Philly Front Office

The Kansas City Royals have been around since 1969. In that time, 56 years, do you have any idea how little their paths have crossed with the Phillies? Philly leads the all-time regular season series just 12-9. The teams have made 4 Major League trades with the biggest name changing teams being Paul Byrd. The best player to play any significant time for both? It’s Jim Eisenreich! They do have one thing in common though, the 1980 World Series.

Friday, Sept. 12 at 6:45p – Walker Buehler vs Michael Lorenzen (R)
Saturday, Sept. 13 at 6:05p – Taijuan Walker vs Ryan Bergert (R)
Sunday, Sept. 14. at 1:35p – Aaron Nola vs Noah Cameron (L)

3 Game Series at Citizen’s Bank Park, Philadelphia, PA

The Trades

I wasn’t kidding about Paul Byrd being the best player traded. He was also the last. On June 5th, 2001, the Phillies traded Byrd to the Royals for Jose Santiago. Santiago was a bullpen arm who managed to only strikeout 28 batters in 63 solid innings that year. He promptly imploded the next year and was released. Byrd however managed a crazy good 5 WAR 2002 season for himself with a 3.90 ERA, 228 innings, and a league leading 7 complete games. It was by far his best season in the pros.

The other 3 trades were:

• 1990 – Jose de Jesus to the Phillies for legend Steve Jeltz¹
• 1989 – Larry McWilliams to the Royals for a PTBNL (career minor leaguer Jeff Hulse)
• 1979 – Doug Bird to the Phillies for Todd Cruz

Now that is an unbelievable collection of nobodies. At least the trades both started and ended with Birds (or Byrds).

The Players

Let’s start by saying that Phillies favorite Bob Boone played for both teams. I can’t count him as the best though because he only played about 1.25 years for the Royals to end his career. To be the best to play for both, it has to be something meaningful. You could maybe go with Raul Ibanez who played 7 years between the two teams and his 127 HRs. His 6 total WAR isn’t making the cut though. How about Whit Merrifield??? I kid, I kid. Ironically, the most recent Phillies no-hitter was thrown by Michael Lorenzen, the Royals Friday night starter.

That brings us to Eisenreich, platoon member extraordinaire for the 1993 Phillies. Honestly, until writing this, I assumed Eisenreich just played the one season for the Phillies and then just drifted away into everyone’s memories as the nerdy partner who played with Pete Incaviglia (sometimes it’s fun to just be blissfully unaware). Turns out Jim played for 6 years in KC before coming to the Phillies for that wonderful run and didn’t retire until he was damn near 40. He even managed a solid 1989 season with 3.1 WAR and a .293 average for KC.

He came to the Phillies at age 34 and was pretty much a godsend against righties that year. Despite not being an everyday guy, he hit .318 with an .808 OPS. In 4 seasons in Philly, he had 9.5 WAR. Add that to his 4.4 with the Royals and you have the greatest Phroyal of all time!

The World Series

The 1980 World Series pitted two franchises that had never won the championship before. Both finished second in their leagues with the 97-win Royals dispatching the 103-win Yankees and the 91-win Phillies defeating the 93-win Astros after Garry Maddox hit a 2 out RBI double in the 10th inning of the deciding game.

The Phillies won Game 1 at the Vet holding on 7-6. They were down late in Game 2 before Royals reliever Dan Quisenberry coughed up 4 runs in the 8th inning. Quisenberry had been so good that year that he finished 5th in Cy Young voting and 8th for MVP. Still, the Phillies went walk, double, groundout, single, double, single to take the lead. The Phillies won 6-4 with Steve Carlton going 8 and getting the win.

The Royals walked off Tug McGraw in the 10th inning of Game 3 back in Kansas City then tied the series fairly easily in Game 4. Very obviously, the city was in a panic at this point. After almost 100 years of no World Series, we were now once again plummeting to our death. In both the 9th and 10th innings of Game 3 the Phillies had 2 on and 1 out only to come up empty. We had let a commanding possible 3-0 series lead slip away and the Royals now had the chance to take the lead at home.

In Game 5, the Phillies struck first going up 2-0 on a 2-run Mike Schmidt HR, but gave the lead away in the 7th. Quisenberry was again up in the 9th to try to take the lead in the series, but gave up a single to Mike Schmidt then a game tying double to Del Unser. 3 batters later, Manny Trillo singled in Unser to take the lead. Tug McGraw came in and WALKED THE BASES LOADED in the 9th before striking out Jose Cardenal to end the game and send the series back to Philly up 3-2. Can you imagine the anxiety in that 9th inning???

Steve Carlton took the hill in Game 6 and pitched 7 innings of 1 run ball. Mike Schmidt gave the Phillies the early lead again with a 2-run single in the 3rd. Carlton started the 8th up 4-0, but was pulled after a walk and a single to start the inning. Tug was brought in to get 6 outs and win the first goddamn World Series in Phillies history. He gave up one of Carlton’s runs in the 8th then LOADED THE BASES AGAIN in the 9th with 1 out. A pop fly and the famous strikeout of Willie Wilson later, and the Phillies were finally World Series Champions.²

And that’s essentially the entire history of the Phillies and Royals.

1. For a minute, I thought de Jesus had one of the best eyes in baseball considering his league leading 128 walks in 1991. Unfortunately, I soon learned he was a pitcher 😦 ↩︎
2. Until going through this, I had no idea how insane that 1980 run was. Knowing how anxiety riddled I am now, there’s no way I would have been able to handle those swings. ↩︎