It appears as if Brandon Phillips is in a bit of a snit over the way he has been treated by the media in Cincinnati.

It seems as if the reporters had the audacity to report that Phillips had a poor second half for the Reds last year, and that his stats have been declining.

John Fay at Cincinnati.com contends Phillips has engaged in some “revisionist history.” He writes:

“I don’t have nothing to say to those cats,” Phillips said to Anthony Castrovince of MLB.com about the Cincinnati media. “They know what the deal is. They just talk about how I was falling off and declining. How the (expletive) am I declining? I had 100 … ribbies (RBI) last year. And I did that with one … hand. And I won a Gold Glove? So how the (expletive) am I declining? Come on, man.”

Phillips isn’t talking to me, C. Trent Rosecrans, Mark Sheldon and Hal McCoy because he says we wrote that he struggled in the second half without mentioning he was playing hurt.

Phillips can talk or not talk. That doesn’t matter to me. There will be 24 players on the roster who will talk. But the notion that we didn’t write about his injury is blatantly false.

It was mentioned over and over again.

Later, Fay writes:

We checked the archives. Phillips’ struggles were never mentioned on Cincinnati.com without a reference to the fact that he was hit on the left wrist on June 1 in Pittsburgh by Tony Watson. I’m sure that’s true with the other local media outlets as well.

Phillips was hitting .296 with a .347 on-base percentage and a .481 slugging percentage when he was hit by the pitch. He hit .241/.288/.349 after returning.

It’s to Phillips’ credit that he played through the pain.

But it’s also fair to mention (as long as you put in the caveat that he played hurt) that his offensive numbers have declined. Phillips is an anti-sabermetrics guy, so I won’t go all advanced stat to make my point. But his average has gone from .300 to .281 to .261 over the last three years. His doubles have gone from 38 to 30 to 24. He stole five bases in eight attempts last year. In 2012, he stole 15 in 17 tries.

Yep, those dang numbers.

Fay concludes:

Phillips seems to thrive on anything negative, or that he perceives as negative, that’s written or said about him. It seems to motivate him. He’s crushed St. Louis pitching since he became Enemy No. 1 in Cardinal territory.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see him have a big year this year. Whether he’ll want to talk about it or not is hard to say.

So in essence Phillips now has called more attention to his stats decline by not talking. Good move, Brandon.