Kuzul

Breaking up is always hard to do, even when it’s for the best.

You start reminiscing about all the good times you’ve had, the places you’ve traveled together.

It’s even harder when you live together.  All their stuff is in your place, and everywhere you look are reminders of the good thing you had.

But sometimes it has to be done, even if you don’t have another special someone waiting in the wings.

You don’t stay with someone just because you’ve always been with them, hoping that things will get better.

Sometimes, it’s just no longer working and you need to start seeing other people.

For the Phillies and Brad Lidge, that sometime should be now.

There’s a give and take in every relationship.  Last night, the Phillies took the lead in the top of the ninth against the Nationals.

And Brad Lidge gave it away.

It was clear from the start the inning would end badly.  Lidge had no semblance of the strike zone last night.

Even the untrained eye could see he was struggling just to put the ball over.

A typical Lidge outing these days is enough to make your heart race–although not in a good way, like in the old days.

The year was 2008, and Brad Lidge was perfect. Not one blown save.

Not in the regular season.

Not in the postseason.

Lidge came out of that bullpen, and you knew it was game over–for the good guys.

Not any more.

Sure there are sparks of what made you fall in love with the guy in the first place.

The fall-off-the-table slider.

The sizzling fastball.

But when one of the traits starts to fade and you look a little deeper, you realize that there’s not much else there.

Lidge is a two-pitch pony. When one isn’t working, he has to lean on the other to get by.

Even this casual baseball writer can see it.

So what do you think happened when a professional hitter named Ryan Zimmerman stood in against Lidge in the bottom of the ninth with two on, trailing by one?

Lidge got smacked around.

Hard.

He sent that ball deep (and I mean deep ) to straightaway center field.

You square away on a ball like that, you knew what was coming.

Really, we all should have seen what was coming.

Perhaps someone (say, Charlie Manuel) should have seen how wild Lidge was and prevented the abuse that was to follow.

If a starting pitcher was that wild, he would have signaled for the bullpen.

But in baseball these days, it’s the closer’s job to get it done.  And in general, managers stick with those closers until the game is either won or lost.

Even if it’s obvious that a guy just doesn’t have good stuff on a night, he’s left out there to do his job.

The problem that Manuel is facing is that he really doesn’t have anyone else in the ‘pen who has shown he can do the job.

And unfortunately, the clock just struck midnight, ending the annual ball that is the trading deadline, with nary a maiden with closer stuff going home with our handsome prince.

So the Phillies leave the party with the same date they brought. Never showing any signs of checking out the other options there.

While it does speak to their loyalty, it doesn’t do much for the long term happiness of the team…and its fans.

Maybe things will get better. 

Maybe Lidge will find that spark that made him the best closer in baseball two years ago.

Maybe.

But most broken marriages don’t get better without counseling.

Perhaps Lidge can learn a new pitch, like Cole Hamels did in the offseason, so he isn’t walking so narrow a tightrope should he not have his best stuff on a given night.

Maybe they just need a “cooling off period,” so Lidge can focus on him, because we all know we can’t contribute to a relationship unless we’re comfortable in our own skin.

All I know is that this marriage between Lidge and the Phillies appears to be broken, and their friends are worried about it.

We Phillies fans know you have been through a lot together, and we hate to choose sides.

But like in most splits, you end up sticking with the friend you’ve known longer.

Sorry, Brad.

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Things couldn’t get better for the Philadelphia Phillies.

They just landed the best pitcher on the trade deadline market in Roy Oswalt. And now they have a nice saying for their farm system: Two Roy’s are better than one!

Ruben Amaro Jr. continues to make some solid trades and finally made another great one.

It all started when he traded for Cliff Lee in last year’s trade deadline. Lee performed well and helped the Phillies land a spot in the World Series against the New York Yankees. Sadly, the Yanks won to get their 27th World Series title.

Then the offseason came, and Roy Halladay was available. He traded Lee to the Seattle Mariners for the best pitcher in baseball. So far, the Phils have not been let down or unsatisfied.

Halladay has pitched well, including that perfect game he had earlier in the season.

