Paul Hagen: Fast games a product of Phillies' batters impatience

NEARLY A QUARTER of a century ago, Mike Schmidt sat in the old, cramped visitors' clubhouse at Wrigley Field after a loss to the Cubs and vented. The sun was still high in the afternoon sky over the fabled ivy and the gabled houses. And that's what ticked off the future Hall of Famer.

His exact words have been lost in misty memory, but his point still resonates. The game had ended too quickly. Instead of being in the air-conditioning, staring at the postgame spread, they should have been outside in the heat, still working. The reason they weren't, he added acidly, was that the entire team had been entirely too impatient in its plate approach, hadn't focused on grinding out at-bats.

At the time, that seemed a little bit curmudgeonly to a young ballwriter eager to get out and sample the fine dining and lively nightlife that the Windy City has to offer. As the years passed, though, the wisdom of his words became increasingly apparent.

With that in mind, the most telling stats of the first three games of a Phillies homestand that continued last night with a 4-1 loss to the Cubs were these:

2:38.

2:30.

2:50.

Those have been the times of games for a win over the Pirates and then consecutive losses to Pittsburgh and Chicago. And while that certainly brings a smile to the face of the pace-of-game police, the view is a lot different from the dugout.

In the last 2 nights, the potent Phillies offense has scored a total of two runs in games started by Zach Duke and Tom Gorzelanny. They have batted a combined 11-for-63 (.175) in the losses. And the time of game is a telltale sign that the lineup isn't clicking the way it can, isn't running deep counts, isn't forcing the guy on the mound to work quite hard enough.

"Sometimes when our hitters get ahead in the count, 2-0 or 3-1, they're very quick to swing the bat and put the ball in play. And sometimes they don't put it in play real good," manager Charlie Manuel mused.

"Remember early in the season when we were walking a lot? We haven't been doing that in the last couple games. We talk about being patient and getting good balls to hit, but the last few games, we haven't been doing that."

There are going to be ebbs and flows in the course of the long baseball season. Individuals and teams will run hot and cold. It happens. Even for a team that often makes its living by forcing the opposing starter to run up a high pitch count then taking advantage when he gets frustrated, starts to tire or gives way to the middle of the bullpen.

And, to be honest, it's a bit of a Catch-22. If the starter is throwing strikes, the last thing a hitter wants to do is take pitches down the middle. When the pitcher is ahead in the count, he has the advantage. That's one of the basic tenets that has made Roy Halladay so successful.

There's even a theory that a batter will see only one hittable pitch in an at-bat, so, when he gets it, he'd better be ready to swing.

None of that detracts from the reality that, as a rule of thumb, the more pitches a hitter sees, the better his chances of doing some damage.

And the perspective can be very different when assessing pitching. Jamie Moyer, the Phillies' 47-year-old lefthander, held the Cubs to two runs on four hits in seven innings last night. He walked only one and struck out seven.

The Phillies were naturally pleased that he was able to keep the Cubs' hitters off balance.

The Cubs might think that they could have been a little less aggressive in swinging at pitches off the plate.

Gorzelanny did a nice job last night. He also got some breaks. Placido Polanco lined out his first two times up. Cubs second baseman Ryan Theriot made a nice play on a grounder by Chase Utley in the third, and rookie shortstop Starlin Castro saved a run by ranging far to his right and throwing out Jayson Werth to end the eighth.

In the seventh, catcher Carlos Ruiz literally knocked Gorzelanny out of the game with a line drive off his left ring finger. X-rays were negative, but Gorzelanny had to leave the game.

Manuel gave the Cubs' starter credit for pitching well, but also thought that he was "a little wild" and that his lineup could have done a better job of taking advantage.

Look, nobody likes 4-hour games, batters stepping in and out of the box, catchers making endless trips to the mound, all the needless stalling that can make games excruciating drags.

Teams that maximize their offensive potential don't approach their at-bats as though they're late for a dinner reservation or are trying to catch a plane, either. There's a comfortable middle ground somewhere in between.

And that's just as true now as when Schmidt said it so many years ago.

Send e-mail to hagenp@phillynews.com.