{"id":390,"date":"2009-10-03T09:38:03","date_gmt":"2009-10-03T13:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=390"},"modified":"2009-10-03T09:38:23","modified_gmt":"2009-10-03T13:38:23","slug":"baseball-quick-hits-heading-into-the-final-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=390","title":{"rendered":"Baseball Quick Hits Heading Into the Final Weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"1\" vspace=\"5\" align=\"left\" width=\"300\" src=\"http:\/\/sonsofsimmons.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/t1_todd_helton.jpg\" hspace=\"5\" alt=\"helton\" height=\"373\" \/>Some news and thoughts as the regular season comes to a close:<\/p>\n<p>-The four NL playoff teams are set in stone, but the first-round matchups are still impossible to predict.\u00a0 With two games left, the four teams are all within two games of each other.\u00a0 Three teams (the Phillies, Dodgers, and, amazingly, Rockies) still have a shot at the top seed.\u00a0 We know the Phillies will be playing the Dodgers or Rockies (we&#8217;ve known that for about a month), but we don&#8217;t know who will have home-field advantage, in either case.\u00a0 I think it&#8217;s pretty important that the Phils have a strong showing this weekend, because I don&#8217;t want to play\u00a0a Rockies team coming off a sweep of the Dodgers to take the division, or play the Dodgers without home-field advantage.\u00a0 With wins today and tomorrow, the Phils can guarantee themselves a good position for the NLDS.<\/p>\n<p>-With that in mind, the Phils are sending Cole Hamels to the hill for today&#8217;s game.\u00a0 They haven&#8217;t announced this, but this pretty much means that Hamels will not be starting Game 1 of the NLDS on Wednesday.\u00a0 The team has suggested that they might limit his pitches today, but I don&#8217;t think it makes sense to have him start Game 1 out of his normal routine of four days off, and I think the team knows this.\u00a0 If it had been my decision, Cole would have pitched on Friday night and been in line to go in Game 1, but now that he&#8217;s pitching today, I think it would be a pretty bad move.\u00a0 It looks like Cliff Lee will get the ball on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>-Some really bad news about the bullpen yesterday:\u00a0 J.C. Romero is <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.philly.com\/philly\/sports\/20091003_Phillies_Notes__A_final_blow_ends_Romero_s_tough_season.html\" title=\"romero park\">done for the season<\/a> and Chan Ho Park will be out at <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"1\" vspace=\"5\" align=\"right\" width=\"275\" src=\"http:\/\/www3.allaroundphilly.com\/blogs\/delcotimes\/ryanl\/uploaded_images\/JCRomero-780358.jpg\" hspace=\"5\" alt=\"romero\" height=\"235\" \/>least until the NLCS.\u00a0 The team couldn&#8217;t be sure what they would get from Romero anyway, but he was such a huge part of the &#8216;pen last year and, really, such a huge part of the World Series title.\u00a0 Assuming the Phils put eleven pitchers on the roster for the NLDS, it will likely be the following: Lee, Hamels, Joe Blanton, Pedro Martinez, J.A. Happ, Brad Lidge, Ryan Madson, Scott Eyre, Brett Myers, Chad Durbin, and Clay Condrey.\u00a0 Tyler Walker and Sergio Escalona are other bullpen options.\u00a0 If the team decides that Happ will be in the rotation, then Escalona would have to be considered to add another lefty to the &#8216;pen, alongside Eyre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some news and thoughts as the regular season comes to a close: -The four NL playoff teams are set in stone, but the first-round matchups are still impossible to predict.\u00a0 With two games left, the four teams are all within &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=390\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/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":[590,655,222,70,632,16,746,752],"class_list":["post-390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb","tag-chan-ho-park","tag-cliff-lee","tag-cole-hamels","tag-dodgers","tag-jc-romero","tag-phillies","tag-rockies","tag-sergio-escalona"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390","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=390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}