"Now is the Time," Meet "Yes, We Can" and "We Owe You One"

Last night's loss to the woeful Pirates finally, officially, and mathematically extinguished any barely flickering hope the Phillies maintained of making the playoffs. Preseason hype is such a wonderful thing, isn't it? The Phils now can safely sleepwalk through the season's final six games as they did its first 156. Lucky me, I hold tickets to tonight's tilt against the Bucs and Saturday's game with the Marlins. And so once again my final in-person memories will be of who-cares at-bats by triple-A call-ups instead of tightly contested games that, you know, matter.

Now that the body has been certified, the post-mortems are already being filed. Mike Carminati at Mike's Baseball Rants offers a lengthy and depressingly plausible assessment of the failed season, while Tom Goodman at Swing and a Miss takes a look at the enormity of the task facing the Phillies as the off-season looms ever closer. You can judge for yourself which of Tom's suggestions are made with his tongue in his cheek. I'll check in with my long-term thoughts later; for now I need to focus on short-term needs: Tony Luke's tonight, or a Schmitter? Yards Philly Pale Ale, or Brandywine Lager?