{"id":533,"date":"2010-04-18T16:26:43","date_gmt":"2010-04-18T21:26:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=533"},"modified":"2010-04-18T16:32:30","modified_gmt":"2010-04-18T21:32:30","slug":"phillies-semi-weekly-report-card-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=533","title":{"rendered":"Phillies Semi-Weekly Report Card #2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Record\u00a0since last\u00a0Report Card: <\/strong>3-3<\/p>\n

Overall Record:\u00a0<\/strong>8-4 (1st in division)\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Phils ended the second week of the season\u00a0with a loss to the\u00a0Marlins today, and that means it’s time for our second semi-weekly report card.\u00a0 Just when it seemed like this team had established an early-season identity of mostly mediocre pitching off-set by spectacular offense, they go out and\u00a0drop a 2-0 game.\u00a0 The lesson: it’s a\u00a0LONG season, and though these grades I’m\u00a0handing out in April may be interesting to think about, they don’t mean all that much in the grand scheme of things.<\/p>\n

\"utley\"Position Players:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Through the first four games of this week, the position players appeared well on their way to posting a second straight ‘A’.\u00a0 They scored 34 runs in those four games, raising their season average to a whopping 7.7 runs per game.\u00a0 But, shockingly, over the last two games they managed just one run, resulting in\u00a0their first back-to-back losses of the\u00a0year.<\/p>\n

The big news at the start of the week was Jimmy Rollins hitting the DL with a strained right calf.\u00a0 That’s proven to be a\u00a0small problem so far, as Juan Castro has combined solid defense with timely hitting from the 7-spot in the line-up.\u00a0 He had big hits in the\u00a0two come-from-behind wins over the Nats early in the week, and a couple more RBIs on Friday night against the\u00a0Marlins.<\/p>\n

As the week went along, the big news became Chase Utley, who is off to another red-hot start at the plate.\u00a0 He homered in the first four games of the week, giving him the ML lead with 6.\u00a0 Another positive trend I saw this week was that Ryan Howard hit a groundball the opposite\u00a0 <\/em>way for an RBI single on Monday.\u00a0 After that, the Nats took the big overshift off.\u00a0 It would be great if Howard could add that ability to his hitting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the negative side, Raul Ibanez has continued to struggle.\u00a0 He was 2-20 at the plate, dropping his average to .171, with no homers.\u00a0 Ben Francisco made his first start of the season in his place today and picked up a double and a walk.\u00a0 Ibanez hasn’t let his struggles affect his defense though.\u00a0 He made a big diving catch on Friday night.\u00a0 I remember when we signed Ibanez and people said he was as bad as Burrell in LF.\u00a0 He’s no Gold Glover, but this guy catches balls that Burrell wouldn’t get with\u00a0fifteen feet of.\u00a0 I think these fielding metric stats still need a lot of work if they’re going to be suggesting things like that.<\/p>\n

Position Players: <\/em>B+<\/strong><\/p>\n

Starting Pitchers:\u00a0 <\/strong>It was another erratic week for Phillie starters, but I think the big news is what Cole Hamels did today.\u00a0 He pitched into the 9th inning and gave up\u00a02 runs, one of which was more Madson’s fault.\u00a0 I still have my concerns about Cole, especially considering his weak outing on Monday, but this game was a great step in the right direction.\u00a0 Not much to say about Mr. Halladay this week.\u00a0 He cruised to a win with a line that matched Cole’s: 8 innings, 2 runs.\u00a0 J.A. Happ had another good outing, but couldn’t go deep into the game again.\u00a0 Also, he has a slight injury and may miss his next start.<\/p>\n

On the negative side, Kyle Kendrick got lit up on Wednesday and looks to be on his way out of the rotation when Blanton returns.\u00a0 Jamie Moyer took a loss thanks to\u00a05 1st inning runs surrendered\u00a0on Saturday, though he did settle down to go five scoreless innings after that.\u00a0 Blanton threw successfully in a bullpen session.<\/p>\n

Starting Pitchers: <\/em>C+<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bullpen:\u00a0 <\/strong>After starting off the week strong again, the bullpen did take a turn for the worse.\u00a0 We had to suspect it might be coming.\u00a0\u00a0Bastardo (1 run), Baez (3), and Madson (2)\u00a0combined\u00a0to give up \u00a06 runs\u00a0in Thursday night’s 7-5 loss to the Nats.\u00a0 The next night, David Herndon came in to pitch the 9th with a 6-run lead and imploded, giving up\u00a04 runs on\u00a05 hits, before Madson came in to finish the game.<\/p>\n

On the plus side, Nelson Figueroa has been excellent as the long man, Jose Contreras has been impressive in limited work, and Chad Durbin is yet to give up a run on the season.<\/p>\n

Bullpen: <\/em>C+<\/strong><\/p>\n

Non-Phillies Note:<\/strong>\u00a0 That 20 inning Mets-Cards game last night was great.\u00a0 I got home around 7 o’clock and saw it was 0-0 in the 10th.\u00a0 I watched a\u00a0couple innings of the Phils game, then watched an entire movie, then saw that the Mets and Cards were still at 0-0 in the 17th inning! In the 18th, the Cards\u00a0put infielder Felipe Lopez on the mound.\u00a0 The second batter of the inning was a Mets reliever that had made his\u00a0ML debut the previous inning.\u00a0 After fouling off about 8 pitches, he hit a\u00a0groundball to\u00a0SS.\u00a0 The throw went over Pujols’s head, but he went and got it and fired to second.\u00a0 The pitcher let up well before the bag and was tagged out!\u00a0 It was madness in St. Louis.\u00a0 The Mets got a run in the 19th, and they somehow still had Frankie Rodriguez available for the save opportunity, but he blew the save.\u00a0\u00a0The Mets finally won in 20.\u00a0 Isn’t baseball great?\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Record\u00a0since last\u00a0Report Card: 3-3 Overall Record:\u00a08-4 (1st in division)\u00a0 The Phils ended the second week of the season\u00a0with a loss to the\u00a0Marlins today, and that means it’s time for our second semi-weekly report card.\u00a0 Just when it seemed like this … 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":[30,222,850,66,709,16,408],"class_list":["post-533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb","category-phils-weekly-report","tag-chase-utley","tag-cole-hamels","tag-juan-castro","tag-marlins","tag-nationals","tag-phillies","tag-raul-ibanez"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533","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=533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}