The Phillies won the opener of the NLCS last night, as Chase Utley and then Pat Burrell connected for home runs off of Dodgers starter Derek Lowe in a three-run sixth inning.

While Citizen’s Bank Park is a hitter-friendly environment, Lowe hardly ever surrenders any long balls. And with a 2-0 lead headed into the sixth, it appeared as if the veteran right-hander and his club were going to cruise to a solid Game 1 win.

And, boy, that would have been huge for L.A. If they had beaten the Phils’ most effective starter, Cole Hamels, on the road, they would be in great shape right now.

But then Rafael Furcal made an uncharacteristic error, Utley and Burrell went yard and Hamels and the Phillies never looked back.

Inside The Box Score:

Phillies’ Side—

• The Phillies, as they have done consistently in the past, scored all of their runs in one inning. All runs came via the long ball as well.

• Burrell, catcher Carlos Ruiz and Utley combined for six of the Phillies’ seven hits. Hamels, who ripped a solid line shot into center field, had the other.

• Ruiz, who posted a line of .219/.320/.300 during the regular season, finished 2-for-3.

• Brad Lidge tossed a perfect ninth inning to pick up the save. Lidge, perhaps a sleeper Cy Young candidate, has now converted 44 saves in as many chances. It took him a while to overcome a hangover from the 2005 NLCS—when he gave up that monstrous shot to Albert Pujols while with the Astros—but he has reestablished himself as one of the most dominant closers in the game with Philadelphia. During the regular season, in fact, he was practically untouchable, limiting opposing hitters to an anemic line of .198/.295/.269 and .563 OPS while posting a 1.95 ERA in 72 appearances. If the Phils’ have the lead late in the game, Charlie Manuel can feel confident that his club is going to leave with a W.

• Hamels, by the way, was not too shabby on the mound on Thursday, either. The 24-year-old southpaw scattered two earned runs on six hits in seven solid innings, striking out eight. He threw 70 out of 105 pitches for strikes, though he did walk two batters.

Dodgers’ side—

• In case you had not heard, Manny Ramirez is a freakishly amazing, out-of-this-universe stud of a hitter. Ramirez picked up where he left of from the Division Series, driving a deep double to center field to score Andre Ethier in the first inning and stake the Dodgers an early lead. He finished 2-for-4, raising his postseason line to .500/.611/.1000. If you are scoring at home, that is a 1.611 OPS. Granted, the sample size is too small to get all worked up about, but this guy has been unbelievable since making the trip to the West Coast. As much pub as he gets, he kind of deserves it.

Tim McCarver can insult his behavior however he wants, but Ramirez has shown why he is arguably the best hitter in baseball when he is locked in. As a Dodger, he just does not make any outs, it seems. He blasted 17 bombs in 53 games after the trade, slugging .743 with a 1.232 OPS. In Citizen’s Bank Park, it might not be the in the Phillies’ best interest to throw him anything near the strike zone, unless they go up-and-in.

• While the Dodgers are certainly not happy about losing, there were some positives. This starts with the bullpen work, as three Dodger relievers combined to shut down the Phillies’ offense after Lowe was removed from the game with one out in the sixth inning.

• Chan #### Park—yes, that Chan #### Park is still pitching—retired two batters to get out of the frame with any more damage. Park, by the way, has provided a nice comeback story for baseball. While it is certainly not on the Ankiel/Hamilton level of overcoming the odds, it is quite amazing that he is back, and effective, in the majors at this point. He posted a 3.40 ERA in 54 games, including five starts, allowing 36 earned runs in 95.1 innings pitched. Sure, he pitched in ’07 with the Mets, but did anyone outside of Queens pick up on that?

• Well, now that the Chan #### tangent is out of the way, another unsuspecting reliever who pitched well was Greg Maddux. Maddux, one of the greatest starting pitchers of all time, tossed a scoreless seventh. His stuff is below-average now, but he still has excellent command and knows how to pitch. Still, though the inning of work may not seem significant in the loss, it does have other implications. This means that he will not make a start in the series, as Clayton Kershaw, who has tremendous stuff, will get the nod.

• Hong-Chih Kuo, who posted a 2.14 ERA, 96-to-21 K/W ratio and 1.01 WHIP in 42 regular season appearances, tossed a perfect ninth. Even without Saito, the Dodgers truly have an excellent bullpen, though some of the aforementioned stats were inflated by a friendly home pitching environment.

