though, for several pretty bad teams, averaging 66 appearances in his three full Phillies seasons (2012-’14), compiling 106 saves and a 2.45 ERA. In 2015 he added another 17 saves and a 1.59 ERA before being traded to Washington.

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He was selected an All-Star twice for his work in Philly.

Beyond Papelbon, though, the relief pitcher situation for Philadelphia has had only a few twinkling lights if the entire past decade is considered.

Most recently, Hector Neris has been something of a workhorse, and is by all accounts far more pleasant as a person than Papelbon. A career Phillies player at this point, Neris has saved 67 games in 307 appearances, and twice posted yearly ERAs below 3.00, most notably in 2016, when he appeared in nearly half of all Phillies games (79) and recorded a 2.58 ERA. When his splitter is working, Neris is very effective.

Here and there, a few relievers’ seasons have been somewhat inspiring without literally being created by the Phillies saves leader. Antonio Bastardo appeared in 64 games in 2011, for example, and compiled a 2.64 ERA, saving eight games. That same year, the best Phillies season of the decade, Ryan Madson was the team saves leader with 32 close-outs and a 2.37 ERA in 62 games.

The rest of the decade for the Philadelphia Phillies, and not only the relievers, was only “somewhat inspiring.”