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The Philadelphia Phillies have made another late-season surge in order to pass the Atlanta Braves in the National League East standings, stretching their own lead to three games.

The Phillies are preparing for another deep playoff run, but first they need to fend off the Braves for the division crown. It’s a big series as Atlanta comes to Citizens Bank Park for three games, hoping to cut into the lead and in a best case scenario make it all even once more.

Phillies manager Charlie Manuel has put his best effort to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Facing the Braves will be Philadelphia’s all-star trio of starting pitchers: Cole Hamels to open the series, Roy Halladay on Tuesday, and Roy Oswalt in the closing game.

If the Phillies can at least win the series, they will pick up an extra game in the standings. A sweep would put the Phillies up by six games with nine remaining.

It’s a tall order in front of the Braves. Not only have they gone on a slide of their own, the Phillies have won seven in a row and 11 of their previous 12. The surprisingly inconsistent offense has finally erupted, scoring 108 runs in 18 games in September.

And at a time when the team has been playing its best baseball, the pitchers taking the mound have been at their absolute best.

Hamels, who hopes to get the Phillies started off on the right foot, has allowed only one run in his previous 31 1/3 innings pitched, and has compiled an ERA of 1.79 in his past 13 starts. This recent stretch has lowered his season ERA to 3.01, just outside the top-10 in the National League.

Halladay, the hurler of a perfect game earlier in the season, has won his past three straight starts. He is the MLB leader in complete games. He owns a 2.49 ERA, his lowest total since 2005 and is good enough for third in the National League. He also has a career high in strikeouts (210), good enough for second in the NL, and has the most wins (19) in the NL and second-most in all of MLB.

Newly acquired Oswalt has been a fantastic pickup for Philadelphia. Since being acquired at the trade deadline, Oswalt has compiled a 7-1 record (the lone loss coming in his first start with the team) and a 1.94 ERA. His ERA over the entirety of the season is 2.90, putting him ninth in the NL.

While getting everyone healthy (starters Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Shane Victorino, Placido Polanco, Jimmy Rollins, and Carlos Ruiz have all seen stints on the DL) and getting the offense right have been big for the Phillies, the amazing pitching from the top of the rotation has been instrumental in Philadelphia’s latest pennant race.

For the upcoming series, not only does aligning the rotation as it is put the team in the best position possible to win its fourth consecutive division title, but it also is the best possible warm-up for October baseball.

Facing a playoff-caliber team (the Braves are currently the Wild Card leaders) the Phillies will line up their three best pitchers in a playoff atmosphere. The importance of the games is huge and the fans in Philadelphia will be loud and behind their team 100 percent.

The Phillies are once again playing their best baseball heading into the postseason, and their most valuable players over that stretch will look to keep the momentum rolling.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

The Atlanta Braves come to town this week for a three-game series against the Philadelphia Phillies at Citizens Bank Park.

The Phillies currently have a three-game lead in the NL East over the Braves, and the San Francisco Giants and Colorado Rockies surging out west, the Braves may very well be playing for their post-season lives.

Here’s a breakdown of what to expect from this showdown.

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C’mon Philadelphia, please put down the Michael Vick Kool-Aid…just for a second. We’re talkin’ baseball right now.

For years, the Phillies have relied heavily on their “Big Three” to win games; the “Big Three,” of course, being the trio of homegrown studs (Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, and Ryan Howard) the Phillies have featured in their daily lineup for the past several years .

Sure, that “Big Three” is still pretty good. But over the final two months of the 2010 campaign, the Phillies have made it to the brink of the postseason on the strength of a different kind of big three: the kind of big three that occupies their starting rotation.

Roy Halladay, Cole Hamels, and Roy Oswalt.  Game-set-match.

That three-man rotation is pretty good. But is it the greatest 1-2-3 rotation punch in Phillies history? Let’s count down and find out.

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Six days left until the biggest series of the year in the National League.

The Phillies official website reports that the Phillies pitching coach, Rich Dubee, may be looking to deliver a knock out blow next week when facing the Atlanta Braves. Given the recent awakening of the Phillies’ bats, that doesn’t sound like too bad an idea.