The Phils are also coming off a great win against the St. Louis Cardinals, winning their eighth straight game along with their eleventh straight at home.

And what could make things better as they face a bad team where their star pitcher can perform well in? I think Oswalt can get a no-hitter in his debut with Philly.

Okay, yeah, you’re right.

I’m taking it too far right there.

But, if you haven’t noticed, things couldn’t get better for Roy Oswalt either.

He was the best pitcher and player on the trade deadline market, and many teams wanted to go after him.

And now he went from joining a bad team like the Houston Astros to the hottest team in the league with the Philadelphia Phillies.

The Phillies can now easily pass the Atlanta Braves in the National League East division if they can keep their consistency going.

Oswalt can also fix his ERA along with that 6-12 record during the rest of the 60 games of the season. Then, once the playoffs hit, we might see Oswalt getting real hot.

But let’s start it off slow with the Washington Nationals. I say the Phils win today’s game as well as this series. What do you think?

The only thing that could make this better is if Stephen Strasburg were starting tonight.

Enjoy tonight’s game!

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On the homemade page-of-the-day calendar that I made my wife as a Christmas present, today’s page reads as follows:

“On this date in 2006, Bobby Abreu was traded by the Philadelphia Phillies to the New York Yankees for, well, not much. Although the deal was heavily criticized at the time, the Phillies have since enjoyed the winningest period in their history, winning three division titles, making two trips to the World Series, and winning the 2008 World Championship.

“More relevantly, it was the day we moved to Philadelphia.”

For Philadelphia fans, that day meant the end of the misery known as Bobby Abreu, Philadelphia Phillie.

What only fans who watched him day in and day out could appreciate was that Abreu, while accumulating impressive numbers in the home runs, stolen bases, and bases on balls departments, could be a spectacularly bad fielder and could, at times, give the impression of not trying all that hard.

Or so I’ve been told. Frankly, I thought the move had been a mistake. I was wrong.

The Phillies have had no regrets.

If that day marked the end of the Bobby Abreu Era in Philadelphia, it also marked the end of the Chancey family’s own personal hell, a hell that had begun 11 months earlier with Hurricane Katrina.

As we loaded our moving van four years ago today, I was reminded of the one thing my wife and I told each other just before we evacuated the City of New Orleans with my mother and brother in tow and with the massive hurricane looming in the Gulf of Mexico:

No regrets.

We had lots of choices to make that day: whether to leave, when to go, where to go, and how to get there. We had three choices of places to evacuate to because we had people waiting for us in Dallas, Texas, Tallahassee, Florida, and Lake Charles, Louisiana.

We had no idea what lay ahead of us, and so we thought it was important that we not end up playing the “what if?” game should things turn out poorly for us.

And so we didn’t. No regrets.

What followed that evacuation, of course, was the worst natural disaster—from a financial perspective—in United States history. The Chancey family spent a brief couple of months as nomads-turned-squatters before ending up in Alexandria, Virginia just in time for Thanksgiving and the longest, most dreary winter these New Orleans folks had ever endured.

We spent roughly a year feeling out of place and out of touch, feeling as though our world had been turned upside down and we had no control over it. Don’t get me wrong: Alexandria, Virginia is a lovely place, but we didn’t chose to live there, and it wasn’t home to us.

And so it was that eight months, a law school graduation and a job offer later, that we found ourselves in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As we arrived with a moving van full of stuff we’d found on craigslist over the previous year, we looked at each other, and one truth became astonishingly clear.

For the first time since the hurricane had forced us from New Orleans, we were once again in control of our own destiny. We were back on track.

We were finally home.

So, too, did the Philadelphia Phillies finally come home that day in July, 2006.  

As it turns out, the Chancey family had moved to Philadelphia on the very day that the Phillies became a National League dynasty, and the ride has been nothing short of magical.  

After trading away Bobby Abreu (I’ll never forget my first ever purchase of the Philadelphia Inquirer , which featured a column titled “Wait ’till the Year After Next”), the Phillies went on an improbable run, and Ryan Howard won the NL MVP on the strength of matching Jimmie Foxx’s record for home runs by a Philadelphian with 58.

