PAT GILLICK seldom loses his cool, but yesterday he looked as if he was about to go medieval.
Being perceived as a backward old man running a laughingstock ballclub pokes Gillick right in the gizzard. The perception of the Phillies' analytics department is thus:
Tucked away in a dungeon deep below Citizens Bank Park, the Phillies employ a half-dozen shaven-pated monks who spend their days and nights bent over parchment, tallow candles providing a dim, sputtering light, by which they dutifully transcribe outdated statistical information. When they finally fill a scroll, they slide off their stools and, backs still bent from ages of this wretched labor, they shuffle to the tower of nobility, where Gillick and general manager Ruben Amaro Jr.