The Phillies crushed the Florida Marlins 11-4 on Monday, September 13th to retain their one-game lead in the NL East, while the Braves held up their end, beating the Washington Nationals 4-0.

With just over two weeks left in this season, and six games remaining between the two NL East teams, it’s pretty obvious that the race to first place will all come down to the head-to-head match-up.

The Braves, known to be a resilient team, are going to have much to contend with come these final games down the stretch because, of the six games remaining, it’s quite possible the Phillies will pitch their aces in five of them.

All it would take is for Rich Dubee to realign this weekend’s pitching rotation, and voila!  To make it happen, all Dubee would have to do is switch Roy Oswalt’s and Kyle Kendrick’s starts this weekend.

Oswalt is set to pitch on Saturday, September 18, but if switched to pitch on Friday, September 17th, instead, the trio could line up against those wily Braves on Monday, starting with Cole Hamels. But does Dubee see it the same way?

He commented on the matter, as reported by Todd Zoleki saying:

“As long as [Oswalt] is feeling fine, there’s a real good chance,…I don’t think there’s any downside to pitching Oswalt, Hamels, and Halladay. They are our front three starters. I would think if you have two series with the Braves, you’d want the best guys available, if possible.”

The news comes at no surprise to some, given what’s at stake here. Between the Atlanta Braves, the San Francisco Giants, and the red hot, Colorado Rockies jostling for playoff berths, it seems winning the division will be key—Dubee is not going to be the one to take that chance.

In September the three have put up stellar pitching performances, pitching for a combined 51 innings, going 7-0, and throwing 52 strikeouts, while only giving up, between the three of them, an average of under two runs per game.

The Braves have faced two of the three pitchers this year, in four games. The pitchers have gotten the best of them in three of the four games pitching, between the two of them, 23 innings, giving up seven runs, throwing 20 strikeouts, and only giving up two runs.

For the Phils, the good news is, Roy Halladay has absolutely dominated the Braves the two times he faced them, going the distance in both games.

In the first game, Halladay pitched an .82 ERA, giving up no runs, and striking out seven. His second game interestingly enough were strikingly similar numbers, but with one home run given up.

The good news for the Braves is, they seemed to have less of a struggle with Hamels, scoring six runs on him, including a three-run homer by Troy Glaus in the rain, while splitting a game a piece with him.

Now, Hamels and Halladay add Oswalt to the show and for the first time this season, line up in one series and take on the Atlanta Braves for all of the marbles.

If that doesn’t get you excited as a Braves, or Phillies fan, nothing will.

It most certainly will be must see TV, and yours truly, will be all over that coverage the whole week. Stay tuned.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

We all know July 31 and the days leading up to that day change the season for some teams. There were some serious trades including a trade involving a Cy Young winner and a couple of ex-first overall draft picks. This slideshow shows the top nine pickups and the worst trade deadline pickups. The slideshow only shows teams in second or third place who brought in players who have played well since joining their new team.

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We all knew it would come. Now it’s that time.

Like a man on death row, you just sit and wait—you wait on your sentence and hope, something, somehow, could change your fate.

Then the inevitable day comes, and all of a sudden…you’ve lost first place.

Those Phightin’s, I don’t know how they do it, but, they live up to that name of theirs year after year.

If you haven’t been keeping up, or you fell asleep within the game last night, I’m here to tell you, those Phils have done it again. They are back in first place and they are ready to finish the last two and a half weeks off of this season in style—as they have in the last five years, or so.

With a very important series coming up in under two weeks, the Phils wasted no more time taking over the top spot, beating the Florida Marlins last night 8-7 after a scary crash by the Phillies bullpen. The bats, however, were able to come alive, enough, to bail Joe Blanton out.

The pitching shouldn’t be a problem down the stretch, being that the Phils have made due without such a dynamic force before.

Even if Joe Blanton and Kyle Kendrick were to bomb every game in the playoffs, it will still be hard to beat three aces in a seven game series—and that’s without pitching some on short rest.