The following year Jimmy Rollins told the world that the Phillies were the team to beat in the NL East and then backed it up, winning his own NL MVP on the strength of becoming the fourth player ever with 20 doubles, 20 triples, 20 home runs, and 20 stolen bases.

I believe it was Shane Victorino’s grand slam against C.C. Sabathia in the 2008 NLDS, two batters after Brett Myers’ Epic Walk, when I started saying “we” when referring to the Philadelphia Phillies. The Phils got us a world championship that year and then went to the World Series again the following year.

To tell you the truth, I have no problem whatsoever considering the Phillies’ run to be my own personal reward for past ills suffered, both the acute trauma of Hurricane Katrina as well as the chronic lifetime condition of being a Chicago Cubs fan.

As I’ve said in the past, if you spent your life rooting for the Cubs and then moved to a new city and the team in that city suddenly started going to the World Series every year, you’d switch allegiances too.

And so it continues.

Tonight, on the fourth anniversary of Bobby Abreu’s departure from Philadelphia, the Phillies are two days into the tenure of Domonic Brown, the player we hope will be the next Phillies superstar. Meanwhile, newly acquired Roy Oswalt takes his first turn in the Phillies’ rotation against our NL East neighbors to the south, the Washington Nationals.

Will this be the beginning of a third run to the World Series? Will Oswalt and Brown be the pieces we need to win our second championship in three years?

We’ll see.

For my part, I could not be more pleased with this team or this city.  

Becoming a Philadelphian has meant, to me, making “Our Nation’s first…” jokes (this is the site of our Nation’s first microwave dinner, etc.), figuring out where the best cheesesteaks really are, and making fun of people who take their picture in front of the Rocky statue.

Meanwhile, my wife, my kids, and I have found ourselves in a wonderful West Philadelphia neighborhood surrounded by the best group of friends we could have ever hoped for, living a life I don’t think we could have imagined four years ago.

True to our word, we have no regrets.  

As one of my favorite movie lines goes, I’d rather be with the people of Philadelphia than with the finest people in the world.

As for the Phillies, it’s been a great run, and while all good things must come to an end, I hope that this Phillies run doesn’t end for a long, long time.  

It is crazy to think it all started by trading away what appeared to be their best player, but here we are. Now, as we watch Roy Oswalt take what we hope will be the first step towards our next World Series appearance, hopefully a couple of months from now the Phillies will be able to look back on this deal and, once again, have no regrets.

Asher B. Chancey lives in Philadelphia and is a co-founder of BaseballEvolution.com .

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The text message read: “Hollywood is starting to look like Compton.”

I got that text from a high school friend late on Friday night, April 23: the night Cole “Hollywood” Hamels gave up four home runs in a seven-batter span en route to a 7-4 loss in Arizona.

Apparently Cole didn’t realize the Home Run Derby wasn’t supposed to take place in Phoenix until July 2011.

Anyway, I agreed with the text message’s sentiment, because I, like most Phillies fans, have been pretty pissed off with Cole Hamels at times in the past couple of years.

I haven’t enjoyed hearing Cole whine about pitching in day games (’09 NLDS vs. Colorado). I haven’t enjoyed watching him repeatedly give up two-out, two-strike runs to the opposition. I haven’t enjoyed seeing him pitch like Steve Carlton for five brilliant innings only to see him look like a southpawed Adam Eaton for one, usually fatal, frame.

I haven’t been a Cole Hamels apologist and don’t mean to make excuses for him here. But after doing some statistical research over the last few days, I’ve realized that Cole doesn’t deserve a lot of the flak he’s been given by fans such as myself over the past few seasons. I was wrong.

Is Hamels nothing more than the three-week wonder he was back in October 2008? His win-loss record suggests he is. Since the start of ’08, Hamels has a very pedestrian 31-28 record in 85 starts.

But Cole Hamels has been a pretty unlucky pitcher over the years, and his record could be a lot better than it is had he just a little bit of luck on his side.

