The not-so mysteriousness of the closer

It’s impossible to know if a single pitch that ends with a bad result can serve as an alarm bell for a pitcher, but ever since Brad Lidge gave up that game-winning home run to Ryan Zimmerman in Washington last weekend, he’s been almost unhittable.

Lidge has appeared in four games since serving up that homer with a one-run lead with one out in the ninth inning at Nationals Park where he has faced 11 hitters and retired 10 of them. Of those 11 hitters, Lidge notched four strikeouts, allowed one single and picked up three more saves to give him 13 this season in 17 chances.

The difference has been his command, says Manuel.

“He’s getting ahead of the hitters or when he falls behind early in the count he rebounds and catches up and he’s in a position to avoid what I call a ‘have-to’ count where he has to throw a certain pitch,” Manuel said. “He’s been getting his slider over and throwing enough fastballs inside. He’s been throwing more strikes.”

No, his season stats don’t pop off the page, but it hasn’t been awful. Though there still is that sense of impending doom when Lidge comes in from the bullpen in the ninth inning and a noticeable loss of velocity in his fastball that he doesn’t throw nearly as much as he did in the past, the results are much improved from last season. Yes, there is still talk about replacing Lidge as the Phillies’ closer amongst fans and media-types, and the $11.5 million he is owed for the 2011 season seems like one of those contracts that might be a year too long. However, when one looks inside the results the conclusion is things could be far worse with any number of closers around the league.

Moreover, when Lidge’s contract ends at the end of next season, there is a pretty good chance that he will have more saves than any anyone else in team history. Lidge needs 27 more saves to tie Jose Mesa with 112 and if he gets there he will probably do it in approximately 50 fewer innings.

So what’s the problem?

For one thing, it’s the ninth inning and it’s a close game. If it wasn’t that way, Lidge wouldn’t be in the game doing that tightrope act where the slightest slip up could end up in a crash landing.

As that goes, there are a handful of tell-all signs that determine whether or not Lidge will be trading high-fives with his teammates at the end of the game or moping off the field with his head down. For instance, if he allows a walk or a hit to the first batter he faces, things have a tendency to go bad. In 28 outings this season, Lidge has allowed the leadoff hitter to reach base eight times (seven on hits) and as those innings progress he has allowed six hits, six walks and seven runs for an ERA of 9.45.

Compared to the 20 games where Lidge gets the first guy out, he has allowed six runs. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that things go much more smoothly when Lidge gets that first out quickly, though he has blown a pair saves in both instances and the Phillies are 6-2 in games where he allows the first hitter to reach base.

Plus, these splits are pretty indicative of most relief pitchers. The result of the first pitch often determines how the at-bat will go and the first hitter can sway the trajectory of the rest of the inning.

Now, quickly, a few things on Lidge…

Lidge has saved 30 games in four of his six full seasons with two years where he got more than 40 saves. For a historical perspective, Goose Gossage only got 30 saves in a season twice. The same goes for Rollie Fingers. Bruce Sutter, the other closer in the Hall of Fame, notched four 30-plus saves seasons just like Lidge.

Of course, 30 saves doesn’t mean what it did in the old days. In fact, of the five closers in the Hall of Fame – Gossage, Sutter, Fingers, Dennis Eckersley and Hoyt Wilhelm – only one has put together more 30-plus saves seasons than Lidge. Certainly that will change when guys like Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman get in, but if he were able to get into a time machine and transport his stats to the 1970s and early ‘80s, Lidge would be on the path to a Hall-of-Fame career.

Infamously, Lidge also has the highest ERA in baseball history for a pitcher with over 20 saves when he got 31 with a 7.21 ERA last season. Manager Charlie Manuel probably would have gone with a different closer if he had one to do that tightrope act as well as Lidge. Since he didn’t (and doesn’t still), Manuel has a pretty good read on what makes for a smooth night for his closer.

Walks.

Like any pitcher, if Lidge can command his pitches things are going to go well. It doesn’t matter if his fastball is 92-mph or 96 as long as he doesn’t give any free passes. In fact, this season Lidge has walked 14 hitters in 11 outings over 11 innings. In those 11 games/innings, the opposition has scored 11 runs off of Lidge and in three of his four blown saves he’s walked at least one hitter.

“The biggest thing about him is when he can stay away from walking guys or getting behind in the count, it’s almost like any other pitcher,” Manuel said. “That’s when he can get people out.”

No, it’s not a big mystery when it comes to being a successful closer. It’s simple, really… throws strikes, get outs. It couldn’t be any less complicated. But what is complicated is what happens in a game when Lidge is just one out—one pitch—away from getting out of an inning. And in more cases than not, getting out of the inning means ending the game for Lidge.

For some unknown reason, Lidge has allowed 10 of his 13 runs this season with two outs. With two outs, hitters are 12-for-38 against him with six extra-base hits (three homers) and eight walks. That comes to a .435 on-base percentage and 1.066 OPS with two outs…

In the last inning of the game.

Is this where the lack of velocity on the fastball gets Lidge? Sure, the slider is his bread-and-butter pitch, but he needs a good fastball to set it up. With two outs in the last inning of a game it seems as if hitters are waiting for that one pitch, which means now more than ever the closer needs to lean on his guile and wits.

Sign of respect

WASHINGTON — Shane Victorino was incredulous when he saw the clubhouse attendants at Nationals Park walking to the locker to the right of his holding a couple of baseballs to be signed. The Phillies’ centerfielder just couldn’t get past it.

“I’ve been here for four years and never been asked to sign anything,” Victorino yelled in mock indignation. “He’s been here for one day and he’s already signing.”

It’s a common rite in baseball circles, actually. One player on an opposing team gives a shiny, new baseball to a clubbie and sends him over to the other clubhouse to have it signed by a certain player. Players love signed those baseballs, too. It’s like a great sign of respect if a peer asks for an autograph (without actually asking), usually reserved for the big-time players. Word is Cal Ripken used to make special time just to sign items from the other team, and I once saw Red Sox old-time legend Johnny Pesky exhilarated by the fact that Jim Thome had sent two baseballs to have signed a few years back at Fenway.

“Are you joking with me,” Pesky said, amazed that Thome wanted the balls signed. “Jim Thome wants me to sign these?”

This time it was a player on the Nationals who sent Victorino into a faux tizzy for asking Dom Brown to sign a baseball. After all, to that point Victorino had played in 775 career games including the playoffs and All-Star Game, while Brown had been in just three games with just two starts.

Here was a kid, just 22 and drafted in the 20^th round from Stone Mountain, Ga. because scouts thought he was going to go play wide receiver for the University of Miami, signing autographs for other major leaguers. Moreover, when Brown entered the clubhouse at Nationals Park on his first road trip as a big leaguer, a guy with a rookie of the year award, an MVP, and four of the top most prolific home run-hitting seasons in franchise history, was the first to greet him.

“Hello, Mr. Brown,” Ryan Howard said.

Mister Brown?

So much for the rookie hazing.

Then again, the Phillies organization isn’t treating Brown like a typical rookie. No one is expecting the team’s untouchable prospect to just blend in to the background, with his eyes open and mouth shut. Instead, because of the injuries to nearly every starter this season, Brown is going to be treated like a 22-year old rookie in his first trip to the big leagues.

Nope… Instead, the Phillies are going to treat Brown like a major leaguer.

Actually, there aren’t too many major leaguers that had to have a press conference before his first game and then another for the TV audience as he jogged off the field after he got two hits in his debut. That kind of proves that the Phillies are expecting things from Brown they wouldn’t ordinarily expect from a kid called up from Triple-A in late July. Though manager Charlie Manuel says he’ll likely use Brown 70 percent of the time, and likely against just right-handed pitchers at that, the idea is for Brown to produce.

“Domonic Brown is going to have to come up and make an impact,” general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. said last week. “I remember talking to Paul Owens about this. You've done your job if you have one or two players per year to have some kind of impact from your system on your major-league club. We have to have that happen. Otherwise, we won't be viable.”

In other words, there’s a lot riding on Brown’s production.

But so far he’s handling it well. He’s started four games and has two multi-hit games. He’s driven in a few runs, swiped a bag, and played solid in right field. After Brown made a diving catch last Saturday night at Nationals Park, center fielder Jayson Werth paused to watch the replay on the giant video screen hanging above the ballpark.

That’s just it… lots of the players are paying attention to Brown. Aside from asking for him autographs, the three wise guys of the Phillies—Victorino, Howard and Jimmy Rollins—marveled over the kid’s physique as much as the time he spent in the batting cage. None of the former MVPs or All-Stars on the team was built like that when they were 22.

And just like the rookie is expected, Brown smiled and took the good-natured ribbing from his older, wiser teammates. Hey, it’s his first big-league road trip and rather than head out on the town to dinner with teammates, or museums and sights in D.C. (“Yeah, I’m going to go to the zoo with Dom Brown,” Victorino mocked his inquisitors over his mentorship), Brown is just worrying about making a good impression.

“He’s very mature for his age. He has his head on right and he likes to play and he puts a lot into it so that’s going to help him,” Manuel said.

“Strawberry had the same type of body, he might be a bit taller. He’s a little like [Braves’ rookie Jason] Heyward, but a different style of hitting. [Brown] keeps his bat up higher and has different kind of a swing. It’s high and he comes down on the ball, but he’s bigger, of course.”

Bigger in many senses, too. Not even a week into his big-league career and Brown is being called Mister by Howard and signing autographs for his new peers, much to Victorino’s chagrin. Now all he has to do is go hit.

The (re)maturation of Cole Hamels

WASHINGTON — The busy-ness of the pregame clubhouse at National Park on Friday afternoon was slightly unnerving. With the Phillies gearing up to make a run at a fourth straight trip to the playoffs with newly acquired ace Roy Oswalt on the mound in his first day in a Phillies’ uniform, the visiting clubhouse was more crowded than usual.

On one side of the room shortstop Jimmy Rollins held court, commenting on everything from the X Games shown on one of the TVs hanging from the ceiling of the clubhouse while discussing everything from Sponge Bob Square Pants, Scooby Doo and the 1960s live action Batman series with Adam West.

Oh, it was deep.

Boom! Bash! Pow!

Meanwhile, in the opposite corner from Rollins, Cole Hamels sat slouched in a chair in front of his locker, with his Barnes & Noble Nook, lamenting the fact that if he would have waited he would have probably purchased an iPad, like most of his teammates, instead.

See, it’s never easy to be a ballplayer like Hamels. No, he’s in a financial situation where he can have a Nook and an iPad, but that seems a little superfluous to Hamels. Besides, in due time the next version of the computer gizmo will come out and it will likely be better and faster than the current one. In the meantime, he’ll get all he can out of the Nook.

No, where it’s not easy being Hamels is playing in a place like Philadelphia. Forget all the stuff about how he’s Southern California cool with so much talent brimming over the surface that he makes the game look effortless by default. Forget that he’s similar to Mike Schmidt in that sometimes it’s not cool to be cool even if that’s just the way the guy is.

He’s so cool that the cockiness and arrogance just oozes from every pore when he walks on and off the field. It’s not exactly a trait that works for everyone, but with Hamels it’s real. It’s him. There was never a time where he didn’t think he could routinely throw a baseball past the best hitters on the planet.

And we ought to know the guy by now, right? Drafted not long after he turned 18 in the first round of the 2002 draft, the first world out on Hamels was that he was damaged goods. Sure, he could throw 94-mph and developed an otherworldly changeup after his pitching coach, Mark Furtak, taught him the circle change grip, but the broken left arm when he was a sophomore in high school scared away teams. Even his hometown Padres shied away and took college shortstop Khalil Greene with the 13^th overall pick.

Eight years after that draft Greene is out of baseball while Hamels is going through another resurgence of his own.

In fact, Hamels ought to be good at that by now. Five seasons into his big league career, Hamels has been damaged goods, a delicate injury-prone lefty, a knucklehead from breaking his hand in a bar fight that cost him much of the 2005 season, a phenom, a future Cy Young Award winner, the MVP of the NLCS and World Series, to struggling pitcher trying to find his game.

Now he’s a spoke in the wheel of one of the best starting rotations in baseball and working on his renewed focus and maturity. No longer is he just the cocky kid with injury problems, Hamels a father and a husband now. On one hand he says his four-year marriage and 10-month old son, Caleb, haven’t changed anything from the way he goes about his business or approaches a game, saying, “I don’t bring [family life] to work.” However, he added, being the father to an active, healthy 10-month-old boy changes a guy’s perspective.

On the field it has made him understand things a bit more. For instance, he’s not buying the hype about the Phillies’ new, “Big Three,” the top-notch pitching trio that also includes Roy Halladay and Oswalt. The Big Three play for the Boston Celtics, he said, giving a nod to Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce over the Miami Heat’s LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade.

