He's baaaaack!

It's official. The Phillies have signed Jose Mesa to a Major League contract. He will take Freddy Garcia's spot on the roster after the right-hander was placed on the 15-day disabled list on Saturday.

As for Mesa, skipper Charlie Manuel says the 41-year old vet will be thrown into the mix.

"I'll pitch him wherever we need him," Manuel said. "He's always been the kind of guy who stayed in shape and worked hard and everything. And his experience speaks for itself. Is there a place where he can pitch on our team? Yeah."

Jose Mesa to the rescue!

Wait… didn’t the Phillies just sweep the Mets at Shea?

It didn’t take Johnny Sain or Kreskin to figure out something was wrong with Freddy Garcia last night in Kansas City. From the first pitch it appeared as if Garcia, the Phillies’ big off-season acquisition, was even more out of sorts than usual. His pacing around the mound looked much more deliberate and his pace slowed from its normal pedestrian rate to a crawl.

Instead of using an hour glass to time Garcia’s sauntering between pitches, the league shifted to a sundial.

But more than Garcia’s unhurried work, the most telling part of the short, five outs outing against the lowly Kansas City Royals was the big pitcher’s velocity. Instead of topping the 90-mph mark, Garcia struggled to throw his fastball in the mid-80s. He would have had difficulty breaking a pane of glass with his heater.

Jamie Moyer could have thrown a fastball with more alacrity.

“When I took him out of the game, I walked him downstairs and started talking to him,” manager Charlie Manuel said. “I asked him his shoulder. I told him if he's hurt, I don't want him pitching. I told him, ‘The way you're throwing, it definitely looks like to me that you're hurt.’ He's a mentally tough guy and wants to pitch, but at the same time -- then he told me his shoulder was sore.”

So here we go again. Suddenly the team’s big off-season pick-up appears to be injured again. Though Garcia won’t be examined until Monday in Philadelphia -- coincidentally when his former team the Chicago White Sox turn up at the Bank -- another trip to the disabled list appears inevitable.

“I told him, basically, I do not want somebody who is hurt pitching,” Manuel said. “I want you pitching 100 percent. If there is anything wrong with you, I have to know it. He wanted to talk about it. He was upset because his performance wasn't good. We'll check him out and see what's wrong with him.”

Said Garcia: “Monday I'll check it out and see what's going on with my shoulder. I've got to stop pitching. I don't want to pitch the way I've been pitching. If it is not 100 percent in my shoulder, there's nothing I can do.”

If you are scoring at home, that’s pitchers Garcia, Brett Myers and Tom Gordon out with shoulder ailments. In the minors, pitchers Kyle Drabek, Joe Bisenius and J.A. Happ are all on the disabled list.

What the… ?

With Garcia likely headed to the disabled list for the second time before the season has come close to reaching the halfway point, the question seems to be when was the pitcher hurt and didn’t he have a physical before the trade with the White Sox?

Whatever the answers are, it appears as if Andy Ashby’s short time with the Phillies in 2000 will be better than Garcia’s in 2007.

***
So with Garcia headed out what do the Phillies do? Why sign Jose Mesa to a minor league deal, of course.

The Phillies won’t confirm it, but everyone seems to know that the club’s all-time saves leader is making his big comeback to Philadelphia and should join the club in Kansas City.

Needless to say, most fans aren’t too pleased about Mesa’s prodigal return to one of his old teams, but whatever. If he can pitch a little bit, and he was decent in 79 games for the Rockies last year, it’s a good move. If he continues to pitch like he did for the Tigers in 16 appearances this season (12.34 ERA), release him.

No big whoop.

***
Speaking of no big whoop, general manager Pat Gillick reiterated that he is not leaving the Phillies to become the president of the Seattle Mariners.

***
Remember how we wrote yesterday that it seems as if the Mets’ Paul Lo Duca is a jerk? Well, apparently Cole Hamels thinks so, too. Hamels, according to the story in the Wilmington News Journal says Lo Duca acted like an amateur after his sixth-inning home run on Thursday night.

“You need to act like you've done it before,” Hamels told bulldog scribe Scott Lauber. “He's a veteran. He should know better. It's the old sacred game thing. There are little kids out there that are looking up to you. They look at what happens. That's not the right way to do things.”