Now, what exactly is luck? How can it be quantified? Those questions aren’t exactly easy to answer. So, here are some statistics, and you can make of them what you want.

2008: More Than Just the Playoffs

Considering the pitching clinic Cole put on in the postseason, it’s easy to forget just how good he was during the regular year.

Cole had one hell of a season, and his 14-10 win-loss record didn’t tell the whole story. Hamels led the NL in WHIP (1.08) and finished second in innings pitched (227.333), sixth in strikeouts (196), tied for fifth in ERA (3.09), and tied for fourth in quality starts (23).

Meanwhile, the Phils’ prolific offense finished 2008 tied for the second-most runs scored in the national league (799) but continually failed to support its ace. In 2008, Cole Hamels pitched 10 games in which he gave up two earned runs or less and DID NOT get a win. 10!!!

So yeah, he was 14-10. But he could have easily won at least 18 games had the Phillies’ usually reliable offense not let him down.

2009: Betrayed by the Bullpen

Remember how the Phillies bullpen had so much trouble closing out games last year? Of course you do, and you probably don’t want to be reminded.

Anyway, Cole was killed by the bullpen more than any other Phillies pitcher. Phillies relievers blew SEVEN potential wins for him. In other words, there were seven games that Hamels left with a lead in which he did not get a win.

So sure, Cole was a disappointment in 2009, but a record of at least 13-11 instead of 10-11 would have definitely been possible had the ‘pen had done its part.

2010: NO Run Support…Period

Cole struggled in April, going 2-2 with a 5.28 ERA in his five starts. But since the start of May, Cole has regained his old form.

His record is just 5-5 since the start of May, but his ERA is a fantastic 2.80. Cole is walking more hitters this year than ever before, but his strikeout rate is the highest it’s been since 2007.

He’s given up more than three earned runs just once in his last 15 starts, and he’s pitched at least seven innings in eight of his nine starts. He also has a 1.72 ERA in five July starts…but just one win to show for it.

Everyone acknowledges the fact that Phillies ace Roy Halladay has totally been victimized by a lack of run support in 2010. But guess what: Halladay is actually receiving more run support per game than Hamels (4.07 to 3.64).

Conclusion

Mr. Hamels, I don’t have much of a law background. But if you ever need a defense attorney, then well, I just might be your guy. Check out this chart. Hopefully, it’s a point made and a case closed.

Average Run Support Per Game

(Number of starts in parentheses)

 Cole Hamels    Jamie Moyer    Kyle Kendrick                       

2007    5.24 (28)          5.40 (33)          6.67 (20)                                 

2008    4.72 (33)          5.24 (33)          5.93 (30)         

2009    4.67 (32)          5.05 (25)          —-

2010    3.64 (20)          4.69 (19)          6.14 (19)

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Baseball’s hot stove is heating up. With two weeks left until the trade deadline and Cliff Lee already dealt, the two big names left on the rumor circuit are Carl Crawford and Jayson Werth.

The two have much in common: Both are outfielders who are among the best players on their respective teams. They both play for clubs that are fully in the thick of playoff contention—Crawford’s Rays are three games up in the AL Wild Card, while Werth’s Phillies sit just 1.5 games behind the Rockies and Dodgers in the NL.

But, perhaps more importantly, both stars are going to be free agents come winter, and both figure to price themselves far out of their current teams’ budgets when they hit the open market.

That’s why they’d be traded: GMs Andrew Friedman and Ruben Amaro Jr. might decide that the returns they could get for Crawford and Werth, respectively, would be worth more than a pair of compensation picks and two more months of their production (presumably, at least—there’s no official word on how seriously the teams are considering these deals, if at all).

Of course, such deals would be monumentally stupid for both the Rays and the Phillies—they’re not rebuilding teams playing for 2013, they’re contenders chugging towards October.

When teams send their big stars away for prospects, it’s usually because the production they provide is basically meaningless for a hopeless team. The Phillies and Rays, however, are in the midst of tight pennant races—is there any other time when having stars around could possibly be more important?