“I feel like I'm building on things,” Hamels said. “I'm more aware of what I have to do, how to pitch guys, and I'm comfortable in throwing all the pitches I have.”

Truth is, Hamels talks like a veteran pitcher now instead of the young, brash guy who talked of pitching no-hitters, winning Cy Young awards, going to the Hall-of-Fame and gallivanting with Letterman or Ellen DeGeneres and appearing on his wife’s (second) reality show, as well as the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Those things are fun, but they really don’t mean too much. Take, for instance, the 10-strikeouts he got in seven innings against the Nationals on Sunday afternoon. Sure,

“That was great and all, but I left two pitches up, one to [Ryan] Zimmerman and one to [Adam] Dunn,” he said. “That kind of sums up the game. You can be on things, but you make that one mistake to those two guys and it's costly.”

See… so mature and only 26.

It doesn’t make Hamels less enigmatic, though. After all, some people find a path and that’s the only one they need. Hamels, on the other hand, has been all over the map, especially at the end of the 2009 World Series when the frustration of a mediocre season boiled over into bad body language on the diamond, a misconstrued (foolish) comment, and a minor tiff with a teammate. In Philadelphia, during the digital age, those things get blown up.

Philly ballplayers are supposed to take their beatings stoically. If a player like Chase Utley makes a throwing error, the pitcher has to be cool and can’t go skulking around the mound with bad body language or public displays of dissatisfaction. That’s especially the case during the playoffs where an error by Utley at Dodger Stadium sent Hamels into a mini-tizzy on the mound.

As the post-season wore on and the performances weren’t as good as they were the season before, folks started to turn on Hamels a bit. That was exacerbated by some post-game comments after a poor outing in the World Series when Hamels said he could not wait for the season to end. Sure, it came out harmless and was probably taken a bit out of context, but what ballplayer in the World Series wants the season to end?

How did things change so fast? How does a guy go from 4-0 in the postseason in one season to a combined 11-13 with a 4.61 ERA through the entire 2009 season?

Better yet, who cares? Based on the first half of the season Hamels has rewarded general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. and manager Charlie Manuel for their faith in him. Aside from the strong numbers, Hamels has regained his cool even when things don’t go well. Take Saturday afternoon’s game in Washington where Hamels rebounded from Dunn’s homer to retired five straight with a pair of strikeouts. He also whiffed the next two hitters after Zimmerman’s two-run double in the fourth inning and racked up eight strikeouts between the fourth and seventh innings.

The 7-7 record is not indicative of the season Hamels has had. Obviously, the record and the 3.56 ERA show a lack of run support. Considering that the low run support was part of Hamels’ frustration in 2009, the fact that he’s been steady throughout 2010 with nearly a full run less of support from last year, Hamels has impressed his bosses.

“I think right now he’s very good. I can tell you this, he should have more wins than he’s got—without a doubt. He’s pitched good,” Manuel said.

“Hamels is a big-time pitcher. If you sit there and watch how he pitches and things like that, hey, over the course of his career he’ll be known as a big-time pitcher. He’s a good pitcher and he’s smooth and he has a tremendous feel for how to pitch, and yeah, he gets hit some, but so does everybody else.”

As far as comparing the postseason of 2008 to now, don’t bother. Hamels, still far from his prime, hasn’t lost a thing.

“Talent is great. If you can’t see talent then something’s wrong with you,” Manuel said. “Hamels has got good talent and he’s a great pitcher. He might not have a 95-to-100 mph fastball, but he knows how to set up his fastball and when he’s throwing 93 or 94, he can put the ball by you. He can strike people out. That’s hard to find.”

It’s also hard to find a guy who realizes what needs to change and jumps on it. Hamels is still a work in progress — his metamorphosis is far from complete. Hamels refuses to remain static, which might be his best trait…

He’s not boring.

Philly boy Roy(s)... and Cole, too

His puffy eyes tinged with red and blurriness gave it away that Ruben Amaro Jr. had not slept much lately. If his appearance wasn’t a giveaway to how little he’d been sleeping, his voice did. No, his words weren’t quite slurred together, but they weren’t exactly robust, either.

No, Amaro wasn’t commiserating the one-year anniversary of the acquisition of Cliff Lee, which, coincidentally, was Thursday. Those no more lamenting the one that got away since it’s not unfair to suggest that the team’s starting staff is stronger now than it was then.

Instead, the Phillies general manager had to be thinking about the few mornings of extra sleep-in time based on his work transforming the Phillies’ starting rotation. Actually, Amaro just didn’t transform the Phillies’ rotation. No, that’s far too tame. Instead, those sleepless nights could result in the Phillies going to battle over the next two seasons—and possibly the season after that—with a top of the rotation that rivals any put together in team history.

See, from here on out the Phillies have three aces, a veteran wild card and fifth starter that performs along the lines of which a fifth starter should. In fact, if the Phillies get into the playoffs for a fourth year in a row, there is no team in the National League that can match up with their top three.

Seriously, what team wants to face Roy Halladay, Cole Hamels and the new ace, Roy Oswalt, over a five or seven game series? Sure, those are just names on paper and the game is, as pointed out by Amaro, played by human beings.

As far as that goes, with Thursday’s acquisition of Oswalt, the humans assembled by Amaro just might be the best trio ever to wear a Phillies’ uniform.

Halladay, Hamels and Oswalt? More like electric chair, lethal injection and firing squad.

After the 1916 season where Grover Cleveland Alexander (33 wins), Eppa Rixey (22) and Al Demaree (19) combined for 74 wins, the next best starting trio in team history was on the 1977 club that got 53 wins from Steve Carlton (23), Larry Christenson (19) and Jim Lonborg (11) on the way to a 101 win season and an early exit in the playoffs. The World Champion 1980 club got 52 of their 91 wins from Carlton (24), Dick Ruthven (17) and Bob Walk (11) with no club coming close since.

What does that mean now that the Phillies have Halladay, Hamels and Oswalt, three All-Stars and perennial Cy Young Award candidates?

“I think it’s time for them to go pitch and win,” Amaro said.

That shouldn’t be a problem considering the Phillies’ penchant for scoring runs and the fact that the Philly Big Three are hitting their prime athletic years. Yes, with the addition of Oswalt the Phillies’ budget is pushed to the max. In fact, The Big Three are owed $45.5 million in salary for 2011 on top of the combined $31.5 million owed to Brad Lidge, Raul Ibanez and Jimmy Rollins in the final year of their deals, with the $35 million owed to Ryan Howard and Chase Utley means many more sleepless nights for Amaro as he attempts to figure out how to stretch his dollars.

A baseball roster is like a human body in that if something is wrong with the foot, it could have an effect on the back. Everything is connected, and if that means eight guys are owed a combined $112 million, it’s going to be tough to squeeze in Jayson Werth and/or Chad Durbin when nine other players are owed $38.75 million if J.C. Romero’s option is exercised. That’s more than $150 million with eight spots left open on the roster.

In 2009, only one team spent more than $150 million in player salaries.

Want to guess which team that was?

“This is not easy and it’s not going to happen all of the time,” Amaro said, sounding a lot like a guy who spent way too much money on a really cool car that he wanted. “We don’t have unlimited funds.”

The Phillies have issues, too. For instance, they surely want to bolster the backend of the bullpen with a more efficient closer. They also could use a bat for the bench and a lefty specialist in the ‘pen. They could probably stand a few more seats in the ballpark in order to add on to the revenue from ticket sales, too.

But the bigger question is this…

Is it worth it?

Not since the Braves had Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz has a team in the National League had a top of the rotation as fearsome as the Phillies. The 1971 Orioles got to the World Series (and lost in seven) with four starting pitchers that won at least 20 games. More recently the Oakland A’s had a strong threesome with Tim Hudson, mark Mulder and Barry Zito before they were faced with matching process in free agency.

Heck, even Oswalt was part of a nasty group with Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte with the Astros (and Lidge as the closer) that got to the World Series. But for the Phillies? Yes, this is unprecedented.

That ought to make a manager like Charlie Manuel feel lucky, huh?

“I feel lucky every day,” Manuel said about his fearsome threesome. “That’s good. I like it. Five [ace starters] would be good, too. What the hell? I want to be the best.”

With the best starting pitching trio Manuel should be set for a franchise best fourth straight trip to the playoffs and it “sends a message that we’re all about winning,” Manuel said.

Combined, Hamels, Halladay and Oswalt have a Cy Young Award, a pair of NLCS MVP Awards, and a World Series MVP Award, too. Add in the 11 combined All-Star appearances and four 20-win seasons, and clearly the Phillies are stacked.

But it guarantees nothing. In the past the Phillies never won it all with three aces, though to be fair, they never had three studs like Halladay, Hamels and Oswalt before, either.

“I want the most perfect team I can get,” Manuel said.

Tall order. For now he just has the best team Amaro could squeeze in under $150 million.

The next big thing

DENVER — Hang around baseball long enough and you will learn some lessons, most of them the hard way. It’s guaranteed if you’re smart enough to keep your eyes and ears open. It doesn’t matter how smart a guy thinks he is, how many good sources he has or how many games he has seen in person, there is always something.

So the best lesson I’ve learned about baseball that has been incorporated into my regular, civilian life is a hard one. There is very little wiggle room in this lesson and it is deliberate and foolproof if applied correctly.

Believe nothing. Unless you can confirm something or saw it occur in front of your own two eyes/ears, don’t believe it. In fact, even then it’s a pretty good idea to go out and get a secondary source. For instance, if you believe Albert Pujols is the best hitter you have ever seen, it’s a really good idea to get some back up. Try to find someone who has seen a lot of different hitters from all kinds of backgrounds and ask for their opinion.

Regarding Pujols, I asked Mike Schmidt and Charlie Manuel if he was, indeed, the greatest hitter I had ever seen. Schmidt went so far as to demonstrate Pujols’ batting stance right there in the clubhouse at Veterans Stadium where he described the genius of the Cardinals’ slugger.

“Watch what he does,” Schmidt said, squatting down low with his hands held high, choking up on an imaginary bat. “He always goes in there like he was two strikes on him.”

The thinking, according to Schmidt, is that Pujols is always weary, always thinking and always protective of his strike zone. Pujols wasn’t going to give in to a pitcher’s pitch or chase garbage. The theory is to kill a pitch over the plate and if a guy is good enough to throw one of those fancy breaking pitches on the edge of the plate, just tip your cap and walk quietly back to the dugout.

After that Schmidt went back to trashing Pat Burrell and his lack of hitting acumen.

Big Chuck didn’t demonstrate Pujols’ stance or make any over-analyzed hitting theories. Instead, Charlie made me think and dig between the lines. He does that a lot, actually. A big one with Charlie is, “Watch the game.” That means don’t believe the hype.

“He’s up there,” Charlie said. “He can be whatever you want him to be.”

What does this long-winded preamble have to do with uber-prospect Dom Brown? Well, everything actually. The truth is Brown’s long-awaited ascent to the Majors has sent lots of smart folks struggling to control their emotions. Long, rangy, smart, powerful and fast, Brown comes billed as the ultimate post-steroid era ballplayer. What do you need? Well, guess what? Brown has that trait in his repertoire. He was drafted in the 20^th round out of high school as a left-handed pitcher because most teams thought he was headed for the University of Miami to play wide receiver. Since then he’s never thrown a pitch in a game and the only catches he makes are in right field.

What those teams didn’t know was that Brown was a baseball player who grew up idolizing Ken Griffey Jr., which is perfect. Brown, a lefty in the field and at the plate, could be a stronger, faster version of Griffey. If Griffey was the ultimate player for the pre-steroid era, Brown is his successor.

Oh yes, he’s that good.

That’s the hype machine talking, of course. Griffey, ideally, should be a unanimous Hall-of-Fame pick five years from now. Of course there were a lot of players that should have been unanimous selections in the past—Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Tony Gwynn, etc.—spring to mind, but the BBWAA votes on these things… what are you gonna do?

The question no one has pondered is if the hype and the expectations are fair to Brown. There is a lot of pressure put on the 22-year-old kid to live up to a standard set by others. Yes, it’s the way it goes in this over-populated media landscape of ours, but that doesn’t make it right. Too often we are so quick to anoint everything the greatest hero or flop of all time. There’s never just good or mediocre anymore—it has to be extreme.

We saw this happen to Burrell when he was summoned from Scranton during the 2000 season and we could not understand why the Phillies took so long to call up Marlon Byrd in 2002 because we were told he was going to be the next great center fielder. Eventually Byrd became an All-Star, but it took three teams and six years after he left the Phillies to get there.

Then there were the untouchables, Gavin Floyd and Cole Hamels. When the Phillies were hanging around the cusp of a playoff berth in 2003 and 2004 as the trade deadline loomed, Floyd and Hamels were the first players every team asked for only to be told to beat it or were given a counteroffer that included Ryan Howard.