Amidst what seemed to be a flop by the Phillies in July and August, they have once more, stepped up to the challenge, leaving some who unnecessarily doubted them, to look back on their foolishness.

But the season is not over by any means. The Braves are still right there.

Speaking of which, we can understand the excitement of Braves fans, and the like, but, it’s clear that everyone knows, the Phils are a marathon team, who finishes strong down the stretch.

Despite ‘great debates’ and the sort, the Phils and their fans know all along, there is no need to panic.

In a poll conducted by Phillies Featured Columnist, Vincent Heck, and Braves Featured Columnist, Evan Walker, a few days ago, we asked our fans who would win the NL East.

With the Phillies behind the Braves one game, the public came to an decisive conclusion–after 2,000 readers, 520 people voted, and 80% thought that the Phils would come out on top.

Quick math—that’s 416 voters for the Phils.

There is no doubt in anyone’s mind what the outcome will be, and there should be none in your mind either.

Despite injuries, despite a stretch of cold bats, the Phils and their front office will take care of business the way they know how.

It’s September the 8th, 2010, and the two time National League Champions are in first place again. If the Braves can knock off the team at this stage, much credit should be given to them.

Despite statistically being better than the Phils “across the board” we’ve got to recognize the fact that, there are some very important factors that are just as important, if not, more important than statistics that tell the real story. Those factors should most certainly be considered.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Admit it, even though you were kind of giddy when Ruben Amaro picked Roy Oswalt from Ed Wade’s pocket at the trade deadline, you still weren’t sure that the Phillies new No. 2 starter belonged in any discussions of the league’s top pitchers. After all, discussions of baseball’s top arms usually includes names like Sabathia, Halladay, Wainwright, and of course, Lee.

You read about Oswalt’s propensity to shut down the opposition in August, September, and even October when he was an Astro, but you tempered your expectations after realizing that those impressive playoff numbers were from 2004 and 2005. Those were the days when Cole Hamels was dominating hitters by day and breaking bones (in his own valuable left hand, unfortunately) at night in Clearwater, Florida.

Nonetheless, it was hard not to be excited. After all, in the eyes of every baseball analyst, the Phillies starting rotation (or at least the three arms at the top) was the best in baseball.

Then came Oswalt’s first start as a Phillie, and even though it was less than twenty-four hours after his arrival from the deep south, and with a catcher he had just met, his 8-1 loss to the last place Nationals still gave you that unsatisfied feeling. The kind of feeling you get when you go to a Panera with a huge appetite.

What’s happened since, however, has made you forget those bitter Cliff Lee thoughts and envision another season with Halladay, Oswalt, and Hamels beginning or prolonging the offensive slumps of National League opponents.

In his first month as a Phillie, Oswalt is 4-1 with an ERA of 1.89. Take away that hurried first start against the Nationals, and those numbers go to 4-0 with a 1.31 ERA.

Maybe those late season statistics from years past weren’t a myth after all. With nearly 200 innings under his belt in 2010, Oswalt seems to be surging when it matters the most.

Isn’t it amazing what a pennant race can do for a terrific player freed from a losing atmosphere? The Phillies have now seen this phenomenon in two straight years with Cliff Lee and Roy Oswalt.

With Oswalt, the move to a contender has already proven that this undersized, 33-year-old Mississippian plays to win.

In a crucial stretch of August baseball, we have seen him win with or without his best stuff. At times, his location has been Halladay-esque, but there have also been days like this week’s start against the Dodgers, when Oswalt simply dug deep and competed when the strike zone didn‘t seem as friendly. Firing a 95-mph fastball for a strikeout on his 90th pitch of the afternoon was something you see $15 million pitchers do.

What you don’t often see $15 million pitchers do are things like pinch hitting at crucial spots in late-season games, and substituting as a surprisingly slick left fielder. Oswalt is leaving little doubt that he is here to win.

And the best part is that he will be wearing a Phillies uniform for at least another full season, and possibly two.

Maybe this Ruben Amaro, Jr. guy learned a thing or two during those three years under Pat Gillick. After all, have you heard anyone describe former Phillie J.A. Happ using the word “untouchable” since Roy Oswalt arrived in town?