But, while both deals would be mistakes, the Phillies trading Werth would be exponentially more foolish than the Rays parting ways with Crawford for one simple reason: the Phils will have a much harder time finding a replacement.

The Rays’ roster is built around versatility. B.J. Upton and Ben Zobrist can man two of the three spots in the Tropicana big grass with ease. Matt Joyce would get first crack at filling the left field hole, and if he couldn’t cut it, chances are Sean Rodriguez or Gabe Kabler could.

Of course, there’s also über-prospect Desmond Jennings. The No. 6 pick on Baseball America’s preseason top prospects list fought off an early injury and is hitting .297 with 21 steals in 64 games at Triple-A Durham. Rays fans have been anxiously awaiting his call-up for months, and there seems to be little doubt that he’s ready to take the majors by storm.

But if the team decides none of those viable options are good enough, it wouldn’t be too hard to get a decent replacement via trade. At his current rate of production, Crawford is on pace to provide a full four additional wins to whatever team he plays for from now until the end of the season. To put that in perspective, consider that 18 of MLB’s 30 teams are within four games of a playoff spot.

The point is this: Crawford would command an enormous return in any deal. A ton of talent would change hands, and the Rays would certainly be able to demand a respectable, big-league-ready outfielder in addition to the expected plethora of promising prospects.

The Phillies’ depth chart is substantially more shallow. If Werth is shipped out of town, the only currently available replacements would be Ben Francisco (.659 OPS) and Ross Gload (.668).

There’s always Domonic Brown, the top prospect left in a depleted Phillies farm system. He’s mashed MiLB pitching in 2010, hitting .326/.391/.608 with 19 homers and 59 RBI in 80 games.

The problem? He’s played just 15 games above Double-A. His bat might be Major League-ready—there’s only one way to find out—but it seems like an awfully big risk for a team looking to make up ground in a close race.

The Phillies could trade for a replacement, but it wouldn’t be as easy as it would be for the Rays, because Amaro wouldn’t be able to get nearly as much in return for Werth as Friedman would for Crawford.

On May 11, Werth was on top of the world, hitting .348 with seven homers, 26 RBI, and a scintillating 1.112 OPS in just 32 games. Since then, he’s hit just .242 with only six homers, 23 RBI, and a meager .738 OPS in 52 contests. In his last 15 starts, he hit .214 with no homers, just two RBI, and a nauseating .547 OPS.

Crawford’s WAR to date is 4.8, best of any outfielder; Werth’s is 2.2, which ranks 30th. How much can the Phillies expect a trade to net them if the other 29 teams could be expected to have someone better?

A contending team selling low on one of its star players when there’s no obvious candidate to replace him? Unless there’s some strange set of circumstances that we fans can’t conceive of, any professional general manager that would even consider pulling the trigger on such a deal deserves to be fired immediately.

Given that Crawford is in the midst of a career year and there are a number of possible in-house replacements, you might consider the Phillies’ situation and decide that the Rays trading Crawford sounds reasonable by comparison, and it does. But that doesn’t make it the right thing to do.

It is imperative to remember that the Rays are a contending team. Sure, they’d be selling high on Crawford. But if his trade value is at its peak, doesn’t that also mean he matters to the Rays? Keep in mind that the Rays are rolling towards October, and would probably be among the teams trying to trade for Crawford were he playing for, say, the Indians.

That’s like dumping all your shares of a company right before an all-expense-paid stockholders’ retreat. If you wait to release your holdings, you might not earn quite as big of a profit, but doesn’t a free vacation outweigh the loss of a few bucks?

A year from now, Crawford and Werth will be suiting up in other teams’ uniforms and cashing exorbitant checks from fat-pocketed owners. But with dreams of the World Series trophy floating through both clubhouses, there’s no reason for either player to book an early ticket out of town.

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It can now be said without a doubt that the Philadelphia Phillies will not be making their third straight trip to the World Series this October.

Or at least their manager, Charlie Manuel, seems to think they won’t.

Why else would he do such a preposterous job of selecting his All-Star pitching staff and reserves?