It was the Pirates, not the Phillies, which backed out of the Oliver Perez-for-Ryan Howard deal at the last minute. Coincidentally, Floyd was included in the trade that sent Howard’s roadblock, Jim Thome, to Chicago in order to clear a path for Howard.

As Charlie would say, “Funny game.”

Here’s what I know… having seen Burrell, Byrd, Chase Utley, Floyd, Hamels, Howard and Brown play in the minor leagues, I’d like to think my eyes and ears haven’t mislead me. I thought Burrell would be better with at least one All-Star berth to his credit. Byrd was marketed wrong and probably needed a little more work on his makeup in order to be a star for the Phillies.

Utley was raw and no one really was sure if he’d ever be able to field an infield position. When it appeared that Scott Rolen wasn’t going to re-sign with the Phils, Utley was promoted from Single-A to Triple-A where he spent the season playing third base. Sure, he hit fairly well, but some are still amazed that Utley didn’t kill someone (or himself) with the way he played third base. But out of all the players listed, he has come the farthest as a player. No one expected him to be the best second baseman in the game. Burrell was supposed to have the career that Utley has put together and Utley was just supposed to be a really good hitter.

Who knew?

Floyd was a talent, but not as good as Hamels and certainly lacked that cockiness and swagger the lefty had even way back when he was pitching for the Reading Phillies.

Howard? Wow, was he smart as a minor leaguer. The aspect to Howard’s game that goes unnoticed is how quickly he can make adjustments and alterations at the plate. There’s a lot more than sheer brute force to what he does up there and the massive amount of strikeouts is a byproduct of something. What has been missed is the intelligence for the game Howard had even as a minor leaguer.

Howard and Hamels were the best of the bunch until Brown came along. In his first game for Reading last summer, Brown hit a home run that will go down as one of those legendary moments they talk about years from now. The problem with this legend, however, is that there isn’t much room to embellish it. C’mon… Brown hit a ball about as far as a human being could smash a baseball at Reading’s ballpark without it sounding cartoonish or like something conjured in a video game.

Even better than the talent, intelligence and everything else, Brown was grounded. People kept spelling his name wrong but he was too polite to correct them. When he answered questions he used the word, “sir,” and he wasn’t being sarcastic. Know what? Pujols did the same thing a decade ago.

For now Brown is perfect. His first plate appearance ended with an RBI double crashed off the wall. Famed documentarian Ken Burns was even on hand to see it, which hardly seems like a coincidence.

But Brown is also the one player general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. would not part with when he was cleaning out the farm system to get Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee. Brown is the chosen one even though Amaro went on Daily News Live last week and plainly stated that the kid wasn’t ready for the big show yet. Perhaps that was just Amaro trying to tamp down expectations in order to keep the hype from overwhelming us. A little breather, if you will.

Oh, but we know better. Amaro had no other way of dodging it. Money is always at the fore and guys like Brown (and Howard before him) have the natural flow of their development slowed in order to keep that arbitration and free agency clock from ticking. It stinks because there’s something truly sinister about those motivated by money over merit, but so far we’ve seen guys like Howard and Utley get theirs after toiling away in the minors for no good reason.

Maybe we are jumping the gun on Brown a little bit. Maybe he’ll be more Burrell and Byrd than Howard or Utley? Baseball has a way of separating the champs from the chumps really quickly. You can go to the bank on that.

But I know what my eyes have seen and I know that Brown made it through every level of pro ball with tons of scouts and management types watching his every move with the intent on prying him away from Philadelphia. There’s a reason why Halladay didn’t pitch for the Phillies in 2009 and it was because there was no way Amaro was giving up Brown to get the best righty pitcher in the majors.

Now both Brown and Halladay are teammates with lockers on the same side of the clubhouse. Chances are they’re going to remain so for a while, too. Needless to say, it’s going to be fun following Charlie’s advice…

“Watch the game.”

How can you not?

How deep do the Phillies' problems run?

CHICAGO — At this stage it’s pretty easy being negative. Considering that the Phillies have lost six of eight games to NL Central doormats Pittsburgh and Chicago, and struggled even to score runs off the Cubs at Wrigley Field, yeah, it’s easy to be down on the Phillies.

There’s a lot to be disappointed about, too. Cliff Lee is gone, traded for prospects that may not be able to help the club for the length of the next contract the All-Star lefty signs. Plus, because general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. thought the Phils were better off without Brett Myers, a pitcher who is putting together the best year of his career with the Astros, the Phillies’ rotation is left with Roy Halladay, Cole Hamels and a bunch of guys.

Sometimes those guys pitch well, but most of the time they don’t.

Indeed it was a tough winter for Amaro. Juan Castro, his addition to the bench, was given his unconditional waivers last Saturday. That was because Placido Polanco, the splashy free-agent signee of the off-season, had returned from a stint on the disabled list.

Moreover, Amaro called lefty reliever Scott Eyre’s bluff… and lost. Eyre claimed he would retire rather than play for a team other than the Phillies and kept his word. Future Hall-of-Famer Pedro Martinez was not offered a contract following a postseason in which he started 30 percent of the team’s final 10 games, including two of the World Series games at Yankee Stadium, and now also appears to be retired.

Both pitchers wanted to play for the Phillies, and certainly would have contributed to the team. But for whatever reason their help wasn’t needed. Hell, even Chan Ho Park took a smaller contract than the one offered to him by the Phillies in order to pitch for the Yankees.

Just to pile on, last-year’s free-agent signee Raul Ibanez has struggled after a winter where he had surgery for a sports hernia, and Shane Victorino seems unable to get a hit unless it’s a homer or extra-base knock. Meanwhile, free-agent to be Jayson Werth has turned surly and his attitude questioned as his batting average plummets and his strikeout totals pile up. In four games at Wrigley Field last weekend, Werth struck out nine times—the first five of those came in the first eight plate appearances where he didn’t even move the bat from his shoulder.

“Swing,” manager Charlie Manuel said exacerbatedly after a game in which the team racked up eight strikeouts looking as frozen as an angry possum cowering under the back tires of a car on a pitch-black night.

Meanwhile, Brad Lidge hasn’t been bad, but he hasn’t exactly inspired confidence, either. Ryan Madson’s season has been better known for his ability to kick chairs like a wacko David Akers more than setting up games. Off-season addition Jose Contreras has been inconsistent, while countryman Danys Baez has turned into another one of Amaro’s follies.

Quick, does someone know the opposite of the word, architect?

The most frustrating part of a season that has the Phillies fighting to make up 5½ games in the suddenly competitive NL East, and has driven Manuel crazier than anything has been the offense’s inability to score runs consistently. Post-game meetings with the manager are like summer reruns where the former hitting coach attempts to explain away the dearth of hitting and energy before finally giving up and falling back on his old standbys.

“You guys are stat guys... take a look. If you can't see where the problem is at,” Manuel said after Sunday night’s loss where the ace Halladay gave up six runs in six innings while a lefty named Tom Gorzelanny shut them down. “I don't have to sit here and say anything about anybody. You should be able to read the stats and read what happens and watch the game every night. I don't have to sit here and say anything negative about anybody. It speaks for itself. Nobody can take away your performance. No one can hide it, though, neither.”

The issue for Manuel is inconsistency. Lots of inconsistency.

“It’s the same thing every night,” he said.

Manuel is wrong about the inconsistency. The thing is the only way his team has been consistent this season is with its maddening and inexplicable inconsistency. For a manager who prides himself on his knowledge of hitting with intricate insight on nearly every hitter he’s ever seen, the lack of production from his hitters is especially maddening. In fact, sometimes it seems as if Manuel prefers the teams he coached in Cleveland even though they never won the World Series.

Hitting solves a lot of problems, goes Manuel’s logic. When a team hits, he says, mistakes don’t stand out and the pitching looks better if it’s not really the case.

“Everything looks good when you hit,” Manuel said.

In the interest in fairness, however, Amaro was able to made deals to get three different Cy Young Award winners on his team (even though he dumped two of them). He also put deals in place for Hamels and Howard. With Howard it appears as if the slugger will be with the Phillies for the rest of his career. Halladay likely will finish his career with the Phillies, too. Those players are a very strong cornerstone.

However, Lee is gone, presumably over money though we’ve never received a straight or satisfying answer as to why the pitcher was traded. That’s especially maddening considering Amaro threw good money at bad contracts for Baez and Castro, as well as a three-year deal for starter Joe Blanton at $8 million per season.

Moreover, the team will be saddled with $23 million owed to Lidge and Ibanez in 2011, with extensions for Jimmy Rollins, Ryan Madson and Hamels.

The bottom line is that the Phillies still need pitching and a bat or two in the outfield. Sure, Domonic Brown is on the way, but that still doesn’t answer the pitcher issue…

Or why two guys like Lee or Myers were allowed to walk away.

The winter of the Phillies' discontent

CHICAGO — Charlie Manuel was quick to tell his National League All-Stars that someone in the victorious clubhouse following the 3-1 victory on Tuesday night was going to enjoy playing Game 1 of the World Series this October in their home ballpark.

But Manuel was quick to point out that he wasn’t just talking to the players from the Braves, Reds, Padres or Cardinals, but looking straight at Ryan Howard and Roy Halladay from his club when he said that. See, Manuel very much enjoyed getting to the World Series the past couple of years and very much wants to pad his resume with a few more trips to the Fall Classic, too.

“Keep strivin’,” Manuel said. “I want to keep going.”

The want-to and the able-to are always so fickle, though. Absolutely, a third trip in a row to the World Series just might cinch Manuel’s legacy in Philadelphia — that is if he hasn’t done that already with a title in 2008 and a return trip to the big dance in ’09. No, the Phillies never have had a manager go to the World Series twice and only one other guy, Danny Ozark, went to the playoffs three times like Manuel.

Still, to hear it in the manager’s voice and to see the wear on his face following the 12-6 loss to the Cubs at Wrigley Field on Thursday night, the Phillies could be headed for a light schedule in October for a change. Indeed, there is trouble lurking in the not-so distance horizon for the Phillies and things could spin out of control quickly if they aren’t careful. See, this season Manuel’s crew is much more flawed than in seasons past. The inability to generate offense without a home run has caused some trouble, while injuries have forced guys like Wilson Valdez and Greg Dobbs into key roles.

Certainly games missed by Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Placido Polanco and Carlos Ruiz have hurt the team, but definitely not more than the pitching has hurt.

“We have holes,” Manuel pointed out after the latest loss that set the team to 5½ games off the pace in the NL East and two back for sixth place in the wild-card chase.

Manuel knows as well as anyone about the team’s shortcomings, but he only scratches the surface. Sure, the Phillies’ starters had an ERA of 3.95 and led the league in complete games, innings pitches and strikeouts-to-walks ratio, but those numbers lie.

Bald-faced lie.

What those numbers don’t reveal is that the Phillies desperately need pitching because they are all skewed by Halladay’s presence. Even the relief pitchers have fared well with Halladay’s addition to the staff because the corps of bullpen men have worked the fewest innings in the majors. Needless to say it helps that Halladay can gobble up nearly eight innings every time out.

So what happens when Halladay is taken out of the equation? Do you really want to know?

Try this out: with Halladay the Phils went into Thursday’s second-half opener with the sixth best starter’s ERA in the National League and sixth-best mark overall. But take Halladay’s 2.19 ERA out of the mix and overall ERA jumps to 4.43 while the starters’ sky rockets to 4.54.

In other words, the Phillies need some pitching… before it’s too late.

Now there are two ways to handle this—three if complaining about the Cliff Lee trade is an option, because let’s face it… it’s was a really bad move and could be the reason why the team has been so unhinged this season. No, trading Lee wasn’t the worst possible trade general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. could have made, but it’s up there.

Regardless, one way to make a charge is simply for the rotation to dial it up. Sure, Cole Hamels has been good this year, but he is also prone to inconsistency like the rest of the staff. If the Phillies are going to get back into the playoffs for a fourth straight season, Hamels is going to have to pitch like it’s 2008 or if he magically morphs into Cliff Lee.

Consistency is the key.

“Is it good enough? I don’t know. I mean we gotta pitch,” Manuel said. “If we pitch consistently, put it like this, for where we want to go we have to play high .500 [winning percentage] or low .600 the rest of the way. That means ours pitching has to be very consistent.”

Another way for the staff to gain consistency is to add a missing piece. Nope, unless Amaro has a time machine, either DeLorean model or hot tub, Lee is gone forever. It also doesn’t appear as if Pedro Martinez will be ready to help the club the rest of the way this season, nor does it seem likely that they can get a stud like Roy Oswalt since the y have a dearth of bargaining chips. Trading Jayson Werth clearly has become a very wise move because it seems apparent that he will not be re-signed, but what kind of value does he have?

