What am I doing???

I've read some of my previous posts and darn it.. I just about fell asleep reading my own crap.  I sound like I want to be a beat writer for the Phillies.  That's far from the truth.  This blog is mostly just so I can vent or celebrate after a game.  Where the Phillies are concerned, it's more venting than celebrating even if they did win :)

That said.. Here is my vent from last nights game.  I think it's time to re-evaluate the Kendrick Project.  He looked absolutely horrible out there last night.  He couldn't find the strike zone.  It didn't help that the umpires didn't give him the marginal calls.  To make matters worse, the rest of the team forgot how to play defense.  They made 4 errors.  Give me a damn glove and I'll go play for the league minimum.

On the flip side of things... No matter how ugly a loss and no matter how lopsided the score, it's still counts as one loss.  The next game is a new game.  I hope the Phillies players are able to wrap their heads around that.  

The Young Guns account for the split series with the Reds.

After finishing up with the Nationals, the Phillies head over to Cincinati and play the Reds for a 4 game series.  Maybe they could do some scouting for the Eagles and checkout Chris Henry to see if he could fit in with the Eagles and stay out of trouble with the law.  I'm thinking if Allen Iverson eventually learned how to do it, maybe Chris could do the same.

This series split was a result of two young pitchers in the organization.  One a bonified ace in Cole Hamels and the other a young gun in his sophomore year trying to avoid the sophomore jinx.

Game 1: Different year - Same ol' Kendrick

This is one the games that I was really interested in seeing.  I wanted to see how Kyle Kendrick performed in his sophomore season.  I wasn't too impressed with his spring training performance but that could be said about all the Phillies pitchers including Cole Hamels.  The one thing I remember about last year is what Charlie Manuel said about Kyle and that he didn't know how to throw the ball straight.  To me, that is the key to successful pitching and throwing strikes.  I haven't looked at the stats but I always had the feeling that when Kyle wins, he usually gets a bunch of run support and that is what happened last night.  Watching him pitch is not for the feint in heart.  He'll give up some runs and get into jams but he'll find a way out of it.  The one thing that he avoided was the big inning and that is what makes him a solid pitcher.  It's nice to see the bullpen hold the lead as well.  It's still early but the pickup of Rudy Seanez has been a great acquisition.

Another positive out of this game was that the Phillies bats woke up.  We got two homers from Chase Utley and one from Pat Burrell.  Both guys are on my fantasy baseball team.  Ryan Howard looked like he had a rough night going 0-4 with 2 KO's but at least he got and RBI.  I feel bad for Geoff Jenkins he went 0-4 with 3 KO's.  That's got to be real frustrating.  I'm not going to worry about Victorino's low batting average right now because he seems to be doing his job when Rollins is on board and that is to move him into scoring position.  The hits will eventually come.  I hope...

All in all, this was a good game to win.  Brad Lidge should be activated for Game 2 of this series.  I'll get the Tums ready just in case there is a save situation.  Of course.. I'm not going to hold my breath since Adam Eaton is pitching.  Tell you what Adam, I'll drink out of my Phillies coffee mug all day for you just to help you along :)

Game 2: Hope this is the new and improved Eaton

After Adam Eaton walked the first batter on 4 pitches, you wouldn't have expected to see a pitching gem of a performance but he pulled it off.  Unfortunately, the Phillies still lost the game.  Baseball is a game of mistakes and a couple keys ones late in the game lost this one for the Phillies.  Eaton gave up a late home run to allow the Reds tie the game and Chad Durbin's inability to throw strikes in the ninth gave this game to the Reds.  That said, it was a boon to see Adam Eaton pitch a good game like this.  And it was great to finally see Ryan Howard hit a homer.

The key to a successful season is to win as many series as possible and the Phillies are lined up to have a good chance at winning this series with Brett Myers and Cole Hamels pitching the next two games.  Hopefully, Brett has found his curve ball and the Phillies bats stay alive for Cole Hamels..

Game 3: At least half of the Lidge / Myers swap looks good.

