Phillies Notebook: Too early for Phillies, Manuel to get caught up in expectations

WASHINGTON - Ask Charlie Manuel about his team's batting average on balls in play, and his eyes might glaze over. Ask him about regression to the mean, and he might cock an eyebrow. But ask him about the dangers of overestimating a team's ability based on a week-and-a-half's worth of games and he'll launch into a long story about his final year as the manager in Cleveland in 2002.

The Indians jumped out to a 10-1 start that season that made their fans forget an offseason that had seen them lose stars Kenny Lofton, Juan Gonzalez and Roberto Alomar.

"Everybody jumped out and said how good we were going to be, and the expectations shot from zero up to about 10,000," Manuel said. "All of a sudden, I looked up and at about 30 games we had a losing record."

If you thought expectations could not get any higher than they were when the Phillies signed Cliff Lee to a 5-year, $120 million contract in December, you certainly weren't picturing the offensive start the Phillies have produced. Through nine games, they were first in the league in batting average (.334), on-base percentage (.380) and .OPS (.865) and second in the league with 59 runs. Yesterday, a couple of Philadelphia sports talk radio hosts were actually debating whether the Phillies would even miss Chase Utley while he is sidelined with a knee injury.

But while Manuel is happy with the way his batters have performed thus far, he is also not ready to concede that they will maintain the 1,062-run pace that they carried into last night's game against the Nationals. The numbers suggest he is a wise man.

For starters, the Phillies have seen an unusually high percentage of their batted balls fall for base hits. Heading into last night, 71 percent of their hits had been singles, the sixth-highest rate in the league. Their batting average on balls in play was .384, 39 points higher than the closest team and 70 points higher than the league leader in that category last season.