As we all know, the Dumbest Rule in Professional Sports mandates that the winner of the MLB All-Star Game gets home field advantage in the World Series.

Thus, it only stands to reason that Manuel, the manager of the National League’s squad and also the manager of a potential World Series participant in the Philadelphia Phillies, would want to put together the best All-Star squad available to protect the Phillies’ shot at World Series home-field advantage.

Apparently, Manuel doesn’t see the Phillies back in the Series and has thus decided to sabotage whichever team it is that will eventually get there.

That is the only explanation.

Mind you, Manuel did not simply screw up one or two picks. Manuel practically picked the wrong player at almost every opportunity; everywhere that a pick wasn’t obvious, he went with the wrong one.

Consider, for example, the selection of Tim Lincecum for the pitching staff. Lincecum is one of the best pitchers in the game and is coming off consecutive NL Cy Young Awards. But in 2010, Lincecum is not one of the best 13 pitchers in the NL.  

The selection of Lincecum stands in contrast to the exclusion of Clayton Richard and Mat Latos of the San Diego Padres, both of whom have an ERA well below 3.00 (unlike Lincecum) and one of whom, Richard, is a left-hander.

Which brings up an interesting point—the American League will feature six left-handed starters out of nine, yet the National League has only one left-handed pitcher, Arthur Rhodes.  

So, to face a veritable murderer’s row of Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau, Robinson Cano, Ichiro Suzuki, Josh Hamilton, and Carl Crawford, the National League will be armed with a bevy of right-handers and Rhodes, a 40-year-old middle reliever who, while having a great year, may not even be in the game by the time those other guys have been pulled for backups.

Have a nice weekend, all you left-handed starting pitchers: Jaime Garcia, Johan Santana, Jonathan Sanchez, and Clayton Kershaw. Charlie won’t need your services.

Manuel’s outfield picks, too, are baffling. In selecting Chris Young, Marlon Byrd, Michael Bourn, and Matt Holliday, Manuel made sure that each team in the NL is being represented at the expense of actual All-Star-caliber talent. Fact is, Colby Rasmus, Josh Willingham, and the Phillies’ own Jayson Werth are, to a man, each having better seasons than Young, Bourn, and Holliday.

Look, I realize Charlie is old school and probably despises modern statistics. So, here are some old school stats for you: Chris Young is batting .264. Michael Bourn is batting .260. Holliday has 11 home runs and 39 RBI, which both rank behind his own teammate Rasmus’ 16 and 40.

And it isn’t like Rasmus, Werth, and Willingham are the only viable alternatives. So too would Andrew McCutchen, Angel Pagan, and Matt Kemp have been better selections.

It is funny that Manuel would diss Werth in favor of marginally better outfielders, because he selected Ryan Howard over Joey Votto, who is enjoying a significantly better season than Howard.

Votto isn’t arguably better than Howard; he’s demonstratively better than Howard.

Perhaps the worst selection of all, and perhaps even of all time, was Manuel’s choice of Omar Infante, a utility infielder for the Atlanta Braves, over, well, just about anyone else in the league.

Infante has played just 56 games in 2010 and has appeared at five different positions. He is hitting .311 with a .721 OPS, one home run, eight doubles, three stolen bases, and 23 runs scored. He has 28 strikeouts to only nine walks and only 62 total bases.

Did Charlie lose a bet with somebody?

Look, I am sure Omar Infante is a nice guy, but there are 50 hitters in the National League who are more deserving of the All-Star Game than Infante.

Meanwhile, the final roster spot will be selected by fans in a vote between Votto, Carlos Gonzalez, Ryan Zimmerman, Heath Bell, and Billy Wagner, all of whom are significantly better than Infante, and frankly several other players on the roster.

The irony here is that the NL All-Star team would be better off if it took the five worst reserves and replaced them with all five of the players in the Final Vote.

Even if Charlie Manuel was doing the noble thing and trying to pick the players that most deserved to be at the All-Star Game—which he failed to do—one must be mindful of the fact that, thanks to the Dumbest Rule in Professional Sports, we are beyond the era when every team gets an All-Star and everyone that is there deserves to be there.