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Some of the biggest difference makers come the playoffs did not start the year with that team. Just think about last years World Series when Cliff Lee mowed down the Yankees in game one. 

In 2010, with many teams on the brink of the playoffs, everyone was looking to improve their team.

Here are the top five deals made at the trade deadline.

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Everyone knows what it means: your team is flush with money and run by talentless slobs, who can make up for an inability to develop high quality talent within the farm system by simply buying other team’s high quality talent.  

You are the evil empire, pricing every other team in baseball out of the market for the best players in the game.  

You represent everything that is wrong with baseball and, what’s worse, your fans are front-runners, having forged artificial lifelong allegiances to the best players money can buy, acting as though they are somehow special for having taken part in a travesty.

We all know what is meant by the phrase “the new Yankees.”  The only question is: are the 2010 Philadelphia Phillies it?

If you ask a group of bitter Washington Nationals fans—because hey, who wouldn’t be bitter after five whole years of losing—then the answer is yes.

If you ask any reasonable baseball fan, the answer is: pah-lease.

Truth be told, the Yankees and the Phillies are not without their similarities. Chief amongst them, and contrary to popular opinion, both teams are in fact capable of “growing” their own talent.

Don’t forget, the core of the New York Yankees dynasty from 1995 to 2010 has been the Big Four–Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, and Andy Pettitte—who all came up through the Yankees system and have led the team to five championships in 15 years.

Throw in recent Yankees legend Bernie Williams and new Yankees star Robinson Cano, and that makes six Yankees homegrowns who have been absolutely essential to the team’s success.

The Phillies have also grown their own, with the All-Star double play combination Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, and Ryan Howard all having come up with the Phillies.  So, too, did catcher and fan favorite Carlos Ruiz come up with the Phils, as well as 2008 NLCS and World Series MVP Cole Hamels, starter Kyle Kendrick, and reliever Ryan Madson.

But that is pretty much where the similarities between these two franchises end.

The Yankees, of course, have spent the last 15 seasons buying up all of the most high priced talent in baseball, making big runs at the biggest free agents and pricing all other comers out of the market.  

So it is that the Yankees, over the years, ended up with Mike Mussina, Roger Clemens, Kevin Brown, Randy Johnson, Carl Pavano, Jaret Wright, C.C. Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, Jason Giambi, Alex Rodriguez, Gary Sheffield, Bobby Abreu, Johnny Damon, Mark Teixeira, and Hideki Matsui.

Whenever the Yanks have had a chance, they’ve snagged the best player available.

More importantly, and herein lies the rub, the Yankees have been able to absorb the big contracts gone bad (Pavano, Wright, Brown, Giambi) and continue to acquire top-flight talent, where other teams would be absolutely crippled by the devastating effects that a big-contract player not contributing on the field can have.

And then you have the Philadelphia Phillies.

First of all, it is worth pointing out that the 2008 Phils won a championship without big-money players, almost to a man. The Rollins ($8 million), Utley ($7.785 million), and Howard ($10 million) combo were not yet making elite money, while Hamels ($500,000) was still making peanuts.

The biggest contract on the team belonged to Pat Burrell, who was making $14 million, and only Geoff Jenkins, Jamie Moyer, Adam Eaton, and Brett Myers were making between $5 million and $8.5 million.

Meanwhile, the starting lineup was filled with guys like Pedro Feliz, who’d been run out of town in San Francisco; Shane Victorino, a Rule Five draft pick from four years earlier; and Jayson Werth, who signed for cheap with the Phillies in 2007 after missing all of the 2006 season.

And one of the biggest keys to the Phils’ 2008 World Series run, Brad Lidge, was picked up off the scrap-heap in a trade with Houston after an up-and-down season at a point in his career when he was hardly considered elite. He made $6.3 million to pitch for the Phils in ’08.

At the end of the day, the team’s payroll in 2008 was about $80 million.

But this isn’t about 2008. This is about 2010.

