A pair of phenomena that I think might be related ...

1. The Phillies are 9-6 since Brett Myers became their closer. They recently reached .500 for the first time all season. During that stretch, his numbers look like this:

10.1 IP
1 ER
5 H
4 BB
15 K
5 SV

With an ERA and WHIP both below 1. I would say Charlie Manuel's gambit is working out pretty well.

2. And yet I don't hear anybody in the national sports media (nor in Philadelphia's) eating shit about it. Pretty much everybody said it was the stupidest move they'd seen all year, the mark of a desperate manager trying to save his job (I agreed with the last part, but not the first). Moving the ace to the bullpen? Craziness.

Or not. But don't expect Steven A. Smith or Howard Eskin or Jayson Stark to admit that they were wrong. Instead, they'll ignore the fact that they said it and assume that their readers are too stupid to remember news from three weeks ago.

Unless the Phils wind up in the playoffs, in which case I guarantee you everybody from Joe Morgan to the corpse of Harry Carey will be talking about how brilliant the move was.