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In the last two years, the Phillies closer role has been filled by “a veritable who’s who of incompetent puppets,” as said by Dr. Kelso from ABC’s television show Scrubs .

In 2009, Brad Lidge did almost everything in his power to warrant a demotion from the closer’s role, if not from the major league roster in general. 

Blowing an almost mind numbing 11 saves, as well as posting a 5.45 FIP, he was clearly earning the loser portion of closer. 

His gallant replacement was set-up man Ryan Madson. His pitching featured a simmering high 90’s fastball and disappearing changeup. He spelled Lidge on occasion, but unfortunately managed to muster an equally poor six blown saves. Despite that ugly number, Madson was mostly a victim of bad luck as his 3.23 FIP shows.

Regardless, to say the Phillies closer has been a weak spot would be an understatement.

Coming into 2010, Brad Lidge was on the DL after multiple offseason surgeries, Ryan Madson was the stand-in closer, and Jose Conteras was a 38-year-old former starting pitcher that had suffered a disappointing 2009 campaign. The Phillies had taken a one-year flier on in an attempt to add some middle relief depth.

What a drastic role-reversal a couple of months can create. 

Now, in mid-May, after a brief and relatively successful return, Brad Lidge is back on the disabled list, Ryan Madson ended up on the wrong side of a fight against a folding chair, and Jose Contreras, yes that Jose Contreras, has emerged as the Phillies most successful and dominant reliever. 

Contreras’s rise has been quite extraordinary. He went through spring training with some bad statistics and some ugly outings. He looked like he was somehow going to turn the Phillies’ very small investment into a bad deal.

But somewhere between Spring Training and the regular season, Jose Contreras managed to figure something out. 

At this point in the season, albeit early season, Contreras owns a magnificent 9.0 K/BB rate and 1.82 FIP. 

He is striking out batters at an alarming rate with a filthy mix of mid-90’s splitters and nasty sliders. Even more importantly, he has maintained some outstanding control with a very respectable BB/9 rate of 1.35.

So as of right now, the Phillies bullpen is not acting like the hole that would sink the Phillies ship that many expected it to be. Even more importantly, even in the absence of Brad Lidge and Ryan Madson, the Phillies closer role looks to be in decidedly good hands.

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Who would have thought that the most indispensable part of the Phillies infield would turn out to be Juan Castro?

When Jimmy Rollins tweaked his calf muscle in mid-April, he was batting .391 with a .516 OBP, and a wOBA of .527. Impressive numbers, ones that he certainly would not have been able to keep up over the course of the season, but clearly he would be very hard to replace.

He was replaced by Juan Castro, who provided solid defense, in addition to at least moderately adequate offensive numbers, batting .258 with a .255 wOBA.

But when Castro came down with a strained left knee, the Phillies had no choice but to insert Wilson Valdez into the starting lineup.

Doing his best Exxon Valdez impression, Wilson Valdez has been about as helpful to the Phillies offense as the oil spill was to the Alaskan wildlife.

Valdez is currently batting .152, but more impressively has somehow managed to ground into five double plays in the last week alone.

It takes a sincere concerted effort to provide such a debilitating presence in a lineup.

The penguins and seals that had the misfortune of making their habitat off the coast of Alaska in 1989 may have had their ecosystem destroyed by millions of gallons of oil, but at least they didn’t have to deal with rally-killing double plays.

While the injuries to the position players have been irksome, the injuries to the Phillies bullpen are now bordering on the macabre.

Brad Lidge had finally returned from his off-season knee and elbow surgeries, and at least initially seemed to be vaguely resembling the pitcher who saved 48 games in 48 chances in 2008.

This brief tidbit of good news was of course followed by reports that Lidge is yet again feeling tightness in his elbow and has been consulting with team doctors.

But the Lidge injury cannot even come close to rivaling the unfortunate and cataclysmic event that happened to Ryan Madson.

Perhaps dismayed with his inability to dominate opposing batters in the ninth inning of games so far this year, upon blowing yet another save, this time against the San Francisco Giants on April 26th, Madson returned to the dugout, where sources say he was rudely, irresponsibly, and vulgarly, verbally abused by a particularly sassy folding chair.

Now being a man of supreme pride, and impressive martial arts abilities, Ryan Madson defended himself by issuing a swift roundhouse kick to said chair.

Unfortunately because of his aggressive self-defense, Madson managed to fracture a toe and now currently resides on the 60-day DL.

But such a small price to pay for reducing a sarcastic chair to mere splinters.

While on the plus side the Phillies have still managed to chug along with a 20-13 record, one can only hope their days of rash decisions and unfortunate injuries are behind them.

But then again, this is baseball, and as long as there are games there will be injuries, and in Ryan Madson’s case, as long as there are chairs, there will be blood. 

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Who would have thought that the most indispensable part of the Phillies infield would turn out to be Juan Castro. 

When Jimmy Rollins tweaked his calf muscle in mid-April he was batting .391, with a .516 OBP, and a wOBA of .527. Impressive numbers, ones that he certainly would not have been able to keep up over the course of the season, but clearly he would be very hard to replace.

He was replaced by Juan Castro, who provided solid defense, in addition to at least moderately adequate offensive numbers, batting .258 with a .255 wOBA. 

But when Castro came down with a strained left knee, the Phillies had no choice but to insert Wilson Valdez into the starting lineup. 