I don't know if it is a mental thing or a health thing but Myers just hasn't looked good in his two starts of 2008.  Maybe I blame this one on the Hollywood writers strike.  There was a perfect situation in the bottom of the 5th inning for one of those "Rocky gets up off the mat" storylines.  Bret Myers starts off the inning with allowing back to back singles and then walks a batter after getting one out.  After a coaching visit, he strikes out their young slugging prospect, Joey Votto (with a name like that, why doesn't he play for Philly...).  He then gets the next batter to fly out to center.  The next inning starts off with Chase Utley hitting a single and this is where I think the Hollywood writers should have stpped in.  Instead of the Phillies rallying back from a very manageable 3 runs down, they fail to score a single run and to make matters worse for the Phillies, the Reds tack on 4 runs in the bottom of the 6th to put the game away.

The only bright spot of this game was the return of Brad Lidge.  The guy the Phillies brass brought to take the closing role from Bret Myers so that they could feel like the found a quality starter.  Brad Lidge pitched a scoreless ninth.  Oh well...

Game 4: Will the real Phillies Ace please stand up.

Needing a win to get a split, the Phillies nation turn their hopeful eyes to Cole Hamels.  No... stop looking at his Playboy wife.. Look at Cole Hamels.  Really.. Stop looking at Mrs Hamels.

Anyways, he definately stepped up and pitched a game that was sorely needed.  He went 7 strong innings while giving up only 1 run while striking out 4.  The only difference between this game and the one that he previously lost was that the Phillies bats showed up this time.  They gave him 5 runs to support his winning performance. This game wasn't without excitement though.  The 8th inning's pitcher was Tom Gordon.  Until he gets a few good performances under his belt, I'll hold my breath a bit whenever he steps up to the mound.  The first game implosion is still fresh in my mind.  It looks like he's stepped past it though because he had an easy 1-2-3 inning.  The excitement came in the 9th.  After 2 quick outs, it seemed like the game was in the bag. Lidge walks Paul Bako and Corey Patterson reached base on an error by the left fielder So Taguchi.  He's supposed to be the defensive replacement for Pat Burrell.  The Reds now have people on 2nd and 3rd with two outs.  The Reds send up Ken Griffey Jr to pinch hit for Ryan Freel.  The Phillies decide to walk him to load the bases.  I've seen this kind of respect given to Ryan Howard in his MVP year.  Seemed like you are willing to bring the winning run to the plate than letting Griffey tie it up with a swing of the bat.  After, Lidge gives up a run with a wild pitch, I start thinking of melting down and head for the Tums.  After chewing on few Tums, I was relieved when Lidge struck out the final batter after going to a full count.

On a side note, I drank from my Phillies mug right before game time.  Maybe that helped but then again.. that might be the reason I have a hole in my stomach...

In closing:

A split wasn't what I was expecting going into the final two games of this series but a split is better than going 1-3 in this series.  Hopefully, they can take this momentum to the NY Mets who have to be reeling a little after suffering a mini-sweep by the Braves.

First series and same old stuff. But, it's an improvement.

Even though they lost the series, I'll take it as an improvement over last year.  The Phillies started the last two seasons being swept by their opening opponents.

Game 1:

Since I live in Atlanta, I don't get to watch the games on a regular basis.  I just get to see how things play out from the stats or what I see through MLB's game cast.  So, I miss a lot of nuances of a pitchers performance.  All I see is Myers cruising through 4 innings and then the Nationals hit him up for a bunch of runs.  I don't see that he didn't have his best stuff like he said.  Though I know what he is talking about.  Last year, I knew he was in trouble in the bullpen when he couldn't get his curve ball over for a strike.  If that happened and it was a save situation, then I just knew to kiss the game goodbye.  This game just eventually displayed the Frustrating Phillies though they did appear for a time as the Fighting Phillies.  They tied things up late in the game only to lose the lead in the 9th from a imploding performance from Tom Gordon.  It's early but still this game didn't leave a good taste in my mouth.