A player like Werth would be desirable on a club making a push for the playoffs, but even there he isn’t very attractive since he likely could only be a two month rental. Besides, if a team is in contention, it is not going to deal away valuable pitching talent for Werth. That wouldn’t make sense.

Then again, trading away Lee and re-signing Joe Blanton for three years after he was shopped during the winter meetings only for the Phils’ to learn there wasn’t any interest. That’s no knock on Blanton, but really… why sign him for three years and $24 million when there is a chance to give Lee an extension?

It doesn’t make any sense.

Speaking of not making much sense, the decision to allow Brett Myers to walk away seems to have come back and bit the team on the rear, too. Making matters worse is the fact that Myers is exactly the type of pitcher the Phillies need right now. In fact, Myers is quietly putting together the best season of his career with the Astros, checking in with a 3.41 ERA in 18 starts and 121 innings.

Sure, there was plenty of baggage that came with having Myers on the team, but there was no shortage of enthusiasm. These days the only way some of the players on the club express themselves is by screaming expletives at a father and his son sitting in the right-field seats.

Maybe we can rephrase the old baseball adage by pointing out that a team can’t win a pennant in December, but this one just might have lost one last winter.

LeBron will make you go, 'Woooooooo'

Go ahead and admit it… you watched. Oh sure, you’ll say it was simply for the spectacle or the circus and that you really didn’t care one way or the other, but that’s bunk.

You watched and you know why you did.

Look, I’m into the show as much as the next guy. I like the insanity and hyperbole that rides along in a sidecar with media hype. The bigger, the better. In fact, if something is prefaced with “World” or “Super” in the title, sign me up.

Yes, more Super World Spectacular Circuses, please.

Now this doesn’t mean I think these are quality events. This is strictly about the hype and the over-the-top matter in which we often treat the mundane. I’m no sociologist or media critic, but the manner in which we produce and consume certain events has to explain something about our culture.

Yeah, deep statement, I know. But can you think of an earnestly produced “news” event that was filled with more hilarity than the LeBron James thing over the past few days? Frankly, it had it all. There was manufactured drama, fake emotion and overwrought victors and vanquished. Plus, there was Jim Gray, whose un-ironic seriousness for unimportant events is more amazing than anything conjured on “Dynasty” or the crew from the mockumentaries, “Best in Show” or “This is Spinal Tap.”

Choosing Gray over a character created by Christopher Guest or Harry Shearer for his hour-long ESPN drama, “decision,” was a masterstroke.

So too was the rant of an open letter posted by scorned Cleveland owner, Dan Gilbert, whose other claim to fame is that he is the owner of the company that makes the oversized posters called, “Fathead.” The company’s spokesman was alleged serial sexual harasser, Ben Roethlisberger. In addition to being the owner of the Cavaliers, a team that paid LeBron more than $62 million during the past seven years, Gilbert also owns the companies that created TurboTax and 1-800-Contacts.

In other words, Gilbert knows all doing big things cheaply and quickly. However, it is disappointing that he chose to address his pain over LeBron’s spurning of Cleveland with a letter posted on the Internet as opposed to a soliloquy with Mean Gene Okerlund at his side.

But yes, I watched the LeBron infomercial. That is to say I dialed it up on the Internet and viewed it while taking the Amtrak train home from 30th Street Station, with one ear eavesdropping on the conversations of my fellow travelers gripping their mobile devices and announcing the play-by-play as it occurred. Call it a live blog/tweet come to life all while using public transport.

That’s so much community and carbon offsetting in one cramped, tin can it makes me want to pile into a rubber raft and attack oil tankers… or at least find a recycling can for my water bottle. Amtrak, a government agency, does not have recycling aboard their trains. Yes, that’s the true shame of the LeBron-athon.

But that’s about as deep as it got for most folks in regard to the LeBron circus. People allowed themselves to get sucked in to take hard line stances on a particular side. The anger and indignation directed at inanimate objects like ESPN, Cleveland, Miami and LeBron James was not only so thick and rich that it could drizzled over waffles, but also was amazingly comical.

What we were able to deduce from the entire extravaganza is that the virtue sports fans most value from their athletes is loyalty…

Excuse me while I drop to one knee in order to catch my breath from laughing myself silly.

Another funny moment that came out of LeBron’s TV show happened the other day while Wilmington News Journal­ artiste, Martin Frank, and I were talking about it, when Phils’ skipper Charlie Manuel overheard us. For those who don’t know, Big Chuck was a pretty good basketball player in his day and had several scholarship offers to play collegiately, including one from Penn. Charlie is also a professed fan of the game and once admitted he “kept up” with the career of fellow Virginian and NBA star, Ralph Sampson.

Anyway, Charlie heard us talking and turned around with a question, “What do you guys think of it?”

Not feeling up to getting way too deep into it, we settled on Martin’s summary that “it was weird.” Which, to put it mildly, it was. The whole thing was weird. But Charlie spent a lot of years in Cleveland coaching and managing the Indians and might have more insight into the psyche of its citizenship than either of us. Still, when asked for his thoughts, Charlie just kind of shrugged. When it was pointed out that LeBron had “taken less money to go to Miami,” the ol’ manager had the best analysis of anyone in any type of media could have dreamed.

“Woooooooo,” Charlie said in mock, sarcastic awe.

If there is any way to describe the minute difference between an athlete drawing a $20 million salary or a lesser, $15 million one, Charlie did it with one syllable.

“Woooooooo.”

Exactly. Woooooooo, indeed.

Versatility has served Figueroa well

It wasn’t long after he had cleared waivers and was sent back to Triple-A when Nelson Figueroa took the mound and gave up a run. When that happened, the professional journeyman only had one thought…

“Well, I’m done,” Figueroa said. “I’ll never get back there now.”

The funny thing about the two runs Figueroa allowed for Lehigh Valley is that they were the only two he gave up in three starts covering 19 innings. In that same span the righty struck out 18, and allowed just 13 hitters to get on base. His 3-0 record with a 0.95 ERA was further proof that Figueroa could get outs in the big leagues.

Then again, this is not news. Figueroa has been that guy for a long time — the proverbial square peg in a round hole. Sometimes it seems as if the strikes against him are his age, repertoire or the location of his dominant hand. Maybe if he were younger, threw harder or was a lefty, Figueroa’s career would have turned out differently.

No one would fault Figueroa if he had some bitterness or had called it quits long ago. However, that hasn’t been the case at all. With an arsenal of what seems to be about 100 different pitches along with a handful of derivations, Figueroa is like a Swiss Army knife for Charlie Manuel.

In fact, this season Figueroa has started a game, closed one, come in as the long man and as a situational right-hander. Mixed in there is a week as the International League player of the week and enough frequent traveler miles to circle the earth.

To top it off, Figueroa is back with the Phillies a decade after he was traded from Arizona as part of the Curt Schilling trade.

It’s crazy to think that of all the players in that trade — Omar Daal, Travis Lee and Vicente Padilla — that Figueroa would somehow manage to find a way back with the Phillies.

Oh, but the right-hander has taken the scenic route. Last season Figueroa, from Coney Island in Brooklyn, made 10 starts for the Mets and has appeared in 32 games for his hometown team over the past two seasons. In between his 2001 season for the Phillies and 2009 work for New York, Figueroa has pitched for Milwaukee and Pittsburgh in the Majors, as well as Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Indianapolis, New Orleans, Nashville, Long Island, Buffalo, Chihuahua in the Mexican League as well as South Korea and Taiwan.

All told Figueroa has pitched for 18 different teams, which doesn’t include winter league when he was MVP of the 2007 Chinese Professional Baseball League championship series. Shoot, he even took the entire 2005 season off to recover from two different shoulder surgeries after tearing his rotator cuff.

“I can relate to that a lot,” said Manuel, who had a playing career very similar to Figueroa. “I played five years in the minors before I even made the major leagues and I used to get sent out some to play for some and then get called back. Yeah, I can relate to those things.”

Manuel went to Figueroa for two innings on back-to-back nights, which in the modern game is definitely old school. Actually, Figueroa would have gone back to the mound in the 13th for a third inning and was waiting on deck to hit until catcher Brian Schneider blasted his walk-off homer to give the pitcher his second big league win of the season.

Like a lot of ballplayers, Figueroa says he hasn’t thought much about how much longer he’ll play. What makes him unique is that with a degree in American Studies from renowned Brandeis University, the vagabond lifestyle of a journeyman pitcher is an interesting career choice.

“I’ve learned one thing in this game, you can’t control anything,” he said “I can only control when the ball is in my hand and I’m out there on the mound.”

This year he’s been in control, but for how long. When Chad Durbin returns from the disabled list after the All-Star Break, Figueroa could be caught in another numbers crunch and be designated for assignment for the third time this year between two teams in the NL East.

Still, it’s almost a guarantee that Figueroa will be pitching for somewhere for the rest of the year. It might not be in the big leagues, but as long as he’s still consistently getting outs with control over that vast repertoire of pitches, some team will want him. After all, pitchers that get outs just don’t grow on trees.

Why can't baseball make up its mind?

Just when you think you’re out, they pull you right back in. And this time it’s the veritable Mafioso of whiners and complainers out there finger wagging and indignation that seems almost unnatural given the subject matter.

That’s until we see that it’s July and the roster for next week’s All-Star Game had just been announced.

On the scale of injustices occurring these days, it appears as if All-Star “snubs” to guys like Joey Votto and Heath Bell rank right up there with racial intolerance, economic malfeasance and the BP disaster. Of course I’m basing this all off the acrimony and dissent put out on social media outlets, which I’m sure is an accurate representation of all trenchant discourse.

So at the risk of sounding like the PR department for BP, let me put it out there for all the outraged and disenchanted out there…

Get over it!

There, I said it.

OK, I’ll agree with the argument that Joey Votto, Josh Willingham, Billy Wagner, Miguel Olivo and Colby Rasmus should be All-Stars. I also understand that Omar Infante should not be an All-Star if not for any other reason than he doesn’t qualify for the league leadership in most offensive categories. But I also know that in this instance we should, to borrow a phrase, hate the game and not the player.

See, the All-Star Game and the process for which players are chosen is ridiculously flawed. If there is any injustice here it’s not that certain deserving players get left off, but the argument occurs as all. Major League Baseball wants to have it both ways with its broken and, dare we say, stupid system. It wants a showcase where fans can celebrate the game, yet also wants a meaningful contest where something is at stake. That’s not a case of making a cake and eating it, too, that’s pure intellectual dishonesty.

With its All-Star Game set up the way it is, Major League Baseball clearly thinks everyone is dumb… and that’s just mean.

In no other major sport do they pretend that an exhibition is truly meaningful and then hamstring the teams by forcing them to take players that may not be worthy. Just think how Charlie Manuel feels about trying to win a game that is being marketed with the slogan, “It counts!”yet being told that his starters will be a bunch of guys that won a popularity contest on the Internet. If that isn’t enough, he has to select a utility player, a non-closer reliever, and any starting pitcher to play in the Sunday game before the break is not eligible for the All-Star Game.

But you know, it counts.

If baseball wants to have a show, have a show. Do what the NBA does with its All-Star Game where it’s a weekend of parties, dunks and fancy, environmentally deficient cars, lots of showing off, Shakira, and at the end, two minutes of basketball played by the best athletes on the planet. The NBA makes no apologies, either. Instead it touts that it has the best All-Star Game out there and they might even be correct if only for the fact that it doesn't pretend to be something it's not.

The NFL does pretty much the same thing, only most players bag out of it since it seems silly to play an exhibition football game after a long season. Maybe the best way to improve the NFL Pro Bowl is to make it a flag football game, or a “Battle of the Network Stars.”

That is if such a thing as network stars even exist anymore.

I’m not even sure if the NHL has an All-Star Game, but if it did, even the hopelessly disorganized NHL wouldn’t put on an All-Star Game the way MLB does. It just doesn’t make any sense and everyone can see that. Think about it… you have probably been in fantasy football leagues better organized than the NHL and if that league sees the folly of the baseball All-Star Game, then it’s really quite obvious.

What Major League Baseball should do is make a decision whether it wants to have a showcase for its fans or a real game with its best players. Truth be told, there is no way to do both and even the most rational fan would argue that the best way to showcase a sport is to have the best players and teams in meaningful games. That’s what happens in Europe with soccer’s Premier leagues and Champions League. Understanding the simple fact that sports fans — the core audience for baseball, by the way — want their games with no frills, bells or whistles, soccer is perfect. There are no commercials, no fluff and no extraneous goofing off. For no more than two hours you are going to get the sport and nothing else even if it has to go extra time.

It’s so simple that it’s genius. If anyone wants to know why soccer is the most popular sport on earth it’s because they don’t get mixed up in all the sideshows or waste anyone’s time. Instead, they allow the fans to make that choice.