• Like Philadelphia, L.A. combined for seven hits. Man-Ram and Ethier combined for four of them, with Russell Martin, James Loney and Matt Kemp collecting the others.

Some other things that popped into my head.

• It is weird seeing Maddux in a relief role.

• Jeff Kent is old.

• Nomar belongs on the bench, even though Loney’s splits against lefties are far from impressive.

• This game featured two of the most exciting, fast leadoff-hitting shortstops in the game in Furcal and Jimmy Rollins. And they are both switch hitters, too. But neither player reached base, combining to go 0-for-8, and Furcal had the error. Still, it has to be nice to get him back in the lineup for L.A. He was a monster in April before his injury, posting a .357/.439/.573 slash stats line in 36 games overall.

Thinking about Game 2, it should be interesting to see which Brett Myers shows up. Myers was garbage in the first half, before being demoted to the minors. He returned to Philly rejuvenated, putting together a nice little string of quality starts together. He did struggle, however, in September.

Even with an effective Myers going for Philadelphia, L.A. has the edge in Chad Billingsley, who has excellent stuff and struck out 201 in 200.2 innings pitched during the regular season. Billingsley can shut any offense down on any given night, and was perhaps the most valuable arm on the Dodgers all year—16-10, 3.14 ERA, 1.34 WHIP. Anything can happen in one game, or a short series, which is why postseason baseball predictions are so ridiculous. Plus, the ballpark effect will play a factor, as the Coors Field of the East might play a role again. (Hey, if the game had been played in L.A. last night, Burrell and Utley would still be homerless for the series.) Still, I like the Dodgers in the second game.

Any thoughts on the series? 

I hate to go all Peter Griffin in this space, but do you know what really grinds my gears?

When ignorant baseball commentators make statements that are factually inaccurate.

Disclaimer: I am also about to do my best Fire Joe Morgan impersonation as well.

Let me start with the recent TBS coverage of the American League Division series between the Chicago White Sox and Tampa Bay Rays.

Right off the bat, Harold Reynolds—the man fired from ESPN for alleged sexual harassment, but for the most part a well-liked broadcaster—began discussing the Rays’ lineup by suggesting that Carl Crawford would be one of the best leadoff hitters in the game if he played for another team.

I am paraphrasing that, and it is not an exact quote. But, he then went on discussing how Crawford has been a great leadoff hitter in the past, ect...

Well, Harold—

A. Crawford has said, time and time again, that he hates batting in the leadoff spot.
B. Crawford has not hit leadoff in any game this year.
C. Crawford finished the season with a .319 on-base percentage.

Point C especially shows Reynolds’ severely flawed way of looking at baseball. He is stuck in the past, it seems. No player with a sub-.340 on-base percentage should ever sniff the leadoff spot. Ever.

Sure, CC is fast. He steals bases. Occasionally, he will even drop down a bunt for a base hit. Yes, he does a lot of the things that baseball fans associate with the traditional, typical leadoff man.

The most important thing a leadoff hitter can do, however, is get on base. Above all else. And, with his poor plate discipline, Crawford has shown that this is an issue for him.

Reynolds then went on with his usual tirade on small-ball tactics. Which is fine.

But this leads into my next example, regarding Chip Caray. Let me preface this by saying that Caray has excellent communication skills and is a fairly solid play-by-play man. But, as the following paragraphs will show, he should leave the whole analyst thing to people who, well, know what they are talking about.

Caray was a guest on XM's Baseball This Morning with Buck Martinez and Mark Patrick earlier today.

Shortly into his appearance, Caray, who will do color work for TBS during the upcoming ALCS, began to criticize Moneyball and the value of on-base percentage.

But to make his point—and this is the real kicker—he cited the Los Angeles Angels' first-round exit from the postseaon as an example of why the concepts of Moneyball do not work.

Again, I will paraphrase here. But he basically spewed out the typical Moneyball does not work in the postseason nonsense, saying, “No Moneyball team has made it to the World Series and eventually won it.”

Then Caray cited the Boston Red Sox and Rays as teams that are good because they know how to manufacture runs, or something along those lines.

Now, I do not know where to begin here. There is too much to criticize; this may take longer than I want to spend on this, in fact.

