“Guys We Despise”: John Lannan & Rod Barajas
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be unveiling a list. After careful consideration by the lot of Phillies Nation writers, we’ve come up with the players, teams, coaches, and umpires throughout baseball that we just don’t like. That is, on the baseball field, of course.
You know, the guys that the Phillies just can’t get out. The people that just annoy you to no end. The Phillie killers, so to speak.
Today, we break into the Top 10 with No’s. 10 and 9.
#10: John Lannan
-Really, we should like this guy. After all, he’s just 2-12 lifetime against the Phillies with an ERA off the charts (5.79 to be exact) in 17 career starts. He’s the kind of guy you want to face. Unless you’re Chase Utley or Ryan Howard.
If you recall, Lannan broke Chase Utley’s hand back in 2007, putting a damper on the Phillies chances at a spot in the playoffs. Luckily, they were able to overcome the loss of Utley, who had surgery to fix the break on July 27 of that year. He returned on August 27, somehow missing just one month. And, the Phillies went on to win the division. So that turned out OK. However, Lannan was a marked man from that point forward.
On the other hand, Lannan had marked the Phillies. The lefty has plunked 26 batters during his career – eight of them are Utley, Howard, and Shane Victorino. All told, he has hit Phillies batters a total of 10 times in those 17 starts.
While we despise him for the Utley/Howard incident of 2007, plus the array of other plunkings, I guess we should note that the Phillies have crushed him, too. Revenge, I suppose.
#9: Rod Barajas
-Ole! That’s how Rod Barajas’ career will be remembered in red pinstripes. He was supposed to bring a powerful bat to the back-end of the Phillies lineup in 2007. Instead, he was an abject failure here, and like Freddy Garcia, just kind of slid into the background.
With the Phillies, Barajas played a career-low 48 games and hit just four homers while knocking in 10 runs in 147 plate appearances. But it will always come back to that one play that he failed to make.
Against the Florida Marlins, Barajas somehow missed an easy tag on Hanley Ramirez, who was a dead duck at home plate. The missed tag allowed the game to continue and two pitches later, Brett Myers threw his arm out, leaving the game with a strained shoulder.
Not only did Barajas not do much with the bat while he was a Phillie, he had a hand in one of the crappiest plays of the last decade. On top of that, he managed to kill the Phillies every time he faced them for a good three years. As our own Jon Nisula puts it, “look at his career stats against the Phillies once he left: .971 OPS against the Phillies compared to his career .698 OPS, 27 PA/HR in his career, but just 11 PA/HR against the Phillies. How does that happen?”
Put all that together and it gets you to #9 on our list.