In the meantime, Charlie Manuel is going to Anaheim with a compromised club. Worse, he’s being told he has to win or his side won’t get home-field advantage in the World Series. Maybe if he truly was able to select his players it wouldn’t be so bad, but y’know, it’s a show…

Only it’s not. They say it counts, except it doesn’t.

Confused? So is Major League Baseball.

Helping out with the All-Stars

PITTSBURGH — Guys like me have no particular insight or influence when it comes to Phils’ manager Charlie Manuel and his decision making. Come to think about it, no else really does, either. Charlie is his own man and isn’t afraid to put his ass on the line.

The buck stops with Charlie.

So when discussing the All-Star Game and Manuel’s job as manager for the National League for the second year in a row, there wasn’t much reading between the lines. Charlie said he had a deadline in which to submit his roster and like anyone with a busy life and a job that takes him to place like Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, he was probably going to go right up until the last minute.

Actually, that makes sense because choosing an All-Star team isn’t exactly like writing a paper for an anthropology class. History doesn’t change, but baseball statistics are never static. Just when you think you have a handle on what the numbers show about a ballplayer he’ll ground out to end the fourth inning somewhere or some nerd will develop some new metric that revolutionizes everything.

Ultimately, however, it comes down to the numbers and more than anything Charlie will take a look at the more mainstream of them before submitting his selections.

And because we’re like that in the sports writing business, I took the time to come up with a starting nine for both leagues. No, Charlie didn’t ask me to do it and as stated earlier, it’s doubtful this exercise will have any influence. Truth be told, I didn’t even vote in the All-Star balloting.

But because there’s nothing else really going on and no World Cup action to tune in for, here’s my starting nine for the National League:

C — Miguel Olivo, Colorado
Actual pick — Yadier Molina, St. Louis
This was purely a statistical and offensive selection seeing as Olivo leads all National League catchers with 11 homers and 39 RBIs. Truth is I can’t really recall an instance when I saw Olivo play this season and his numbers could be inflated because he’s playing for the Rockies at Coors Field this season instead of for the Kansas City Royals. It’s a lot different when a guy gets to bat behind Jason Giambi instead of Alberto Collaspo.

Brian McCann of Atlanta just might be the best all-around catcher in the league and will be there with Molina and Olivo, though it would be interesting to see if Carlos Ruiz would have been in the mix had he been able to stay healthy.

1B — Albert Pujols, St. Louis
Actual pick: Pujols
I didn’t even bother looking up Pujols’s stats and I haven’t checked his line in a box score all season. Oh sure, Joey Votto from Cincinnati is having a monster first half and Ryan Howard has posted some decent numbers, too. But as long as Pujols is drawing breath on this planet, he’s in the All-Star Game.

In fact, Pujols could be 90 and retired for 20 years and I would write his name in for the All-Star Game. I wouldn’t even care if his UZR was subpar because Pujols is the best hitter we have ever seen.

2B — Martin Prado, Atlanta
Actual pick: Chase Utley, Philadelphia
Going by what I get to see on a regular basis, a guy like Prado deserves some investigation. Did you know that Prado comes from the same hometown (Marcay, Venezuela) as ex-Phillies outfielder Bobby Abreu? Or that last season Prado hit three homers with 10 RBIs and a .432 batting average in 15 games against the Phillies?

How about this one… did you know that Prado leads the National League with a .336 batting average and finished first in the player’s balloting for the All-Star Game? It’s true. Prado beat Utley in the player’s vote, 472-276. That’s right, Prado beat Utley like a gong.

Because Utley is out with a torn up thumb until September, Prado will get the starting nod for Big Chuck’s National Leaguers.

3B — Scott Rolen, Cincinnati
Actual pick: David Wright, New York
I have a confession to make and it makes me a little uncomfortable, but here it goes… Scott Rolen is my favorite player. Yes, Pujols is the best hitter I’ve ever seen. Much better than even Rod Carew, George Brett or Tony Gwynn, but if my sons ever are interested in playing baseball seriously, I’ll get a DVD of Rolen, pop it into the machine and show it to my kids.

Then I'd probably say something like, "That, son, is how you play the game."

Because Rolen plays the game exactly the way it should be played and it's not really very subtle, either. For now though, the kids like the big fella. For intance, my oldest likes Ryan Howard because he had a life-sized poster in his room and the Phillies’ first baseman has some flair in the batters’ box with that exaggerated trigger with his bat pushed forward like a sword and, of course, he hits a lot of homers. Kids like big dudes who hit homers. When I was my son's age it was Greg Luzinski that every kid copied. Now it's The Big Piece.

Meanwhile my youngest doesn’t know what the hell a baseball is yet, but he'll learn because he's a lefty. All they both know about baseball is that it often keeps their daddy away from home and that’s not a good thing.

But back to Rolen...

There are no hidden meanings when Rolen plays third base or circles the bases. It’s all effort and power with some finesse sprinkled in around third base with some glove work that even forced Mike Schmidt to admit that Rolen was the best he’d ever seen. There also is no searching for nuance, which somehow makes his game appealing. Rolen really doesn't have any style when he plays and anyone with a sense of fashion will tell you, sometimes no style is style.

If there is something beneath the surface with Rolen it's that he has an iconoclastic quality, if you will. It was something that the folks in Philly didn't get at all, and maybe the only explanation is it's some sort of Indiana thing that is ingrained with dudes from that part of the world as if it’s part of their DNA. Letterman, John Cougar Mellencamp and Larry Bird all seem to have the same kind of qualities as Rolen, and they all come from the same place. 

Indiana.

For some reason certain folks from Indiana react to every slight or insult. When he was in playing in Philly, Rolen looked like he played baseball because he wanted revenge for something. It was something to see. Sure, guys with his sensibilities have traits that can be a bit alienating, but whatever.

Do you think everyone likes Letterman, Mellencamp or Bird? Do you think they care?

As far as the 2010 season goes Rolen seems to be on the path for the comeback player of the year. Healthy for the first time in about a half a decade, Rolen won the player’s balloting by 30 votes over David Wright. Plus, with his sixth All-Star appearance, Rolen has the third-most All-Star appearances on the squad behind Pujols and Roy Halladay.

He's old, but at least he has his panache back.

SS — Hanley Ramirez, Florida
Actual pick: Ramirez
There are two things that are peculiar about Ramirez. One is to wonder how he would be discussed if he played in Boston, Philadelphia or New York instead of Miami. If he spent five minutes playing for the Yankees or Mets, folks would probably be talking about Ramirez as if he were the second coming of Honus Wagner. Instead, we get to chalk down Jose Reyes as the most overrated New York player.

The second peculiarity is that most people only know Ramirez as the guy who lollygagged after a ball and then battled with his soon-to-be ex-manager. Of course that has a lot to do with Ramirez playing in Miami instead of an actual sports town, but hey, what are you going to do? Ramirez was voted to start in the All-Star Game for the third time so it appears as if they’ve heard of him somewhere.

OF—Andre Ethier, Los Angeles; Corey Hart, Milwaukee; Josh Willingham, Washington
Actual picks: Ryan Braun, Milwaukee; Ethier; Jason Heyward, Atlanta
My picks are all statistically based because if I was going by what I have seen, Hart would never be there. Has there ever been a player that always ends the season with great statistics, but whenever you get the chance to see him play, he stinks? That’s Corey Hart for me.

Then again I’m probably focusing on Hart because he won the final five Internet balloting two years ago and I was unfamiliar with his body of work aside from the humiliating 3-for-13 he posted in the 2008 NLDS against the Phillies.

Besides, who didn’t love that tune, “Sunglasses at Night” by Canadian pop-rocker Corey Hart back in 1983? Just thinking about it makes me want to break out a key-tar and rock out.

Either way, Corey Hart (but not Corey Hart) is having a solid season. I still haven't seen him play this year and I'm sure if I did he'd go 0-for-4 with a couple of K's and a throwing error, but whatever. His numbers look really good.

P — Ubaldo Jimenez, Colorado
Actual pick: Jimenez (player vote)
Remember the first time you saw Jimenez pitch? It was probably in September of 2007 at the Bank or maybe even in October of that year in the NLDS. If you’re like me (and why wouldn’t you be?) you probably said aloud, “Holy bleep, what was that pitch?!”

You also probably thought, “I bet that guy is going to be a star if he can put it all together.”

Jimenez’s had what big leaguers like to call, “electric stuff.” He was raw back then, but threw 98 with breaking pitches that hissed and slithered like a snake. He was exciting in a way folks get excited when they discover a really good band that no one else has heard of, but now that everyone has caught up with the proper way of seeing things, you somehow feel justified and self-assured that you know baseball talent when you see it.

Hell, you might even be ready for a gig as a scout so you can go bird-doggin' around looking for the next best thing.

Anyway, Jimenez pitched the clinching Game 3 at Coors Field in the ’07 NLDS and held the Phillies to just three hits in an interesting duel with Jamie Moyer, which was his coming out party. People got a good, first look at him then though it took some time for him to get right here.

Two years after that rookie season, Jimenez won 27 games and showed flashes of brilliance though the rawness was most prevalent. This year, though, it appears as if he’s put it all together. At 14-1 with a 2.27 ERA, Jimenez already has a no-hitter to his credit and should get the starting nod for the National Leaguers.   

Interestingly, Halladay finished second in the player balloting behind Jimenez. However, since Manuel will be thinking more about his club than the National Leaguers, don’t expect Halladay to get into the game.

And that's it. There are you're National League All-Stars as defined by me. Get busy debating the merits of Omar Infante or Joey Votto. There's seven days to fight about it until everyone shows up in Anaheim for the big game.

Adapt, evolve, survive

Well now everything dies baby that's a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back
—Bruce Springsteen

NEW YORK — Now we don’t know what is happening with the Phillies. The issues regarding the collective offensive slump could be one of those fluke things or maybe even something larger at work. We’ll be able to figure out those things at the end of the season when we ask what went wrong or right for this ballclub.

But make no mistake about it… something is wrong with the Phillies these days and walking in to Yankee Stadium for three games beginning tonight is probably not the best remedy. After all, not only do the Yankees have the best record in baseball, but also they are 22-7 at home this season.

So as the Phillies hope for a resurrection and look for a big-time measuring stick, we can only project and ask questions. No, it’s not the best situation, but until something breaks it’s all we have.

The question:

Is this it? Is this 32-29 version of the Phillies — the team that is 6-14 in the last 20 games — what we’re going to have to deal with for the rest of the season? And if so, how did we get here?

No, things don’t look too promising, and though manager Charlie Manuel remains upbeat and continues to trot of the mantra that his guys will hit (and pitch?), secretly he is worried. Why wouldn’t he be? Manuel knows as well as anyone that sometimes the twists and turns of the game have a way of settling in. At some point the trends stop being aberrations or spikes in a chart and become the norm. Just listen to Manuel speak if you need proof. He’ll cite line and verse about a time when the Phillies dropped into an offensive swoon, stayed there and never really wiggled out of it.

It began, Manuel recalls often, with a 20-run explosion in St. Louis in 2008, followed by the thought that the Phillies were on the way to scoring 1,000 runs for the season only to replaced with the reality that the team wasn’t going to score many runs without slugging a home run.

Worse, the great hitting coach’s team went on to win the World Series that year not by slugging past teams, but with pitching and defense.

Of all the indignities!

In the meantime the numbers are pretty harrowing. Worse, the owners of some of the ugliest digits are the players the Phillies can least afford to post them. After tying Reggie Jackson's World Series record with five homers in last October's Fall Classic, Chase Utley has dropped off considerably. Though he clubbed 10 homers in the first two months of the season, the All-Star second baseman has not hit one since May 20, a span of 21 games. Uglier yet, Utley has batted just .153 in that span. That's far worse than the .230 with two homers Ryan Howard has provided over the last 20 games or the .164 average and lone homer from free-agent to be, Jayson Werth in that same period.

As the manager might say, “Not good…”

The most alarming of the team-wide slumps is with Utley, who looks as if he is a marathoner who hit the wall. It’s not that Utley isn’t posting the numbers because sometimes that can be subjective and/or not an accurate measure. No, the part that Utley barely has warning track power anymore is what is strange. Last year Utley was whipped at the end of the season because had off-season hip surgery, rushed to get back to the lineup and then played in 156 regular-season games and 15 more in the playoffs. It was understandable for a guy to wear down under those circumstances.

However, how could Utley look so tired just 59 games into this season considering Manuel promised to give his second baseman more days off during the season? Instead, because of the Phillies’ struggles it’s become a vicious cycle. Manuel can’t rest Utley because the team needs to win games, but by continually trotting him out there he has begun to take the shape of a pencil worn down to the nub.

