{"id":1975,"date":"2011-06-07T15:04:38","date_gmt":"2011-06-07T19:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=1975"},"modified":"2011-06-07T15:04:38","modified_gmt":"2011-06-07T19:04:38","slug":"phillies-report-card-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=1975","title":{"rendered":"Phillies Report Card #6"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u00a0<\/strong><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/div>\n
\"\"

Dom Brown had some clutch hits<\/p><\/div>\n

Record since last Report Card:<\/strong> 5-5<\/p>\n

Overall Record:\u00a0 <\/strong>36-24 (1st in division)<\/p>\n

Throughout the season (roughly every 10 games) we\u2019ll review how the Phils have been performing over the past week or two and hand out some grades.\u00a0 These grades reflect the team\u2019s performance since the previous Report Card.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Phils hit the 60-game mark playing mediocre ball, yet still find themselves with the best record in baseball and the biggest division lead, 4 games over Atlanta and Florida.\u00a0 It’s hard to feel overly optimistic though when they lost four consecutive games last week to the Nationals and Pirates.\u00a0 On to the grades…<\/p>\n

Position Players:
\n<\/strong>Stop me if you’ve heard this before: it looked like the offense was starting to come together but then, suddenly, it wasn’t at all.\u00a0 On the heels of a 9-game stretch without scoring more than 3 runs, they had scored at least 5 runs in\u00a07 of\u00a08 games after a 5-4 win over the Nats last Monday.\u00a0 Then, against the vaunted Nationals and Pirates pitching staffs, the wheels fell off again.\u00a0 They scored 4 runs combined over the next 30 innings, and have now failed to score more than 3 runs in 5 of their last 6 contests.<\/p>\n

The big positive story of these 10 games was the first sustained big league success for Dom Brown.\u00a0 He hit .375 (12-32), with 3 doubles and a homer.\u00a0 He came up\u00a0big in the clutch last Friday in New York.\u00a0 In the 8th inning, he singled, stole second, and then scored the tying run on a Rollins double.\u00a0 The next inning, he knocked in Ruiz with a single for the game-winning RBI.\u00a0 He had his first start against a left-hander last night, and it appears as though he’s laid claim to the RF job, hopefully for a long time to come.<\/p>\n

The other positives came from the table-setters.\u00a0 Rollins and Polanco combined to hit .301 (22-78), with Rollins also stealing\u00a0five bases in six games before he\u00a0fouled a\u00a0ball off his knee on Saturday.\u00a0 He hasn’t played since, but should be\u00a0back any day.\u00a0 Polanco, of course, has\u00a0been the lone bright spot practically all season for this line-up.<\/p>\n

On the negative side,\u00a0despite homering in back-to-back games, Ibanez hit just .194.\u00a0 Victorino returned from his injury but is just 3-16 so far.\u00a0 Mayberry hit .217 before being optioned back to AAA when Victorino returned.<\/p>\n

Defensively, it wasn’t the cleanest stretch, as the team committed six errors in these 10 games.<\/p>\n

Grade<\/em>: C-<\/strong><\/p>\n

Starting Pitchers:
\n<\/strong>Yet another decent but far from great stretch of\u00a0outings from the starting rotation.\u00a0 Hamels and Oswalt each turned in\u00a0two strong starts.\u00a0 Hamels allowed 3 earned runs in 15 innings, picking up a win and a no-decision.\u00a0 Cole now leads the league in WHIP (0.97) and has positioned himself (along with Halladay) in the early Cy Young conversation.\u00a0 Oswalt also gave up just 3 earned runs, but he only threw 11 innings.\u00a0 He’s been great, but two underlying causes for concern:\u00a0 his strike-out rate is well below his career average, and he’s pitched past the 6th inning just once all season.<\/p>\n

Halladay and Lee continued a\u00a0recent trend of alternating excellent and mediocre starts.\u00a0 Halladay was touched for 4 runs on 10 hits by the\u00a0Nats but\u00a0then\u00a0gave up just 2 runs in 7 innings\u00a0to beat the Pirates.\u00a0 Lee had his worst start of the year, giving up 6 runs in a loss in Washington, but came back with\u00a0the Start of the Week last night, striking out 10\u00a0Dodgers\u00a0over seven\u00a0shutout innings.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0other two starts were made by Worley and\u00a0Kendrick.\u00a0 Worley really struggled, surrendering 8 runs (5 earned) and 12 hits\u00a0over\u00a03 innings against the Mets before heading back to AAA.\u00a0 Kendrick was defeated by the Pirates after giving up 4 runs in 5 innings.<\/p>\n

Grade:\u00a0 <\/em>B-<\/strong><\/p>\n

Relief Pitchers:
\n<\/strong>If you take away Danys Baez (which the Phillies might do soon enough following two more poor outings) then the ‘pen had another fantastic stretch of games.\u00a0 Yes, Ryan Madson did give up a run in two separate outings, but he still converted all four of his save opportunities.\u00a0 In the past, Madson seemed to find a way to blow a save opp, now he finds a way to close the door.<\/p>\n

The battle for the 8th inning set-up job, between Contreras and Bastardo, continued.\u00a0 Contreras gave up a run 2.2 IP, and Bastardo may have the upper-hand at the moment, as he allowed no runs and just one hit in 5 IP, though he did walk four.\u00a0 Stutes continued his solid season, allowing one run in 4 IP.<\/p>\n

Grade:\u00a0 <\/em>B+<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 Record since last Report Card: 5-5 Overall Record:\u00a0 36-24 (1st in division) Throughout the season (roughly every 10 games) we\u2019ll review how the Phils have been performing over the past week or two and hand out some grades.\u00a0 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[628,655,222,807,14,653,16,788,322,213],"class_list":["post-1975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb","tag-antonio-bastardo","tag-cliff-lee","tag-cole-hamels","tag-domonic-brown","tag-jimmy-rollins","tag-john-mayberry","tag-phillies","tag-placido-polanco","tag-roy-oswalt","tag-ryan-madson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1975"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1983,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975\/revisions\/1983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}