{"id":532,"date":"2010-04-11T19:30:22","date_gmt":"2010-04-12T00:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=532"},"modified":"2010-04-20T21:24:39","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T02:24:39","slug":"bsb-phillies-semi-weekly-report-card-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=532","title":{"rendered":"BSB Phillies Semi-Weekly Report Card #1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"halladay\"This will be the first installment of a new column here on the blog.\u00a0 Throughout the baseball season, we’ll post updates on the Phils and hand out grades for position players, starting pitchers, and the bullpen.\u00a0 The intent is to post the update on a weekly basis but it might be longer than that sometimes.\u00a0 For each post, the grades will be based on what has happened since the last column went up.\u00a0 There will also be grades handed out at the one-quarter mark, half-season, three-quarter mark and, of course, a cumulative grade handed out at the end of the season.<\/p>\n

So, let’s take a look at the first week of the season, which wrapped up today with a Roy Halladay complete game victory in Houston.\u00a0 The Phils swept the series and will take a 5-1 record, and plenty of momentum, into their home opener against the Nationals tomorrow afternoon.\u00a0 Now, it’s hard to get too overly excited about the hot start because the Nats and Astros are two pretty bad teams.\u00a0 On the other hand, considering the Phils recent history of mediocre to bad Aprils, it’s nice to see them get off to\u00a0the strong start, no matter who they’re beating.\u00a0 Plus, it doesn’t hurt to build some confidence and a nice spot in the standings in advance of starting the meat of the schedule.<\/p>\n

Position Players:\u00a0 <\/strong>Granted, they haven’t exactly faced a murderer’s row of pitchers, but the Phils’ bats have picked up right where they left off and they’ve hit the way we’ve come to expect.\u00a0 They’re leading the majors in runs scored, averaging just over 7 runs a game.\u00a0 They scored at least 5 runs in each of the first 5 games.\u00a0 Of course, it’s no coincidence that they scored just 2 today, with Roy Oswalt on the mound for Houston.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The lone newcomer, Placido Polanco, came back with a bang, as he hit a grand slam and drove in 6 runs on Opening Day.\u00a0 He didn’t stop there, as he has 13 hits already.\u00a0 He’s shown some signs that he’s still adjusting to playing third base (like when he didn’t get to the bag in time on a bunt today), but I think he’ll be fine there.<\/p>\n

Jimmy Rollins has started to erase memories of his abysmal first-half in ’09, with a hot start at the plate that included a leadoff homer today.\u00a0 He’s scored at least one\u00a0run in all six games.\u00a0 Raul Ibanez hasn’t been terrible, but after his disappearance down the stretch last year and a poor spring, he’s worth keeping an eye on to see if he’ll find his power stroke.\u00a0 Ryan Howard has 3 bombs already, including a mammoth shot into the upper-deck in right-center field in Washington the other day.\u00a0 For a guy who generally starts slow, that’s been great to see.<\/p>\n

Position Players Grade:<\/em> A<\/strong><\/p>\n

Starting Pitchers:\u00a0 <\/strong>Well, Blue Jays fans are probably pretty used to this storyline: there’s Halladay, and there’s the other four guys in the rotation.\u00a0 To the surprise of no one, Halladay has been dominant, winning both of his starts and surrendering just one earned run in his 16 innings of work.\u00a0 He also has a K:BB ratio 17:2 so far.\u00a0 He’s, uh, good.<\/p>\n

As for the rest of the rotation, there wasn’t a quality start to be found.\u00a0 In fact, only Jamie Moyer went more than 5 innings, and he gave up 5 runs in his 6 innings.\u00a0 J.A. Happ did look good in his start on Friday night, but 103 pitches for 5 innings is nothing to\u00a0write home about, even if he gave up no runs.\u00a0 Cole Hamels and Kyle Kendrick were both unimpressive.\u00a0 In the end, though, it’s the first week of the season and it’s just one start.\u00a0 Let’s not start drawing conclusions.\u00a0 Cole gets a chance to redeem himself at the Bank tomorrow.\u00a0 You better believe the boo birds will be out if he doesn’t.\u00a0 I’m sure the hunt is on for a new whipping boy with Donny Mac out of town.<\/p>\n

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

Bullpen:\u00a0 <\/strong>For this group, no news (or little news, at least) is good news.\u00a0 Considering the struggles of last year,\u00a0and also\u00a0that Brad Lidge and J.C. Romero are on the DL, two of last year’s most reliable relievers (Eyre and Park) are gone, and that no major additions were made in the offseason, this first week has to be considered a big success for the pen.\u00a0 Ryan Madson converted a save in his only opportunity.\u00a0 Danys Baez surprised me\u00a0by hitting 97 on the radar gun in Houston on Saturday night, and Chad Durbin, David Herndon, and Jose Contreras combined to pitch 8.1 scoreless innings.<\/p>\n

Bullpen Grade:\u00a0 <\/em>A-<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This will be the first installment of a new column here on the blog.\u00a0 Throughout the baseball season, we’ll post updates on the Phils and hand out grades for position players, starting pitchers, and the bullpen.\u00a0 The intent is to … 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":[13,1028],"tags":[26,222,14,709,16,788,309,218],"class_list":["post-532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb","category-phils-weekly-report","tag-astros","tag-cole-hamels","tag-jimmy-rollins","tag-nationals","tag-phillies","tag-placido-polanco","tag-roy-halladay","tag-ryan-howard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532","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=532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}