There are other variables at work, too. For instance, pitchers appear to have regrouped after being bludgeoned during the so-called “Steroid Era.” In making up for lost time and fighting back against ballparks built to cater to baseball’s lost age, the big-league pitchers have mounted an insurrection with three no-hitters and two perfect games already this season. Those tallies would be four and three if Jim Joyce hadn’t missed a call at first base in Detroit two weeks ago.

Like any living species, pitchers adapt and evolve. So after more than a decade of being treated like chum for hitters, the tables have turned. For a team filled with talented yet strikeout-prone and flawed hitters like the Phillies, opponents finally appear to be exploiting certain weaknesses.

All of those theories and questions only create more theories and questions. Still, the only question that matters in the short term is to wonder how quickly can the Phillies adjust, adapt and evolve.  Because if the answer is not, “very quickly,” what we see might just be what we’re going to get.

Um... your town is cool, too?

Note: Variations of this essay have been posted on this space in the past, but since the hacky, trite, tired “city rip” pieces are en vogue, we reworked it and we present it again like new. Sorry, folks, if it makes you feel good about putting down another civic body, you have other issues… you know, besides being a hack.

THE TOWN FORMERLY KNOWN AS ANGRYVILLE — They handle defeat well in Chicago. After all, the Blackhawks, White Sox and especially the Cubs have taught them well. Just think how good at losing they’d be if Portland would have done the right thing and drafted Michael Jordan.

But in Chicago they don't mope, freak out, or litter the field with D-sized batteries during the action. They really don't even complain, to be perfectly frank. Actually, they're used to it.

They just go home. They leave early and fight traffic. They put the crippling defeats out of their minds by skipping work to play in the sun. They just forget about it as they frolic in those glorious public parks beneath sculptures created by Picasso and Oprah with cool drinks and lots of pretty friends.

Loss? Nah, they don't deal with it at all in Chicago. Who has the time? They actually have a beach in the city in Chicago. Life is good and they pick up the trash off the streets, too. Nice place Chicago… it helps them swallow defeat so well.

In Philadelphia we know loss all too well. It's in our DNA. It's intense... no wait, that's wrong. It's intensity.

At least it was.

Back in the old days we all woke up before the dawn just as the rage had regrouped so we could wipe the bitter-tasting bile that has encrusted the corners of our mouths with the outer black sleeve of our spittle-coated Motorhead t-shirts. Then we dragged our sorry asses off the couch where we collapsed just 45 minutes earlier and instinctively thrust a middle finger at the rest of the world.

The day had begun in Philadelphia. The fury must be unleashed. We lost again.

But there is always a fleeting moment — one that usually occurs in the time it takes to get from one knee to a standing position after unfolding oneself from the couch — when stock is taken. A moment, as fast as a flap of a hummingbird's wing, enters our twisted and angry heads:

World weary. Saddened by my years on the road. Seen a lot. Done a lot. Loss? Yeah, I know loss. I know loss with its friends sorrow, fury and death. Yes, loss and me are like this... we're partners as we walk on the dusty trail of life.

But something happened in October of 2008 when Brad Lidge threw that slider past Eric Hinske. Beneath that tiney, porcupine-like exterior, glimpses into our souls were exposed. There was warmth, fear, insecurity...

Victory?

Yes, victory. The Phillies won the World Series. The Flyers are going to the Stanley Cup (yeah, I said it). Both of these things are happening barely months apart. Kind of like it was 1980-81 all over again.

Is Bruce Springsteen still as popular as he was during the dawn of the Reagan Administration? Oh yeah, here in the dawn of the Obama Administration, an adapted Chicagoan no less, Springsteen is playing halftime at the Super Bowl.

In the old days during the B.C. Era[1], Chicago was a place that made it easy to look down upon with our sad, wretched lives of angry and failed dreams. In Chicago, with their manicured parks, gourmet restaurants, unimpeded gentrification, high-brow universities and gleaming skyscrapers the rest of us calls it the city of big shoulders. It burned down and rose again—bigger, better, cleaner, friendlier.

It gets cold and windy, true, but they take that in stride, too.

Those were the places Philly fans showed up en masse to watch our teams fight for our civic pride. Back in the old, B.C. Era, they saw us coming. We stuck out with that crippled walk of defeat, clenched jaws of stress and disgust, fists balled up and middle fingers erect. When we took the exit ramp off the boulevard of broken dreams to enter these happy, little towns, the local authorities were ready. They had been tipped off ahead of time and were prepared to set up a dragnet at a moment's notice.

But those condescending attitudes and the arrogance in which those people flit through life so carefree and cheery no longer sting. We don't turn them back with our jealousy and resentment. No, instead we take the hackery in stride. The mockery and stereotypes don't hurt any longer.

It's just one of those annoying things that championship cities are used to.

Hey, who knows... maybe there is a bit of respect coming our way? Oh sure, they still trot out the golden oldies:

Boo Santa. Cheer injuries. Snowballs at the Cowboys. Batteries for J.D. Drew. Cheesesteaks. Cracked bells. Anger and passion. Rocky Balboa.

But try this out... sportswriters are afraid of Philadelphians. At least that's (kind of) the contention of one mainstreamer writing for one of those new-fangled web sites.

Really? Uh... nice! So maybe this means that now that the proverbial shoe is on the proverbial other foot, the whole hacky city rip thing is finished? Instead maybe they'll write about the actual ballclubs instead of all the clichés?

Think so?

Of course not.

During the Phillies' run Charlie Manuel was often prophetic, but never more than when he said:

“Winning is hard. Nothing about winning comes easy,” the wizened sage of a baseball manager said. “... believe me, there's a price you pay for winning, too.”

That price can sometimes mean dignity, self-respect and the ability to think clearly.

We're inside the looking glass, people. The Phillies won, the Flyers need two more games...

All things considered, it ain't all that bad to be in Philadelphia. Let them say what they want because we win now. Someday we might even get used to it.

---

[1] B.C. is "Before Championship(s)"

The Meech abides

NEW YORK—There is something pure and wholesome about personal restraint. It’s one of those things that can make a person stronger or sharper. Sometimes withholding an insatiable urge can even make us better.

At least that’s what they say.

So what about the Phillies’ ability to just say no to scoring runs? Sure, it flies in the face of fundamental baseball theory, but the fact that the Phillies have only been able to score in one inning out of the last 45 shows the resolve of a Tibetan monk.

Take a second to think about how difficult it is to go practically five games without scoring a run… Then take a look at the Phillies’ offense and the fact that they slugged their way into the World Series for two straight years. That makes the fact that the Phillies have been shut out by the Mets in three straight games that much more incredible.

Charlie Manuel figured his guys would get one by accident on Thursday night against the Mets at CitiField. How could they not score one off Mike Pelfrey with runners at the corners, one out and the crafty Placido Polanco coming to the plate? It’s been well documented here and in other spaces that Polanco is one of those gritty ballplayers who do all the little things that don’t show up in the box score. He’ll hit the ball the other way, put it in play, and take a few pitches to extend the inning to allow his teammates to get a look at a pitcher’s repertoire.

Except, of course, when he doesn’t.

With the tying run on third base ready to dash home and put the Phillies in a game for the first time in nearly a week, Polanco didn’t hit the ball the other way. He also didn’t do any little things that don’t show in the box score or take some pitches. He didn’t do any of that. Instead, Polanco grounded into a double play to end the team’s best chance to score a run.

The ol’ GIDP shows up in all of those expanded box scores these days.

It’s not fair to pick on Polanco though, especially since he seems to taking it so hard. After last night’s game he admitted that he was incredibly frustrated by the team’s extraordinary restraint and didn’t attempt to mask his displeasure. Jayson Werth, contrarily, dealt with the frustration by shaving off nearly all of the hair from his face. But in his first game with smooth cheeks, Werth made five outs in four plate appearances by striking out three times and grounding into an inning-ending double play when he was able to make contact.

“No matter how you want to spin it, we're still in first place and we've got a real good ballclub,” Werth said.

Werth is right about that, and that’s what makes this uncanny ability to hold back so much more amazing. Figuring that the purification process in nearly complete, the Phillies are probably a game or two away from an offensive explosion.  That’s how it always happens, right?

“Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you,” Manuel said, but not in a way like Sam Elliott. It would have been better if he sounded like Sam Elliott.

Nevertheless, as written after the game: And sometimes you don’t eat at all.

At least that’s the case for a father and husband from Northeast Philly named Mike Meech. You see, so dedicated to his team is Meech that he decided to go through a purification process of his own just like the Phillies by staging a hunger strike until the team deigns it necessary to score a run. Since 5:15 p.m. on Wednesday, Meech has not eaten a crumb of food. Reports indicate that he purchased a stromboli for $15 to feast upon when the time was right, but Polanco, Werth and the rest of the Phillies had other ideas.

So now Meech is entering a world of pain. Mark it zero, dude. By the time the Phillies dig in against the Marlins on Friday night it will be more than 48 hours into the hunger strike. Needless to say, he’s fragile… he’s very fragile, man. He needs some nourishment and that stromboli is getting rotten waiting for the Phillies to score a run.

So we have to ask: Has the whole world gone crazy? Is Meech the only one who gives a bleep about the rules? A man has to take up a cause from time to time, and our friend Meech has decided that if the Phillies are going to go down, he’s going with them. Undoubtedly Charlie Manuel can appreciate the plight of one of his biggest boosters considering ol’ Chuck has decided to show more restraint when it comes to his diet, too. In fact, Charlie has been imbibing on a certain brand of diet food, which makes a hunger strike more preferable by comparison.

So when you’re sitting down to watch the Phillies tonight, think of Meech. Better yet, make a sort of Lenten appeal by standing with a man who has put his team’s welfare in front of his own. That’s right, I’m telling you to put down that fork and that hillock of food compressed into a box or a bowl and do the right thing.

Meech and Charlie will know about it and will appreciate the gesture.

What goes around comes around

NEW YORK — It’s nothing new that the Phillies are thetalk of baseball. Get to the World Series two years in a row and win the NL East three straight years and there’s a tendency for others to do a little gabbing. That’s just the way it goes.

Still, the Phillies could not have imagined that some of the guys on other clubs as well as the national media types would be talking about them the way they have over the past couple of weeks.

As Charlie Manuel says, “Not good…”

It’s bad enough that the team has been shut out twice in a row by the Mets and three times in the last four games, but it’s not worrisome. Teams go through those offensive funks every season and the Phillies are no different. Sure, the hitters “stink right now,” as Ruben Amaro Jr. put it on Wednesday, but stink happens. The 15 runs in the last eight games swoon will be corrected because all that stuff evens out.

But what should folks be worried about with these Phillies? Well, there’s a bunch of things. It’s never good when the manager complains of listlessness and malaise from the team during the slump. The fact that Manuel closed the clubhouse doors for a little chat after the latest loss to the Mets is a pretty good kick in the pants—probably a better reality check than the 13-0 on the scoreboard the past two games.

Eventually, however, the Phillies will hit. There’s no fear in that. Sure, it might start with one of those home run feasts the team is known for where the majority of the scoring comes from a few bombs, but whatever. It’s worked so far. Instead, the fact that other teams and making fun of the Phillies is a big warning sign of where the team is…

They are a big-market club just like the Yankees and Red Sox.

Look no further than the message on a t-shirt seen in the Rockies clubhouse this week with a not-so veiled shot at the Phillies:

“We have: 84 home games, Tasers, Roy Halladay, Your signs.”

[Note: word is the guys behind the shirt are from the popular site, Zoo With Roy. They sent one to Rockies' manager Jim Tracy and outfielder Ryan Spilborghs had one in his locker. See, you never can have enough quality t-shirts.]

Put it this way—they aren’t making up shirts disparaging the Royals or the Pirates. Nope, that only works for the Yankees and Red Sox, which should serve notice to the Phillies that they are one of those teams. Sure, they knew as much already considering it’s tough to go to the World Series two years in a row without going unnoticed. But maybe the Phillies were unaware that other players, teams and fans saw them as arrogant.

C’mon, admit it… if Shane Victorino was on another team you’d look at him the way you saw Matthew Barnaby or Danny Ainge.

Remember when Phillies fans took delight in being the spoiler? Those were trite and sad times that did nothing more than to illustrate how mediocre the team was. Like there was that series at the Vet in 1986 where the Mets came in with a chance to clinch the NL East only to go away with the champagne still on ice. Or there was that Labor Day game where Curt Schilling beat the Yankees with 15 strikeouts. Ultimately they were defiant, fist-in-the-air moments that added up to nothing.

Taking pleasure in slowing the trip of people going somewhere doesn’t change the fact that you are still a loser.

That’s not the Phillies anymore. They are the team going somewhere while a bunch clubs like the Mets are trying to ruin the fun. They’re making up t-shirts and everything.

