Over the last three games Shane Victorino has six hits, three runs, and five RBI, a remarkable percentage increase over the 15 hits, 11 runs and 9 RBI he put up over the course of the first 15 games. Despite the impossibly small sample size, neither of those numbers are a fluke.

Coming off the World Baseball Classic, an event barely participated in, Victorino didn’t get his normal reps in during spring training. Much has been made about how the WBC ruins pitchers by having them overthrow their arms before they’ve built up their old arm speed, but there a similar, albeit lesser, effect on hitters as well. When Victorino was seeing pitches his focus wasn’t re-building his swing, ironing out chinks in the armor, or re-learning how to go the opposite way, it was attempting to win a ballgame.

Now, he’s gotten his swings in and has started to really look like a hitter again. With a few ABs under his belt, he’s found his sea legs and has started raking. Look out.

As far as I can tell this is going to be the first time someone has written something along the lines of ‘Shane’s about to turn it on,’ and that’s not exactly a mistake. First of all no one really assumes Shane turning it on means a terrible amount. Second, no one has really noticed he was struggling. Both of those are tied into the fact that he’s somehow found himself in the perfect role.

Shane has not being called on to lead the team – if they’re not scoring runs its on Rollins, Utley and Howard. Until a week ago both he and the shortstop were comparably bad (Rollins too played on the WBC), but where Rollins is expected to challenge for postseason awards Victorino just needs to get on base once a game and play good defense. There have been several stories about how the SS isn’t hitting and those questions have to be heard. Today Jimmy Rollins predicted that he’d hit .400 his month. He may – he’s made good on similar predictions before – but at this point he kinda has to too. Shane doesn’t, he’s imagined as a decent role player, and as such, even on the World Champions he has slotted himself into a relatively pressure free role.

The problem with that is that Victorino isn’t a decent role player – he’s better. Much better. In fact, last year he outperformed the MVP in runs, hits, HR, Batting Average and the OBP/SLUG/OPS trinity.

It’s something hardcore fantasy players noticed this first two years ago when his breakout first half stats matched those of then second round pick Carl Crawford’s almost exactly.  Then, last year, he did it again. Savvy owners, fresh off their Victorino-fueled wins chuckled to themselves and uber-athlete Crawford got his praises sung when the two faced off in last years’ World Series. Surrounded by MVPs Shane’s role is simply ’sparkplug’. Surrounded by anyone else, probably, it’d be ’star’. If we thought about the kid that way, it’d probably be ’star’ here too.

Now, a couple notes on the team …

• The fact that the Phils aren’t 8-10, or much worse, says a lot about the teams’ ability to win. Generally I don’t put a terrible amount of stock in flukly looking stats, but I don’t think its entirely a mistake that the Phils are in the thick of it despite getting outhit by their opponents by 20+ points (.262 to .284 … seriously)

• Probably worth noting that the Phillies have finally started playing a series of games in a row. They’ve trotted out there seven straight days and come with wins in five of them.

• If Lidge does miss a week or so – and it won’t be worse than that – the Phillies are in good hands with Ryan Madson. Madson is a stud. He has the stuff and demeanor to be a big time closer one day. Like when Brad Lidge replaced Billy Wagner (in Houston) there will come a time, maybe a year and a half from now, when the Phillies will be able to sell high on Lidge and be confident they have a capable replacement in house. Don’t worry about his early troubles one bit.

• FWIW, Gary Majewski has a 0.82 ERA in triple A

• And Meech is in absolute midseason form over at the fightins, he’s got photographic evidence that Charlie Manuel wasn’t always such an old guy …

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Phillies, Shane Victorino, Winners. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.