Then again, Lo Duca appears to have a history of doing things the wrong way.

One coming in and one going out?

With a report out there that the Phillies are bringing back their all-time saves leader, Jose Mesa, it only figures that another pitcher is on the way out… perhaps. Reports from the Phillies' clubhouse are that Freddy Garcia has soreness in his right shoulder and will see team physician Dr. Michael Ciccotti on Monday.

Whispers are that Garcia has been hurt all season long and is just now up to admitting it. Does it have anything to do with six-run second inning the Kansas City Royals posted on him Friday night? Who knows. Either way, Garcia was torched for six runs and seven hits while getting just five outs against the Royals.

New York state of mind

Just how are we expected to sleep at night knowing that a menace to society like Paris Hilton is out of the slammer and under house arrest? Someone please answer that question…

***
Speaking of slammers and dubious fame, Jimmy Rollins, author of the “team to beat” quote that whips the partisans into a lather whenever he shows up at Shea Stadium, had a pretty big game last night.

And it’s pretty safe to assume that he enjoyed every second of it.

“It's a great place to do it, in New York against this team,” Rollins said after the game.

Rollins, of course, slugged a two-out, two-strike three-run home run in the top of the seventh to resuscitate the Phillies’ silent offense and lead the way to a 4-2 victory. The most important part is that the Phillies climbed over the .500 mark again and have a chance to go for the sweep over the Mets tonight when Cole Hamels pitches against John Maine.

For any fan of young, stud pitchers, tonight is the game to watch.

For now, though, Rollins gets another game at Shea until mid-September which means the fans there get to boo him for his game-winning homer and innocuous comments.

Seriously, why do fans get worked up over something so mundane as a guy believing his team is good? Someday, perhaps, I’ll get it… then again, probably not.

Be that as it may, the idea of Rollins becoming a villain to the New York sports’ fans has been floated out there, though Rollins says he doesn’t think he’ll ever reach the heights of hatred that Reggie Miller or someone like that.

“I think I smile too much,” Rollins laughed. “Maybe if I was a mean guy I'd make for a good villain. But I enjoy playing the game. Eventually you get tired being mad at a happy guy.”

Nah, Reggie Miller seems to be a happy-go-lucky guy and it didn’t seem as if the New Yorkers ever got tired of booing him. Then again, Michael Jordan used to carve the Knicks apart and that didn’t stop anyone in the Big Apple from buying Nikes.

Nevertheless, Rollins says he wouldn’t mind becoming an assassin like Reggie Miller.

“I hope I could be a Reggie Miller. Shoot, that would be great.”

Of course Reggie Miller was disliked for what he did to the New York fans during the playoffs. Rollins and the Phillies will have to get there for the rivalry to really bloom.

***
If there is one thing we learned about Jose Mesa back when he was saving more games than any pitcher in Phillies’ history it was the big fella was really in good shape. It might not have looked that way to an outsider, but there were very few players on those Phillies’ teams that worked out as much or as hard as Joe Table.

Perhaps that’s why Mesa, listed as 41 years old, is getting another look-see after being released from the Detroit Tigers. Nothing is promised now, but reports are that the Phillies will work out the veteran reliever to see whether he could be a worthy addition to the front-end of the bullpen.

Hey, what does it hurt?

Mesa saved 111 games for the Phillies from 2001 to 2003and he saved 320 games (including 70 for the Pirates in 2004 and 2005) during his 19-season career. But after putting together a solid season for the Colorado Rockies in 2006 (3.86 ERA in 79 games), Mesa has struggled for the Tigers this season. So far he’s been in 16 games and has a not-so sharp 12.34 ERA.

Nonetheless, if the Phillies like anything about Mesa it wouldn’t be too difficult to find a spot for him in the ‘pen.

***
Here’s some good news if you like to drink coffee… it’s really, really good for you.

According to a new meta-analysis in the magazine Gastroenterology, there is a strong likelihood that caffeine consumption decreases your risk of liver cancer. Even better, according to a study in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, caffeine consumption could make you a faster runner – actually 1 percent faster if you have a penchant for distance running.

The best part: a 23-year study of 13,000 Californians in Preventive Medicine found that moderate caffeine consumers had a significantly reduced risk of death.

So get out there and get drinking. It will make you faster for a long time.