So what’s the plan? How can the Phillies turn 84 home games, tasers, Roy Halladay and the opposition’s signs into quiet respect and humble goodness instead intense dislike and unrepentant arrogance?

Tough one, huh?

How about this: when another manager tells the media that your team is a bunch of jerks, don’t rub his nose in it and tell him to, “quit crying.” If someone wants to be a jerk there’s no sense matching that behavior. Nobody wants to watch a jerk competition[1].

Another good idea is to not trade former American League Cy Young Award winners. That’s just the height of arrogance, isn’t it? Imagine believing your team is so good that it can send away a pitcher who produced the greatest postseason in team history since Grover Cleveland Alexander for a bunch of prospects. How are the teams that don’t have any Cy Young Award winners going to view that?

And how are they going to react when they get two shutouts in a row against you?

If the Phillies had legit trade bait aside from Domonic Brown, I’d suggest trading to get Cliff Lee or Roy Oswalt and wait for the bats to come alive. I’d also try to remember that what comes around goes around. Nothing lasts forever, folks. Someday the Phillies will be back trying to knock off good teams going somewhere.

Anyway, we’re here at CitiField waiting to see what Charlie has to say a day after his meeting. Be back soon…

---

[1] There are more pithy ways to describe this contest that are more suitable to the popular nomenclature, but we’ll just leave that for Meech or Deitch.

No way to the no-no

There’s something about no-hitters or near no-hittersthat gets people to remember and talk about all the great pitched games they have seen. Watch a game like the one Daisuke Matsuzaka pitched on Saturday night against the Phillies and all those crazy memories come flooding back.

Dice-K came four outs away from throwing a no-hitter against the Phillies even though the hitters smoked about a half-dozen balls right at the defense. Finally, it was the No. 8-hole hitter Juan Castro who broke up the no-no with a soft, broken-bat single over shortstop.

Close but not quite there.

Having seen just one no-hitter and a couple of close ones, it would have been kind of cool to see Dice-K close it out on Saturday night even though it would have meant a bunch more work. Considering that Kevin Millwood’s masterpiece in 2003 was the only one I’ve seen—at any level—sure, pile it on.

So what were the close ones?

·         May 30, 1982 — The Blue Jays’ Jim Gott, in the fourth start of his career to get his first win, went six innings against the Orioles at Memorial Stadium before turning it over to Roy Lee Jackson to close it out. The only hit was a one-out single in the fifth by catcher Rick Dempsey, so the game was hardly dramatic. However, the game was historical because it was the very first game in Cal Ripken’s epic consecutive games streak.

·         Oct. 6, 1991 — Dave Hollins ended the no-hitter in the second inning with a double, but with six players in their first or second big-league season, plus the strikeout prone Dale Murphy all in the lineup, David Cone had one of those days. Cone got 19 strikeouts against the Phillies and had a chance to tie the all-time record against Wes Chamberlain and Murphy. Oddly, Cone didn't get that 20th strikeout, but he got Ks on the first six outs, struck out the side four times and didn't get a single strikeout in the seventh inning. Still, Cone had a chance to get 20 Ksin his 141-pitch three-hit shutout.

·         Sept. 26, 2001 — Randy Wolf shuts down the Reds at the Vet on Larry Bowa bobblehead night. This was back in the days when people would show up to collect their dolly and then turn around and walk out because they were cynical about the local ballclub. Nevertheless, this one was less dramatic than the Gott/Jackson combo piece since the only hit Wolf allowed was to second hitter of the game. Interestingly, the hit turned out to be the first one in the career of Raul Gonzalez.

·         May 10, 2002 — What did you think of Padilla this day? Well, he was pretty good. In fact, the enigmatic right-hander came four outs away from throwing a no-hitter against the defending World Champion Diamondbacks at the Vet. The first hit was a ground-rule double by pinch hitter Chris Donnels that bounced just inside the chalk line in left field and bounced into that area that jutted out in foul territory. Padilla was thisclose from getting it, but the two-hitter might be the best game of his wobbly career.

·         April 27, 2003 — Kevin Millwood got it done. The part everyone forgets about this one is that the Giants’ rookie Jesse Foppert tossed a three-hitter in just his second career start. Fortunately for the Phillies one of those hits was a leadoff homer from Ricky Ledee. Otherwise, Millwood might have had to go more than nine innings to get the no-hitter.

·         May 14, 2003 — This was just a two-hitter for Curt Schilling in his last start ever at the Vet, but  it was easily the most dominating pitching performance of any game on this list. David Bell legged out a flared double in the third inning and Bobby Abreu looped a single in the fifth, but no Phillie made solid contact. Mixed in with those two hits were 14 strikeouts from Schilling, which wasn’t as incredible as the fact that he threw 45 pitches that were completely missed by the Phillies hitters. Not a no-hitter, but it could have been.

·         July 25, 2004 — That chatty Eric Milton came the closest of anyone to getting a no-hitter at Citizens Bank Park when the lefty took one into the ninth inning only to lose it when Michael Barrett got a pop up double when center fielder Doug Glanville got a bad read and jump on the ball. The weird part was that manager Larry Bowa put Glanville in for defense in the ninth to replace Ricky Ledee, who happened to make two really good plays in center field during Kevin Millwood’s no-hitter as well as in David Cone’s perfect game in 1999. Nevertheless, Glanville went on to misjudge another fly ball in deep center that led to two runs for the Cubs. As a result, Milton didn’t get out of the ninth, missed out on the win, the shutout and the no-no. Rough day for Glanville.

·         April 2, 2008 — How about this… the year the Phillies won the World Series, they lost the first two games of the season to the lowly Washington Nationals. The Nats won just 59 games in 2008, which means after the first series of the year they went 57-101. One of those wins was a combined one-hitter from Tim Redding, Luis Ayala and Jon Rauch in which the Phillies whiffed only twice and scratched out just a second-inning single by Pedro Feliz. Worse, Cole Hamels allowed just one run in eight innings on a homer from Ryan Zimmerman.

So aside from Kevin Millwood and the time I took a no-hitter into the final inning of a fifth grade little league game for the Lancaster Township Phillies against the LT Giants (10 Ks and a run before the first hit), there really haven’t been too many near misses. Perhaps that’s why people tend to go a little crazy over no-hitters or why guys like Charlie Manuel don’t want to see them against his team.

According to Manuel, he has never managed a team that has been the victim of a no-hitter. Moreover, Chuck says the only time he was on the losing end of a no-hitter was in the minor leagues against the Cocoa Astros’ ace, Don Wilson.

Now Charlie says the no-hitter against his Orlando Twins of the Single-A Florida State League was in 1964, but considering the fact that Wilson only had two starts and one win in ’64, it’s more likely that Wilson’s no-hitter against Manuel and his teammates was in 1965.

Aside from the minor detail of the year, Charlie remembers the more important details.

“We had two people in the stands — a scout and a lady that was selling hot dogs. Seriously,” Charlie said.

No sense selling hotdogs when the only person in the stands is a scout, right?

“She started giving them away,” he said, noting that he probably took one considering he didn’t get much in meal money in those days.

“I might have, but I didn’t have any meal money back in those days,” Charlie said. “Maybe a buck and a half.”

Charlie likes to tell the story about the time he broke up a no-hitter from Catfish Hunter if it can be called that. No, his story isn’t completely inaccurate, but it wasn’t the most dramatic setting in baseball history, either. Manuel got Catfish with a leadoff single in the fifth during a game in Oakland on April 16, 1972 to start a two-run rally in a Twins’ 3-2 victory over Catfish’s A’s.

But, technically, yes, Chuck broke up the no-hitter. However, he might have been the only one to notice what was happening.

'Here comes a fastball in 3, 2... '

One of the better sports books I read over the past yearwas Joshua Prager’s, The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and the Shot Heard Round the World. The title kind of explains the story in which the book documents the events leading up to one of the most famous events in all of sports and the aftermath of its participants.

The event, of course, was the home run hit by Thomson off Branca in the 1951 playoff to determine the champion of the National League played at the Polo Grounds. Even before Prager’s book, Thomson’s homer was one of those historical flashpoints where seemingly every movement had significance and was chronicled in some way. In fact, Don DeLillo’s epic novel, Underworld, opens with the ball disappearing into the left field stands and retrieved by a neighborhood kid who snuck into the ballpark. In reality, no one knows what happened to the ball.

Imagine that… the most famous home run ever hit and no one knows what happened to the ball. If Thomson’s homer happened in our age there would be a court injunction or an Amber Alert to have it returned.

Nevertheless, Prager painstakingly researched the length to which the New York Giants went to create an elaborate scheme to steal the signs from the opposition. First, a member of the grounds crew set up a line of buzzers and signals from the centerfield clubhouse to the bullpen, where coach Herman Franks had stationed himself at a window with a pair of binoculars. There, Franks buzzed the signal to backup catcher Sal Yvars in the bullpen that was actually located in the deepest part of center field on the playing field. When he got the signal, Yvars would tip off the hitter by positioning himself a certain way in the bullpen. If hitters wanted the sign, Yvars had it for them.

In the book Yvars admits that he signaled to Thomson to be ready for a fastball from Branca. The rest, as they say, is history.

Using technology, like buzzers and binoculars, is a violation of the spirit of the game and probably a whole bunch of good rules, too. However, if a player (or players)are able to decode the opposition’s signals through wits or another team’s negligence, then there is nothing wrong with that. Better yet, stealing signs is an art form in baseball. No one wants to admit that they do it for fear of retribution, but trust me… the Phillies have a guy on the team who is really good at stealing signs. This guy once told me that he could pick off most team’s signs just one cycle through the pattern, but later denied this a few years later.

Oh yes, I know what I heard and that Phillies player knows what he told me.

There is nothing wrong with that. A good sign stealers is one of those intangibles like the ability to take a good lead or knowing how to read a ball off the bat. Anyone who complains about that type of sign stealing is a whiner.

And that’s exactly what Charlie Manuel called those complainers before Wednesday’s game in Denver.

“Keep crying,” Manuel said.

Of course, the Phillies have been accused of stealing signs for years, which is something Manuel always greeted with a wary smile when asked about it. Good, old fashioned sign stealing is part of the game and something old salts like Manuel appreciate. However, the latest accusation has some legs to it with the photographic evidence of bullpen coach Mick Billmeyer with a pair of binoculars and sitting next to what could be the bullpen phone.

So the Phillies were caught red-handed, huh?

“Absolutely not,” Manuel said Wednesday. “Absolutely [bleeping] not. In no way were we stealing signs. We don’t do that.

“I understand why they’d be concerned about it, but that’s the truth. We’re not trying to steal signs. That’s it. I didn’t know [Billmeyer] did that. He watches our catcher to help him where he’s setting up. It definitely had nothing to do with signs.”

That’s the Phillies story and they are sticking to it. But that didn’t stop Major League Baseball from issuing a formal warning to the team or the Rockies from piling on the accusations. At the same time, it’s OK to take Manuel at his word but that doesn’t mean anyone has to buy it. Knowing Billmeyer he very well might be checking out the catcher’s positioning, or scoping out girls in the stands. He is the catching coach, after all.

However, teams have access to tons and tons of video and if Mick wants to make a teaching point to Carlos Ruiz or Paul Hoover, he has all of those games and squats at his disposal.

Binoculars? It doesn’t look right.

Who knows if it is even possible to catch a sign and signal it back in to the hitter so that he can react accordingly. To do that, Billmeyer would have to be really good at deciphering the sign with a way to get his message across in seconds. That doesn't seem likely.

On the other hand, Billmeyer could spot tendencies and patterns to what the catcher and pitcher are doing and signal that in... but then again they can figure that out from any point in the ballpark.

So are the Phillies cheaters? Probably no more than any other team… besides, it’s not like they’re getting three extra home games or anything.

Wait… what?

Werth the money? The fans think so

Congressmen often make the assumption that the folks who write letters to their office typically are ardent voters. Certainly that seems like the proper conclusion to make since if people are moved enough to put their feelings into words, they probably will drag their rears out of the house and go to the polling place.

A similar assumption can be made by taking a look around the ballpark on Friday night. Indeed, it’s one thing to go out and purchase a team shirt with a favorite players’ name on the back, but it really says something about the fan if they spend time creating a sign or poster with some sentiment attached to it.

Think about like this: money comes and goes. Certainly folks waste a bunch of hard-earned cash on trivial things that they will grow tired of or too big for. Of course there’s always a chance that favorite ballplayer could get traded and there you are stuck with a Kenny Lofton shirt.

Hey, it happens.

But if a person wastes time, it will never return and can’t be replaced. That makes one’s time the most valuable commodity. It also means if a person gets out the markers, poster board and glitter gun, they are invested in something significant. What makes it doubly important is that if a person takes on a big project that sends words out for all to see. Moreover, carrying a sign with a message arranged on it means the person is hardly sitting on the fence.

