Kuzul

<!– /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:””; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –> Happy Memorial Day everyone, we hope you had a good day doing whatever it was that you did.  It was an absolutely gorgeous three day weekend here in upstate New York with perfect weather every day. 

However, please don’t lose sight of why we celebrated this weekend.  Take a moment to thank those who gave the ultimate sacrifice in defense of this great country of ours, and thank those who are currently serving.  I have the utmost respect for every single person who has ever been in the armed forces as well as their families who have the difficult job of carrying on with their loved ones away. Thank you for all that you do! 

And now, back to baseball.

Wow, talk about hot!  Ubaldo Jimenez outdueled Tim Lincecum and ran his record to 10-1 on the season with another complete game shutout on Memorial Day.  Jimenez scattered four hits over nine innings and struck out nine. 

I would imagine that he has to cool off eventually, there is no way that Baldy can go 26-2 and have an ERA under 1.00 for the entire season.  Even though it is inevitable that he will have some bad starts on the horizon, he certainly has become one of fantasy’s finest this year and should be treated that way.

Yunel Escobar looks like he finally might start hitting as he had back to back multi-hit games on Sunday and Monday and drove two runs today. 

Escobar was a guy that I liked coming into the season as a possible guy to have as a backup or in your middle infield position if your league requires that spot.  He has averaged 12 homers and 68 RBI with a near .300 batting average the past couple of seasons. 

He is going to have to start doing some work to get to those numbers again, but I feel fairly confident that he will have a few nice hot streaks during the season and is someone that is at least worth being injury insurance for your middle infield. 

Cody Ross has been an underrated source of power the past few seasons, but through the first two months of 2010, he hadn’t really done much. 

His batting average has been hovering around .300 which is a nice change for Ross, but a guy who has averaged 23 homers and 81 RBIs over the past two years had just four coming into today and two of those were in the same game. 

Well, Ross pounded out his fifth tater of the season on Monday and maybe this will get him going.  If you drafted Ross you might want to keep him on your bench, although like I said his batting average hasn’t been bad. 

I would definitely give him more time to turn this around, and hopefully he will go on a tear and cross that 20 homerun plateau again this season.

Rickie Weeks is still healthy and is still swinging a hot bat here in 2010—and while I am not a Weeks believer it is hard to argue with what he is doing. 

After a two homer game on Sunday Weeks was at it again with another two hit game and he drove in two more runs.  Weeks is already getting close to his career high in most categories, although he is hitting just .251. 

Ride the hot streak as long as you can with Weeks at a premium position, just don’t be surprised if he slumps badly or gets hurt. 

Stephen Strasburg is now supposed to make his major league debut on June 8th against the Pittsburgh Pirates (I almost typed Steelers, ha ha). 

I am not sure why they gave him the extra start in AAA, maybe they wanted him to face the worst possible team so instead of Cincinnati he will now mow down the Pirates in his first start. 

Mark your calendars, this should be exciting. 

Garrett Jones hit his sixth homer of the season on Monday, and although he still isn’t hitting for the power he did in 2009, he is doing better than I thought. 

I would like to see his batting average improve, but he did hit just .207 in April, so the fact that his average is now .261 is an encouraging sight.

The thing that I am liking about Jones is that he is actually driving in runs this season.  Somehow with 21 homers in just 81 games last year he managed to drive in just 44 runs.  This season, although the home runs are down, he already has 31 RBIs and that is with a disappointing start. 

I think if someone let him go in your league I would scoop him up and stash him on the bench for a while, I have a feeling that Jones is going to get hot with the power sometime soon. 

Brad Lidge was activated off the 15 day DL after missing 18 games with elbow stiffness.  He came into a lopsided game and pitched a perfect eighth inning, striking out one. 

He might get eased back into the closer’s role a little, but I would say by the end of the week at the latest he should be back closing out the end of games for the Phillies.  How he will do, or when he will get hurt again is anyone’s guess. 

If you are running with Lidge this season (and going forward for that matter) you are playing a risky game, and could roll craps at any time.  He is one of the ultimate high risk/high reward type of players.  Jose Contreras likely works into the 8th inning role for the time being, but if you picked him up I would hold on to him.  He was three for three in save opportunities and will become valuable again if something happens to Lidge.

Derek Jeter left the game on Monday in the seventh inning with tightness in his hamstring, a few innings after being hit by a pitch. Manager Joe Girardi just said that it stiffened up on him after a base hit in the seventh and he would be evaluated tomorrow to see the extent of the injury. 

Throughout his career Jeter has proved over and over that it takes nearly amputation of a limb for him to miss a game due to injury so I would be surprised if he missed any more than one game, and wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if he was in the Yankee lineup tomorrow.

Somehow the Blue Jays are being very successful when two of their stars from 2009, Aaron Hill and Adam Lind are both disappointing.  However, both have started to show some signs of breaking out recently. 

Hill had two hits and drove in his 18th run of the year, but in the last ten days he hit four home runs with six RBIs.  Unfortunately, he is still batting in the .170s, but I believe that has to improve. 

Lind hit his eighth home run, his second in the last ten days, to go with five RBIs.  His batting average is also a horrible .226 but he is another one that I think has to turn it around.  Opportunities

I have more faith in these two Blue Jays than I do in Jose Bautista and Alex Gonzalez —the two hitters that have carried Toronto offensively for the first two months of the year.