Game 2:

The only pitcher on the staff that gives me confidence that he will win the game (a la Carlton) is Cole Hamels.  The only time this doesn't happen is if he just has a rare bad outing or the Phillies bats just go into hibernation.  The latter happened this case.  They just managed to get 1 hit off of Tim Redding.  I looked him up and he's a career 4.85 ERA pitcher.  Not a pitching stud by any means but he was able to stifle the Phillies bats.   When Bret Myers was interviewed, he mentioned that you could call him a lier if the Phillies started 4-11 again this year.  After this loss, I was starting to envision the phillies going 2-13 or worse 0-15 in April.

Game 3: 

Yikes.  This game started awful.  Moyer spotted the Nationals 5 runs in the 1st.  This game felt like the 1st.  The Phils would either be the Fightin' or Frustratin' Phils depending on what inning it was.  They did a great job getting the lead back in the 6th by scoreing 6 runs only to let the Nats tie things back up again in the 8th.  The worse thing about that is that Romero gave up the run.  He's supposed to be the anchor in the bullpen.  The other irony is that Tom Gordon held the Nats in the 9th instead of giving the game away.  On that note, he didn't make it look easy.  I think I overdosed on Tums in the 9th.  They Phillies won it on a gutsy/risky play by Jimmy Rollins taking 3rd from 1st on a sacrifice bunt.  I got to give kudos on free swinging Jason Werth to wait on a the pitcher to throw a strike which never came.  4 balls, a walk and an RBI later, the Phillies avoided being swept for a 3rd year in a row.

Like I said, it's an improvement and I'm sticking to it.

On a side note, I would like to take some credit for the win because I had realized that I had not started my daily ritual of drinking from my Phillies coffee mug.  So yes, you can blame me for the first two losses as well.  Won't happen again.

Time to start this back up again

I stayed away from blogging about the Phillies all of last year because I couldn't take the roller coaster season.  One day, I was cheering them on.  Other days, I would stick the proverbial fork in them.  Ironically though, I did sense the comeback.  Well... not sure if I sensed it or just wished it. Either way, it happened and it was a big surprise to me as well as the players.  The way they just got swepted in three games led me to believe that the Phillies just didn't know what to do with themselves.  One could argue that they ran into a really hot team going into the playoffs but the Phillies also carried some momentum going in as well.

So, we have a new season on our hands with an updated slew of players.  None of which is a stud pitcher like everyone wanted.  It's kind of sad that we have to depend Moyer to be our 3rd starter.  No knock on him though.  He keeps amazing us with his slow ball and slower ball.    I still get a chuckle when I recall what he said his daughter told him.  That he drives faster than he pitches sometimes.  One day, I think he will develop a pitch that will just stop in front of the plate and hover there causing batters to just lose patience and swing away.  The thing though, is he should really be a 4th starter or maybe a 5th.  I can't say that I have a whole lot of confidence in our 3rd through 5th starters.  We'll have to wait and see how Kyle Kendrick performs in his sophomore season.  Was he a flash in the pan or is he for real.  I do believe that he is a legit 4th starter.  Adam Eaton has a lot to prove this season.  He didn't seem to perform well in Spring Training but then again, no one really did.  We'll just have to wait and see.  Maybe Kris Benson will make it through the minor leagues.  

Even though Brad Lidge started the season on the DL and Tom Gordon seems to be showing his age, I think the Phillies bullpen is probably a lot stronger this season.  I think the anchor in the bullpen will be J.C. Romero.  The only question mark will be if Lidge can get back to his closer form.  I got to say that he picked an interesting city to work on it.  If he had some mental problems in Houston, I don't think he'll get a pass in Philly if he starts to falter.

Even though we lost Aaron Rowand, I think the Phillies still upgraded their lineup with the additions of Pedro Feliz and Geoff Jenkins.  Feliz is definately an upgrade as a fielding 3rd baseman.  I expect to see a whole bunch of runs scored this season.  On the flip side, I still expect to see a lot of runners left on base.  It's just the Phillies way.  Sooner you accept that as a Phillies fan, the sooner you can stop taking those anti-anxiety pills. 

But keep them handy just in case they do the same thing that they did last year.