That message… yes, they mean it.

So considering the number of homemade signs imploring the Phillies brass to re-sign right fielder Jayson Werth, an interesting predicament could arise if the off-season arrives without a new contract in place.

How will the fans get out the message if Werth is allowed to test free agency?

It could be an interesting development considering the Phillies are reported to have a limited amount of cash to spend on player payroll and a significant portion of that money already committed to some key members of the team. Plus, with Jimmy Rollins, Cole Hamels and Ryan Madson available for new contracts after the 2011 season, the Phillies have some decisions to make.

Based on the feelings put onto poster board on Friday night, the decision is pretty easy. Then again, it’s always easy to spend someone else’s money.

We don’t yet know what type deal Werth will be seeking come this winter, but it’s safe to assume it will be a bit more than the $7 million he’s getting this season. Sure, Werth should cool down a bit as the season wears on, but there are very few players in the game producing the way the Phils’ right fielder has.  Heading into Friday’s game, Werth ranked in the top 10 in most every significant offensive category in the league, including the second-best OPS and the most doubles. Moreover, based on the Phillies’ attendance at home and the amount of signs professing love for Werth, it’s difficult to envision a scenario where he is not playing in July’s All-Star Game.

In fact, Ryan Howard says the rest of the lineup is keying off Werth, who slugged his second two-out, three-run homer in as many days on Friday night. Eventually, Howard says, the opposition will have to figure out whether it’s better to go after the cleanup man or Werth.

“In time it will. It’s one of those things where I will probably get some better pitches, but now I’m just trying to get on and ride on Jay-Dub for a little while,” Howard said.

Oh yes, even with a late start to his career, Werth, soon to be 31, is becoming a star. When GM Pat Gillick snapped up Werth for $850,000 after the Dodgers let him go before the 2007 season, who could have guessed the player would be so beloved? Seriously, when the Phillies picked up Werth in December of 2006, the most common reaction was, “Who?”

Certainly Werth would have joined that chorus considering he was nearly out of baseball because of a wrist injury and had bounced around through the Orioles, Blue Jays and Dodgers organizations before Gillick snuck in and grabbed him. His career was over before it started until Geoff Jenkins was injured during the 2008 season and Werth could finally move into an everyday role.

“I don’t see any reason why he can’t keep it up,” manager Charlie Manuel said. “He’s a big strong guy with a lot of talent. I’ve said it before, but I see him getting better.”

But where Werth’s worth (like that?) is most evident is not from the prodigious numbers he’s posted through the first month-plus of the season. Sure, that stuff helps when it comes to contract time and voting on the awards and stuff like that, but Werth is one of those guys who can, in Manuel’s parlance, “be whatever you need.”

It’s not unreasonable to believe that Werth could be a leadoff hitter because of his speed and ability to get on base and milk pitchers, just as it’s not insane to see him batting cleanup. Sure, Manuel uses him for protection in the lineup behind Ryan Howard, and he’s come through with big-time slugging. However, Werth’s versatility is what the Phillies cannot replace.

“He’s playing very good,” Manuel understated.

And they know it.

“He’s just going out there and having good at-bats and he’s not missing,” Howard said. “Basically, he’s there waiting for Chase (Utley) and I to have good at-bats so we can get on for him.”

There is no way to forget Robin Roberts

Robin Roberts was one of those guys your grandfather always talked about. But rather in hushed tones and clinical recitation of the finer points of his Hall-of-Fame baseball career, your grandfather and the other old timers talked about Robin Roberts with excited exuberance.

See, Robbie, who died this morning at his home in Florida of natural causes at age 83, was a horse. He was the guy who started both ends of a doubleheader, or threw until there was no one else to pitch to. If he didn’t finish the first game and take the hill for the night cap, chances are he’d get into the game as a pinch hitter. Robin Roberts was a baseball player. Baseball players play every day.

Oh, but Roberts was a pitcher, too. He had to be. For a guy to rack up 305 complete games in 609 career starts over 19 Major League seasons, yeah, he absolutely had to know something about how to pitch. It was more than simply blowing the ball past a hitter or leaning back on one unhittable pitch in order to rack up all those innings for so many years without breaking down.

“I liked him when I was a kid,” Charlie Manuel said, noting that the high heat that Roberts was known for overshadowed a pretty nice curveball, too.

There was an art to his craft. Sure, there was brawn and strength, but there was guile, too. How else does a pitcher pile on seven straight seasons of 300 innings?

Yeah, imagine that… 300 innings. Do you know when the last time was when a pitcher got 300 innings in a season? Try 1980 when Steve Carlton got 304. Indeed, baseball has traversed through three decades since a pitcher accomplished what Roberts did as a routine part of the job.

There was more to it than that, though.

“The kind of person he was will stand out more than the numbers on the back of a baseball card,” Roy Halladay said, adding that he was overwhelmed to learn that Roberts wanted to meet him and sought him out during spring training.

“Everyone aspires to be that good.”

Halladay has been labeled as the modern-day version of Roberts, only he has only completed as many as nine games in a single season and topped out at 266 innings. However, like Roberts, Halladay rarely played for good teams (until now). The Phillies won the pennant in 1950 and were swept out of the World Series by the Yankees. So when one looks at the career stats there is just that one trip to the postseason. That’s it. Moreover, Roberts’ teams finished as high as third place just twice in 19 seasons. So beyond 1950 and two other seasons, Roberts’ teams were pretty much out of it by September. There really wasn’t all that much to pitch for since the season could easily be charted out on the calendar with no hope for a trip to the World Series.

Actually, after going to the World Series in 1950, the Phillies finished better than fourth place just one time in Roberts’ tenure with the team. Somehow, the great righty figured out how to win at least 20 games in six straight years.

Yet Roberts completed all those games anyway. He won 286 despite pitching almost exclusively for second-division teams.

With that in mind, imagine how your grandfather would talk about Roberts if he had pitched for the Yankees, Dodgers or Cardinals. Think about that for a second... You would probably be told that Roberts was the greatest pitcher of all time, only without all that exuberance. Had Roberts been lucky enough to pitch for a team in the pennant chase every season, you’d hear his name whispered in those tones reserved for Cy Young or Christy Matthewson. He would be seen as otherworldly and his stat sheet would be difficult to look at without breaking into historonics.

He could have gotten 400 wins with the Yankees.

But Roberts was of this world. He wouldn’t have been Robbie had he been the star of New York. You see him in those grainy old photos smiling and striking a pitching pose, hardly broken by all those losing seasons. Better yet, when he career had ended after hanging on for a few extra seasons with Baltimore, Houston and Chicago, Roberts was more than the Phillies greatest Hall-of-Famer and greatest ambassador…

He was the game’s greatest gentleman.

I’d like to think Roberts’ gentlemanly ways are what drew in my grandfather. Sure, those stats are amazing, and the kind of stuff to dig into like an old box in the attic filled with photos never seen before. Roberts was retired long before I was born and, ridiculously, needed 10 years for enshrinement into the Hall of Fame. But when he was in the room, flashing that great smile of his that shined from his eyes as if it were a floodlight filling every corner, you were sucked in.

He didn’t even have to say a word and everyone was charmed by his charisma.

I first met Roberts in 1984 just as I was heading into junior high.

Back in 1984 in the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C., I stepped onto an elevator with Roberts and he was kind enough to indulge me and my questions about the Olympics. I had seen where Roberts was a consultant for Team USA and with the L.A. Games quickly approaching, I saw it as my in.

So when I had the chance to shoot the breeze with Roberts again, 24 years after that first meeting, I brought up that ’84 Olympics team again.

They sure did. Mark McGwire, Will Clark, Barry Larkin, B.J. Surhoff and a catcher from Philadelphia named John Marzano took the silver in the first year baseball was re-introduced to the Olympics.
Strangely, the next time I talked to Roberts about Olympic baseball was before the last time the sport was part of the Olympic program.

Good memories. That was the charm about Roberts… he loved the game and he loved talking to people about it. He loved his memories and seemed to be part of a time when stories were passed down from one generation to another. Better yet, he wasn’t so self-absorbed that he looked down on modern players for not playing the way they did back in his day. He also showed no bitterness about the amount of money they make these days, either. He was wise enough to know that the game and times had changed and accepted his era for what it was.

The bottom line was that he loved baseball and life. To create an unforgettable legacy playing a game was a charmed fate for a person, and Roberts knew it.

The last time I saw Roberts was shortly before the 2009 World Series was to begin. Once again the Phillies were playing the Yankees, and Robbie riveted us with stories about closer Jim Konstanty taking the ball as a starter in Game 1.

“The Konstanty thing was a miracle,” Roberts said last October about the league’s top reliever starting in Game 1 of the 1950 World Series. “(Manager) Eddie Sawyer gave him the ball and he went out there like he was doing it his whole life. … That really was a miracle. If he would have won that would have been something they talked about forever, but because he lost people kind of forgot about it.”

No one will ever forget about Robin Roberts, though. Your grandfather was rarely wrong, and when he told you all about Robin Roberts, he was totally correct…

He was as great as they came—off the field more than on it.

Pitching help for the Phillies? Absolute-Lee

Following yet another poor outing from Phillies starter Kyle Kendrick, a rough five innings in a rehab assignment at Double-A Reading from Joe Blanton, and at least another three weeks on the disabled list for lefty J.A. Happ, it must have been difficult for diehard Phillies’ fans to follow the game between Texas and Seattle on Friday night.

Actually, following the inning-by-inning reports from Seattle was enough to muster up pangs of jealousy and maybe even a little resentment. Considering the Phillies trotted out Kendrick on Friday and will go with the aged Jamie Moyer on Sunday night, Cliff Lee’s debut for the Mariners was enough to make one want to beat on their head with a shoe.

Or something like that.

Nevertheless, all the old arguments and sports-talk radio styled knee-jerk reactions reemerged even before Lee exited the game after spinning a three-hitter without allowing a walk or a run in seven innings. Add in the eight strikeouts and it’s an insult-to-injury jawn.

That’s especially the case if Moyer rolls out a clunker on ESPN on Sunday night.

Nevertheless, not even 12 hours after his gem for the Mariners reports out of Seattle indicate Lee will likely be headed to free agency this winter. Given his consistency and the fact that his run during the 2009 postseason was the greatest by a Phillies pitcher since Grover Cleveland Alexander, Lee just might be able to demand the long-term deal he’s reported to be seeking. If John Lackey can get five years and more than $80 million from Boston, what will Cliff Lee get?

That’s going to be a big issue for the Mariners, a team that should be right in the thick of things in the AL West this season. Considering that the Mariners have the core group under contract until 2011, Lee should be the team’s lone long-term priority.

Still, from the looks of things it appears as if the Mariners are taking a wait-and-see approach with Lee. According, to a report from ESPN’s Buster Olney, the Mariners and Lee’s agent Darek Braunecker, are at an impasse.

“We're five months away from free agency,” said Braunecker, “so I think that's the most likely scenario at this point.”

“We've not really had any significant discussions with Seattle. I wouldn't anticipate a deal [with the Mariners].”

Now let’s trot this scenario out there just for fun…

Let’s say the Mariners fall way out of the race in the AL West by the All-Star Break while the Phillies remain scuffling along with some inconsistent performances from the starting staff. Perhaps even Cole Hamels’ inconsistency is enough to make some believe that the Phillies need another pitcher to back up Roy Halladay. Let’s just say all of this unfolds just in time for the July 31 trade deadline…

Do the Phillies again swoop in and make another move for Lee?

Since it’s not my money and I was on record as calling the trade to send Lee to Seattle a mistake, then yes, go get him again. If Pedro wants to sign up, go get him, too. After years of doing all the work in Toronto and carrying the Phillies through the first six starts of the season, Halladay deserves a little more help.

General manager Ruben Amaro Jr. doesn’t discuss internal matters, rumors or even share his thoughts on certain matters, so who knows what’s going on in regard to bolstering the pitching. However, when asked about the team’s pitching after Halladay’s spot, manager Charlie Manuel admitted he was a bit worried.

“I’m concerned about our pitching, really,” Manuel said. “We have to show that we can pitch and we gotta show that we can be consistent doing it. But you have to have confidence in your pitchers. I’ve seen our guys pitch and we have to get Happ and Blanton back, though. And the guys we have I have confidence in them, but they have to do the job.”

No one needed to watch Halladay spin a three-hit shutout over the Mets to know he was a good pitcher. After six starts the righty leads the league in innings with 49 to go with the 5-1 record and 1.47 ERA. But take that out of the mix and the Phils’ starters are 5-5 with a 5.18 ERA while allowing the opposition to hit .283 off of them in 17 starts.

If Lee isn’t an option, maybe Roy Oswalt will be one. Either way, the Phillies need some help.