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Phillies closer Brad Lidge, who has been on the disabled list with inflammation in his right elbow since May 15, said he will throw in the bullpen both today and Thursday while the Phillies visit the Mets at Citi Field.

Yesterday, Lidge received a cortisone injection for the second time in 2010 in hopes of easing the pain of his ailing right elbow. The Phillies hope Lidge can return to the Phillies’ bullpen early next week.

“It feels like it is,” said Lidge, asked if he feels the inflammation is gone. “The key is keeping it out. But I think we’ve figured out some things I can do to keep it out.”

Whether or not Lidge can keep the pain out is a big question—but not the only one facing the Phillies. It’s uncertain whether the Phillies will make Lidge their closer once he returns.

The Phils bullpen has a 3.69 ERA so far the year, the exact same ERA as their starting pitching staff. But that’s misleading. While the Phillies rotation has collectively been excellent through the first seven weeks of 2010, the bullpen has been anything but impressive in close games.

Jose Contreras, the Phillies’ current closer, has been sensational. The 38-year-old has allowed just one run in 14.2 innings this season. The opposition is hitting .163 against him, while he’s walked just two and struck out 20.

With Contreras pitching so well, it’s likely the Phillies will welcome Lidge back with a few appearances in semi-lopsided, no-pressure games.

If Brad is effective in those situations, he could be used as the club’s setup man in place of either Chad Durbin or Danys Baez. Ryan Madson, the most ineffective pitcher in the Phillies bullpen this season, is not expected to return from his broken toe until the end of June.

Lidge made his first major league appearance of the season in a 9-1 loss to the Mets back on April 30 at Citizens Bank Park, where he gave up a home run to the first batter he faced (former Phillie catcher Rod Barajas). Lidge only recorded one out before being removed from the game.

Two weeks later, after pitching in three other games, Brad was back on the DL.

Manager Charlie Manuel will no doubt be very careful not to overwork Lidge when he returns from the DL, whether he’s being used as closer, setup man, or mop-up man.

Decisions, decisions for the Phillies.

But the Phillies’ only goal for right now is to get Lidge healthy for the first time in 13 months (thanks again for your honesty this time, Brad).

Getting Jimmy Rollins back in the lineup would be nice too…

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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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If you listened closely enough this past Wednesday, you could hear the collective groan of a city when we were all informed that Brad Lidge would be leaving Denver in the middle of a series with the Rockies to head back to Philadelphia for an MRI on his surgically-repaired elbow.

Ryan Madson is already out for a couple months and the bullpen probably wasn’t up to snuff to begin with, so losing Lidge would be an absolute catastrophe.

But Lidge and Phillie fans everywhere got some good news on Friday when it was revealed that there is only minor swelling in the joint and nothing more serious like a bone chip or any ligament damage that would have required a stint on the DL.

“We knew the elbow joint swelled up, but the problem is, we didn’t really know if there was something in there that made it swell up,” Lidge told the media after a Phillies win against the Brewers. “In my mind, I was praying there wasn’t. Fortunately, it turned out that way.

“My goal now is to get the inflammation out of there very fast. Hopefully, it’ll not take much more than a day or so. Then, obviously, we’ll be doing everything we can to prevent it from coming back. Once it’s gone it shouldn’t be back.”

Lidge will resume throwing on Saturday, and could even close out the game later that day, if necessary, and if he throws without any discomfort.

Phillies’ skipper Charlie Manuel is going to take it easy on Lidge because he understands he will be a vital piece later in the season. If they work him too hard in May, it could affect his ability to contribute in August and September when the games really start to count.

So if Lidge isn’t 100 percent when he throws Saturday morning, Manuel will look for other options should a save situation arise. It probably won’t be anyone specific, just whomever he feels most comfortable with at that time—most likely Jose Contreras.

Hopefully the Phils can continue to hit the long ball like they did against the Brewers Friday and they’ll be far enough ahead that it won’t matter.

Joe Blanton steps onto the mound without a win this season and a complete game could be just what he needs to get his season moving in the right direction.

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The Philadelphia Phillies bullpen will get a much added lift as Brad Lidge will be activated from the disabled list before tonight’s game against the red hot New York Mets. Then again, the way Lidge pitched last year I am not sure if this is a good thing.

Lidge made his final rehab start Tuesday at Double A Reading going two innings while allowing no hits and striking out four. Perhaps the most impressive part of Lidge’s outing was that he threw first-pitch strikes to 23 out of the 35 batters he faced.

The up and down Phillies bullpen could use Lidge—not the bad Lidge, but the good Lidge from two years ago. The Phillies’ bullpen has already blown four saves in nine chances and are 13th in the NL in OPS against with a .801 clip.

I don’t think Charlie Manuel is going to throw Lidge back into the fire right away. He will most likely let Lidge ease himself in, let him prove himself and then let him regain his closer role.

From a fantasy perspective, if you have room on your roster, take a flier on Lidge. The reward is much greater than the risk.

To make room for Lidge, the Phillies will send down Antonio Bastardo. Bastardo had a 1.69 ERA and struck out five in 5.1 innings for the Phillies this season.

You can follow The Ghost of Moonlight Graham on Twitter @ theghostofmlg

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