Doing his best Exxon Valdez impression, Wilson Valdez has been about as helpful to the Phillies offense as the oil spill was to the Alaskan wildlife. 

Valdez is currently batting .152, but more impressively has somehow managed to ground into five double plays in the last week alone.

It takes a sincere concerted effort to provide such a debilitating presence in a lineup. 

The penguins and seals that had the misfortune of making their habitat off the coast of Alaska in 1989 may have had their ecosystem destroyed by millions of gallons of oil, but at least they didn’t have to deal with rally-killing double plays.

While the injuries to the position players have been irksome, the injuries to the Phillies bullpen are now bordering on the macabre.

Brad Lidge had finally returned from his off-season knee and elbow surgeries, and at least initially seemed to be vaguely resembling the pitcher who saved 48 games in 48 chances in 2008.

This brief tidbit of good news was of course followed by reports that Lidge is yet again feeling tightness in his elbow and has been consulting with team doctors. 

But the Lidge injury cannot even come close to rivaling the unfortunate and cataclysmic event that happened to Ryan Madson. 

Perhaps dismayed with his inability to dominate opposing batters in the 9th inning of games so far this year, upon blowing yet another save, this time against the San Francisco Giants on April 26th, Madson returned to the dugout, where sources say he was rudely, irresponsibly, and vulgarly, verbally abused by a particularly sassy folding chair. 

Now being a man of supreme pride, and impressive martial arts abilities, Ryan Madson defended himself by issuing a swift roundhouse kick to said chair.

Unfortunately because of his aggressive self-defense, Madson managed to fracture a toe and now currently resides on the 60 day DL.

But such a small price to pay for reducing a sarcastic chair to mere splinters.

While on the plus side, the Phillies have still managed to chug along with a 20-13 record, one can only hope their days of rash decisions and unfortunate injuries are behind them.

But then again, this is baseball, and as long as there are games there will be injuries, and in Ryan Madson’s case, as long as there are chairs, there will be blood. 

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Most teams would love the opportunity to choose between two of the best starting pitchers in the major leagues, but for the Phillies this question became an agonizing decision. Who did they want? The dominating Roy Halladay, or their very own post-season hero Cliff Lee? In the end, amid much controversy back in Philadelphia, the Phillies decided to acquire Roy Halladay and send Cliff Lee to Seattle. Here are 5 reasons that they made the right decision.

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When Cole Hamels won the World Series MVP award at the tender age of 24, few doubted that he had a very promising career ahead of him. 

He was the toast of Philadelphia, the unquestioned staff ace, and the heir to Steve “Lefty” Carlton. 

The only problem was that reality intervened, and the last two years have been riddled with speed bumps for the young Hamels.

In 2009 he was plagued by injuries, bad luck, and the occasional verbal gaffe. He went from dominating postseason ace to struggling third starter behind the rejuvenated Pedro Martinez and the cutter-throwing, Southern-talking, easygoing, dyed-in-the-wool season savior, Cliff Lee.

When Lee was traded in the following offseason, the scrutiny of Hamels only grew. 

During the 2010 preseason, the Phillies camp was filled with stories of Hamels’ work ethic. He had improved his arm strength, solidified his curveball, and added a new cutter.

The ace was back.

But so far, the early results from the 2010 season have been inconclusive. 

He has continued to struggle, and Phillies fans have become increasingly restless. 

Hamels’ latest outing, last night’s game against the St. Louis Cardinals, seems to be a pretty good representation of his young career as a whole.

Through eight innings, Hamels was dealing. 

He had given up only six hits and allowed no runs while striking out eight. But then, in the top of the ninth inning, after an ill-timed distraction by a fan, Hamels allowed two straight doubles to tie the game. 

The effort was solid and looked pretty good on paper, but the end result left you wanting just a little bit more. 

But if you take a closer look, there is little reason to doubt that Hamels will figure it out this season and at the very least remain a very solid No. 2 starter behind Roy Halladay.

Hamels currently has a 4.42 ERA, good for 34th among National League starters.

Now if you see that number alone, you are understandably very worried. 

But if there is one thing that the new era of baseball has taught us, it is that some statistics can be very misleading.

Instead of using ERA to condemn Hamels, we should instead look into exactly why that number is so high.

Expected Fielding Independent Pitching, or xFIP, attempts to quantify only the things that pitcher himself can control. It ignores park factors and defense while accounting for strikeouts and walks. It normalizes a pitcher’s HR/fly ball rate and quantifies this on an ERA scale. 

Hamels’ xFIP is 3.31, good for seventh among National League starters.

Now this does not mean that Cole Hamels is the seventh best pitcher in the NL, but what it does show us is that Hamels has actually pitched quite solidly. His biggest weakness is that the majority of the fly balls he has given up have turned into home runs.

If you look at his Batting Average on Balls in Play, or BABIP, which is an unusually high .356, it shows that Hamels has also been unlucky on ground balls and line drives that have come from his hits allowed.

These two numbers suggest that Hamels has actually pitched much better than his ERA reveals, and that number should decline significantly over the course of the year. 

Factor in his very solid K/9 rate of 10.24, and it is not inconceivable that Hamels could turn out to be one of the best No. 2 starters in MLB this year.

So do not fret, Phillies fans. The numbers show that although the utterly dominating Cole Hamels of the 2008 postseason might not be back, the 2010 version should be more than serviceable. 

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