Girardi ready for some normalcy, playoff baseball
Knowing his team had a tall qualification challenge this final weekend of the coronavirus season, Phillies manager Joe Girardi Friday issued a summation of sorts that fell outside of the potential highs and lows of making or missing the National League playoff party.
“I believe it feels like (it’s) more than 60 games, just because of the scheduling and all the things you have to do that you normally don’t have to do,” Girardi said of a virusimpacted season that will end Sunday at Tampa Bay. “The testing, being really conscious of where you’re at all the time, not being able to do all the things that you usually do.
“I’m sure you (all) feel it – tired of wearing a mask! I am tired of wearing a mask. I do it all the time because I know the importance of it. But my favorite times of the day are when I get in my car by myself, because I don’t have a mask on.”
From the virus hitting the Phillies’ spring training facilities just prior to camp in Clearwater to signs of the virus in South Philly after a first visit by the Marlins, to false positive tests that helped create an already chaotic attempt to reschedule a bunch of canceled games through the summer to a bevy of injuries that have made this .500ish short season that much tougher, Girardi spent some time before Game No. 58 giving an honest appraisal of what this first Phillies season for him was like.
And how much he looks forward to his second season.
“I look forward to us getting this solved,” Girardi said. “It’s challenging for everyone. I think there’s a mental grind to it, too, because you understand how careful you have to be, and you have to change how you think about everything. We had the scare of the false positives, started up and had to shut it down. It’s been stressful for those guys. So it’s definitely been challenging for sure.”
Not that this first one is over or anything.
Likely needing at least two out of three in the series against the Rays to have a chance to earn a playoff position, Girardi was tapping Vince Velasquez (with crossed fingers?) for the start Friday night. Dual aces
Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola were the scheduled starters for Saturday and Sunday, respectively.
Former rotation man Spencer Howard was activated off the injured list to be available for long relief if needed.
“I think you have to be fairly aggressive,” Girardi said of handling the pitchers for this last weekend. “Not crazy, but fairly aggressively in a sense like, if you’re not winning, you have to keep their lead as small as possible because you never know; with the next two guys (Wheeler and Nola) going, you can get a lot of distance from them, so you’ve got to manage pretty aggressively.”
The Phillies will pay particular attention to the scoreboard for the Marlins-Yankees and Giants-Padres games this weekend, as Miami and San Francisco try to hold off the Phillies. Amazingly, six teams in the NL were within a game of each other, with four playoff spots at stake in that mix.
“I think you probably feel it a lot more if the fans were in the stands every day,” Girardi said. “That we truly miss. I mean, we miss that so much. I’m glad they pump in crowd noise, but I prefer to have real crowd noise like everyone else would.
“I understand the importance of winning here. Being a player in the National League and managing against them when I was with Florida and the interleague (games), you understand the passion of this city of Philadelphia and how important baseball is to them.”