You can’t blame Washingtonians for looking at the 2010 Philadelphia Phillies and seeing the New York Yankees.  After all, so few Nationals fans actually go to the ballpark—indeed, it took the help of about 30,000 Phillies fans to sell out Opening Day in D.C. this year—that they probably don’t even know what a quality baseball team looks like.

Thus, for a Nationals fan to look at the Phillies and see an Evil Empire isn’t surprising.  But the differences between the Phils and the Yanks aren’t subtle.

It would be easy, for example, to accuse the Phils of ruthlessly snatching up free agent talent on any whim. The Phils are selling out every game (100 in a row and counting) and Phillies merchandise is flying off the shelves.  Certainly there is more money to be spent in Philadelphia on the hometown team than ever before.

But most of that money, thus far, has been spent just in keeping the players the Phillies already have. As noted above, in 2008 the Rollins-Utley-Howard combo made just under $26 million combined. Just two years later, that number is about $43 million and climbing.

Hamels, Werth, Victorino, and Madson all make real money now as well.

Ostensibly, a considerable amount of balleyhoo could be made over certain pitching acquisitions the Phillies have made over the last two seasons, but it would ring hollow.

Since the beginning of the 2009 season, the Phillies have acquired Cliff Lee, Roy Halladay, and Roy Oswalt; that’s three Cy Young Awards and one of the National League’s best pitchers from the last decade.

Surely this reeks of New York Yankee style player acquisition.

But unlike the Yankees, the Phillies have had to pay a price.

For one thing, it isn’t like the Phillies bought Lee, Halladay, and Oswalt, the way the Yankees would have.

Instead, the Phillies have given up a veritable baseball team worth of players to acquire these guys–including Jason Knapp, Carlos Carrasco, Jason Donald, Lou Marson, Kyle Drabek, Michael Taylor, Travis d’Arnaud, Anthony Gose, Jonathan Villar, and J.A. Happ.

And, for that matter, the Phillies have given up all of those players and have only two pitchers to show for it; the Phillies had to get rid of Lee, knowing they wouldn’t be able to afford him once he became a free agent, in order to acquire Halladay. Throw in the fact that Oswalt cost them a very promising Happ, and one almost begins to wonder if the Phils even came out ahead in the deal.

Does this sound like the New York Yankees? Is there any doubt that if they’d wanted to, the Yankees would have acquired Lee, Halladay, and Oswalt and signed them all to long, big money contracts?

There shouldn’t be any doubt, since that is exactly what they did with C.C. Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, and Javier Vazquez over the same period of time.

And consider this: after coming incredibly close to acquiring Lee from the Seattle Mariners this summer, the Yankees dropped out of the chase for him. Why? It is thought that the Yankees don’t want to give up talent now when they know they can get Lee this offseason for free.

Is that an option the Phillies had?

In truth, the only “big-name” free agents the Phillies have acquired during their current reign of terror have been Raul Ibanez and Placido Polanco. An Evil Empire those two do not make.

At the end of the day, from the perspective of the Washington Nationals—20 games back and 20 games under .500—it could certainly appear as though the Phillies have taken on the identity of the greatest monolithic force the sports world has ever known.

However, from closer up, the distinguishing factors between the Phillies and the Yankees are as obvious as can be.

To compare the tortured and convoluted front office moves that the Phillies have made to the whimsical and careless free-spending way of the New York Yankees is to speak from a position of ignorance.

But the Washingtonians, in only their sixth year as a baseball fan-base after over 30 years without baseball, are still in their baseball infancy, so we’ll just consider it the ignorance of youth.

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

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Not everyone can be a winner.

These ten pitchers have found this out the hard way this season. Despite pitching very well for their teams this season they each have a losing record.

These ten pitchers have suffered from a lack of run support, poor defense behind them, and a case of bad luck.

Three of the pitchers on this list pitch for teams that are last place in their divisions, two play for teams that are still in the playoff hunt, and one pitcher on this list is actually on a first place team.

These ten pitchers have combined for eight all star selections, two NLCS MVP’s, a World Series MVP, a Cy Young, and a perfect game. Clearly losing can happen to anyone, but these ten pitchers have pitched better than most and don’t have the wins to show for it.

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