An All-Star roster should be filled with the best players in the league with position, team, and fluke season performance aside.

Alas, it is not to be.

So this is it, Philadelphia Phillies fans. On July 4, 2010, you got all the indication you needed that Phillies manager Charlie Manuel feels that his Phillies team has no shot at the World Series.

If he did, he surely would have given himself a better shot at winning the NL All-Star Game—and he has given himself none.

Asher B. Chancey lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and is a co-founder of BaseballEvolution.com.

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Chad Durbin left the Phillies’ 7-6 victory over the Cleveland Indians in the ninth inning due to an apparent hamstring injury.

It didn’t look too terribly serious, but Charlie Manuel killed any optimism immediately after the game.

“He blew out a hammy,” Manuel told the media after Jimmy Rollins’ walk-off home run. “I would say it’s pretty serious. He definitely popped it.”

Great. Another pitcher down for an extended period of time, leaving it to guys who will either be incredibly overworked or leaving them with no choice other than to call someone up or look to a rather shallow free agent pool.

But then the optimism came back as Durbin seemed to shoot down Manuel’s bleak diagnosis.

“It’s a little better than what Charlie said,” Durbin said. “That scared me. He was just in the dramatic mood because of the home run.”

Durbin said he’s expecting a stint on the DL but that it’s only a Grade 1 sprain and should only take between 10 to 14 days to heal. It could, however, take up to three weeks.

So while it’s not nearly as bad as Manuel made it sound, it’s still not good news.

The bullpen has been an Achilles’ heel of this team as of late, and it can’t afford to get any thinner. Ryan Madson and Antonio Bastardo are already on the DL, Brad Lidge still might be working through some things, and the other guys in the ‘pen aren’t going to be able to handle a huge workload.

Durbin landing on the DL does open up a spot, however, and it could mean the return of Scott Mathieson to the active roster. Whether or not he gets used outside of a pinch situation has yet to be seen, but it’s possible he’s the guy they turn to for depth.

Greg Dobbs Accepts Assignment to Triple-A Lehigh Valley

In some semi-good news, Greg Dobbs has decided he’s going to stay in the Phillies’ system and head down to Triple-A rather than becoming a free agent after passing through waivers.

With some consistent at-bats and some time in the field, Dobbs might be able to find his stride once again and find his way back on the active roster before the season is over.

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We all know the Phillies’ recent struggles—the inconsistent bats and the flat-out lack of offensive production.

Philadelphians have been in a shroud of disbelief over the team’s current struggles, what with the Flyers’ recent success clouding their thoughts, and have ignored the team and brushed off the much-needed panic.

Some call it a slump, some call it midseason woes, but if they Phillies don’t right the ship quickly, we can all call it missing out on the playoffs.

For the Phils, nothing seems scarier in the midst of a slump than interleague play. The team is currently ranked 29th in crossover play, and this year’s struggles have been tragic examples. The Phillies were shelled in the first two games of their recent romp in Boston and barely escaped game three with a win.

Now the Phils have to head to the hallowed grounds of the Bronx to take on the Yankees. Despite the fact that the wounds from last year’s World Series are still healing, the Phillies will have their biggest test in months in NYC.

The series is a three-game set, but when we look at the matchups, we can all agree that game one will be key. Roy Halladay will take the mound for the Phillies, and the Yanks will hope to trump the hype of Halladay with CC Sabathia.

Both of these men have been juggernauts in their careers and hope to set the tone for a possible (and hopeful) World Series matchup in Game One.

Despite last year’s World Series, the Phillies don’t have a huge history against Sabathia. In fact, only three players (Placido Polanco, Raul Ibanez, and Juan Castro) have had more than seven at-bats against Sabathia.

Polanco is a career .326 hitter against the Yankees ace with only one HR and three RBI. Ibanez is the only player close to double-digit RBI, but he only has 11 hits in 40 ABs.

As far as the Doc Halladay v. Yankees matchup, this one has a bit more to it. Halladay was a nightmare for the Yankees when he was in Toronto. The only player on the Yankees lineup that is even arguable against Halladay is A-Rod.