Using the Angels as a poster boy team for Moneyball is like saying, “Barack Obama is a proponent of Reaganomics.” In fact, the Angels, as well-run of an organization as they are, would do well to pay more attention to advanced statistical analysis.

That way, they might have avoided the whole Gary Matthews Jr. fiasco. After all, Matthews Jr. was perhaps the Least Valuable Player in the AL this year while earning enough money to make Barry Zito look underpaid, as he finished with a .675 OPS. If CC Sabathia, granted a pitcher who can absolutely mash, were to play everyday, he would have posted a higher number there.

Bogus contract aside, though, the Angels and Mike Scoscia are perhaps the poster child for incorporating small-ball tactics and manufacturing runs. And they could care less about OBP, one of the few teams left to.

How could Caray use them to make his case?

They actually finished ranked 18th in the majors on-base percentage, and the coaching staff preaches aggressiveness, but why let facts get in the way of an old-fashioned Moneyball bashing? Did Caray even watch their last series? The Angels hurt themselves by swinging at too many first pitches, seemingly hacking at everything. And Scoscia ran his team out of an inning with the whole squeeze bunt on a 2-0 pitch.

That really was such a ridiculous claim. But, more than that, it shows his ignorance about the Michael Lewis bestseller from 2002, which profiles the Oakland Athletics that season.

Moneyball is really not about on-base percentage or being cheap, as most people believe. Sure, OBP and valuing outs more than traditional baseball people have for generations is a major concept to be taken out of the book. However, too many people—especially those who have never read it (we are looking at you, Joe Morgan)—focus on these aspects as opposed to the real theme—finding inefficiencies in the market for baseball players.

Lewis, one of the most intelligent and respected business writers of this generation, wanted to answer one question by following around Billy Beane and the A’s: How could one team with such a low payroll consistently make the postseason, while other small-market teams could not?

The answer, of course, lies is Beane’s ability at exploiting inefficiencies. At the time, OBP was one such inefficiency. Traditional teams overpaid for stats—batting average, for instance—that actually did not have that much of a correlation between scoring runs and winning games as many people were led to believe.

Studies have show repeatedly that team on-base percentage goes hand-in-hand with how many runs a club will score over a full season.

Thus, at the time of the book OBP was a major inefficiency for Beane to exploit. Well, that is hardly the case today, as nearly every front office nowadays uses it as a major criterion—well, at the least the smart ones who do not do things like, say, offer huge contracts to Jose Guillen—for making personnel decisions. In fact, any general manager who still ignores the stat when evaluating talent and making roster decisions should be fired for incompetence. Today.

But, I digress.

One of those teams that values OBP—the Red Sox, who led the majors with a .358 clip.

In fact, Theo Epstein is one of the ultimate so-called Moneyball GMs today. And, guess what? Last time I checked, Mr. Caray, they have won two World Series championships in the past four years and are in a position to win a third. Boston, an organization that hired the father of sabermetrics, Bill James, as a senior advisor, is a so-called Moneyball team with money—a nearly unstoppable combination.

The key for any front office is to strike the right balance between traditional scouting and advanced statistical analysis—which does not work at the amateur level—to build a cost-efficient organization that can sustain its success.

Under Epstein, Boston has done exactly that, devoting the right financial resources into improving its farm system via excellent talent evaluation and the draft while making cost-efficient, intelligent decisions (for the most part) at the major league level.

The success of the other team that Caray mentioned, the Rays, is a direct result of the effective use of statistical analysis to make shrewd roster decisions and excellent trades. Andrew Friedman has shown the ability to find value anywhere, buying low and selling high. All of the talent acquired through low draft picks is beginning to prosper, but the Rays’ success is a result of more than that. Friedman built the rest of his roster by shopping at the equivalent of Wal-Mart for baseball players while locking up a great deal of that young talent before they were eligible for arbitration or free agency.

So, again, they are a Moneyball team by definition, if people still use that ridiculous phrase to describe a team. Yet he used them as an example why teams should not value on-base percentage. Right?

So, to recap.

1. Chip Caray gets paid to talk about baseball.
2. Chip Caray has probably never read Moneyball, yet criticizes it constantly—just like Morgan, who admits that.
3. Chip Caray thinks that a team built on Moneyball principles will never win the World Series, even though the Red Sox have already won two.
4. Chip Caray hates on-base percentage.
5. Someone pays Chip Caray to talk about baseball.

You cannot make this stuff up.