Rodriguez is hitting .299 against Halladay and has seven doubles and 14 RBI. A-Rod is expected to start but could be a game-time decision due to the fact he missed all three games of the Astros series with a bruised hip.

If you look at the Yankees’ big four (Derek Jeter, Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira, and Nick Swisher), they have a staggering 52 K’s and are hitting only .243 against Halladay.

It seems even more exciting for the Phillies when you notice that Halladay is 18-6 with a 2.81 ERA in 35 games against the Yanks and is 8-1 in his last 10 games against the Bronx Bombers.

This is the third meeting between Halladay and Sabathia, as they split their first two meetings.

We all know the pitching is going to be key, but if the Phillies are to have any chance in the series, they will need to improve with their bats. The team is currently last in run production since the end of May, and since they began interleague play this season on May 21 they have only scored a pitiful 53 runs.

As you can see, the pitchers will take the spotlight in game one, but if the Phillies expect to make a run at seeing the Yanks in the postseason, the bats are going to have to do the talking from here on out. Let’s just hope the team is listening.

Side Notes

The Phillies have had luck with the long ball against the Yanks. In last year’s World Series the Phillies had 11 long balls—the Yankees only six. Chase Utley had five HRs in the series.

Utley is currently hitting .256 and was a combined 1-for-9 against the Red Sox.

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If it’s not one thing with these Phillies over the past two weeks or so, then it’s another. If the pitching is spot on, then you can be sure the offense will struggle to muster a single run.

Then once the hitting finally gets going, the pitching and defense begin to struggle, and you’re stuck with that Padres game from Sunday.

The Phillies had no business losing that game the way they did, especially since the offense lit it up in the first two innings. Granted, the Padres quickly pulled Kevin Correia, their starter, after the second inning, but there’s no reason for San Diego’s bullpen to be as shutdown as it was.

They’ve turned themselves into a pretty decent team, and the bullpen isn’t anything to scoff at, but this Phillies lineup should be able to hit any bullpen in the league—especially when they’re forced to eat up eight innings.

Then again, perhaps I’m being too optimistic by thinking the hitting is coming back. Perhaps Correia was simply that bad. Maybe if the Phillies had actually been on, they could have tagged him for 15 runs and not five.

I’m just not sure. Right about now, you’re basically reading the thoughts of a man who has absolutely no idea anymore. First I thought it was just a funk they’d get out of, then I thought it was about complacency, and now I’m telling you I have no idea—and I’m not sure anyone in the organization does either.

The players, the coaches, and the front office seem truly stumped. The only thing they can tell us is that they’re sick of talking about it, as Shane Victorino recently told the media.

Well, Vicky, I’m about as anti-Philly media as they come, but if even one of the eight of you would start connecting with the ball like we all know you can, there would be no questions about why in the world the most talented lineup in the National League is struggling.

Then as far as the pitching goes, there doesn’t seem to be much of an answer there either.

One thing I do know, however, is that when every aspect of a team is beginning to fall apart, it’s time to look at the coaches. No, I’m not going to start a “Fire Charlie Manuel” campaign, but it’s on him to get this team headed back in the right direction.

Given his track record, I believe he will, but he’s certainly taking his sweet time about it.

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The Phillies look really, really bad right now. But relax. Anyone who has followed this team over the years knows that it happens every year, to every team for that matter. That’s part of playing a 162-game schedule.

And as much as the media would like you to believe otherwise, the MLB standings on June 4 are MEANINGLESS. Totally MEANINGLESS.

PLEASE READ: The quotations on the following slides weren’t actually said by anyone. They are just along the lines of what a typical Phillie fan who is high on passion and low on perspective would probably have said following each game.

The “Author’s thoughts” section of each slide is what yours truly was thinking about the Phillies at the given time…if you really care.

Please enjoy, stay calm, stay positive, and remember…

There are still three months of regular season baseball left. Much better days are ahead. Besides, the Phils have a long reputation of being a second-half team, while the Braves and Mets are never known for fading in June…

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