{"id":543,"date":"2010-05-03T18:08:38","date_gmt":"2010-05-03T23:08:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=543"},"modified":"2010-05-06T13:52:34","modified_gmt":"2010-05-06T18:52:34","slug":"543","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=543","title":{"rendered":"Phillies Semi-Weekly Report Card #4"},"content":{"rendered":"

Record since last Report Card: <\/strong>3-3<\/p>\n

Overall Record: <\/strong>14-10 (1st\u00a0in\u00a0division)<\/p>\n

Well, it was a third consecutive 3-3 week, but\u00a0last week was fairly uneventful, while this week was not.\u00a0\u00a0Off the field, Ryan Howard became the sports story of the week after signing his 5 year,\u00a0$125 million extension.\u00a0 Also,\u00a0the injury news kept coming.\u00a0 Ryan Madson hit the DL\u00a0with a broken toe after blowing a save and kicking a chair, and J-Roll and Happ both had their return dates pushed back.\u00a0 On the plus-side, Brad Lidge returned\u00a0and Joe Blanton will be back this week.<\/p>\n

\"howard\"On the field, there was also plenty of news.\u00a0 It looked like\u00a0Jayson Werth\u00a0might’ve sparked a turnaround from the lackluster play, when he hit a three-run double to tie the Giants in the\u00a09th inning on Wednesday.\u00a0 The Phils won it in 11 innings.\u00a0 But those hopes were dashed\u00a0with an all-around ugly\u00a0loss to the\u00a0Mets on Friday.\u00a0\u00a0The team sat 1.5 games back from the Mets at that point.\u00a0 But, Mr. Halladay and the bats came to the rescue, with Halladay posting\u00a0another shut-out on Saturday and the\u00a0offense putting double-digit run totals both Saturday and Sunday to take\u00a01st place back.<\/p>\n

Position Players: \u00a0<\/strong>The offense certainly delivered a message loud and clear to the upstart Mets, putting up 21 runs combined in two games started by the Mets top-2 pitchers.\u00a0 We should really see these things coming from this team at this point.\u00a0 And while we’re on the subject, the baseball world really over-reacted to Mike Pelfrey’s hot start and 27 inning scoreless streak.\u00a0 Not that Tim McCarver is the voice of reason, but he referred to Pelfrey as “almost a #1 starter” on Saturday.\u00a0 Let’s see the guy do it for more than a couple weeks in a row before we hand him a Cy Young, Ok?<\/p>\n

The Phils other win of the week came in a game started by Tim Lincecum, though he did pretty much shut them down.\u00a0 Oddly though, they were dominated by Todd Wellemeyer and Jonathan Niese.\u00a0 Aside from Werth’s double, the other hit of the week was Victorino’s grand slam on Sunday night, that put the Phils up 8-5.\u00a0 The guy has a knack for the big hit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That 4th inning was one of the best regular season innings I’ve ever seen.\u00a0 It deserves a quick recap.\u00a0 With two outs, Utley was on second and the Phils were down 5-2.\u00a0 Singles from Ibanez and Castro were followed by a Ruiz walked to load the bases.\u00a0 Then Jamie Moyer came up, and it became pretty clear that Santana just couldn’t find the strike zone.\u00a0 The fans went crazy the whole at bat, in a scene reminiscent of Brett Myers’s walk against the Brewers in the ’08 NLDS.\u00a0 And just like that Myers walk, this one was followed by a Victorino Slam against one of the best lefties in the game.\u00a0 And they weren’t done.\u00a0\u00a0Polanco singled and then Utley hit a moon shot into the right-field seats.\u00a0 If the Bank had a roof, it would’ve blown off at that point.\u00a0 They added ANOTHER run for good measure on a Werth double.\u00a0 10 runs off Johan Santana, 9 runs in the inning, all with two outs.\u00a0 Just incredible.<\/p>\n

Having said all that, our grade for the week will have to take into account the three games when the offense couldn’t get anything going at all.\u00a0 Other quick notes:\u00a0 Victorino didn’t run out a dropped strike three on Friday.\u00a0 He’s forgiven after the Slam.\u00a0 Great to see Howard and Ibanez get big hits off lefties.\u00a0 Juan Castro continues to deliver timely hits.<\/p>\n

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

Starting Pitchers:\u00a0 <\/strong>As brilliant as Halladay was on Saturday, it was the only outing that resembled a quality start on the week.\u00a0 The most amazing thing about that shutout though:\u00a0 through 4 innings, he was at about 72 pitches.\u00a0 That means over the final five innings, he threw 46 pitches and didn’t allow a hit.\u00a0 I wonder if the umpire was intimidated by him, because he was really barking at him as he came off the mound after the 4th.<\/p>\n

Other than that though, it was mediocrity, at best, from the Phillie starters, including Halladay’s first start of the week, when he gave up 5 runs to the anemic Giants offense.\u00a0 The other members of the rotation pretty much went out there and gave up their 4 or 5 runs in 5 or 6 innings.<\/p>\n

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

Bullpen:\u00a0 <\/strong>Another poor week for this group.\u00a0 The highlight came on Sunday night, when they managed 3 scoreless\u00a0innings in a no-pressure situation.\u00a0 It was surprising that they didn’t get Lidge out there in that spot.\u00a0 He made his debut on Friday night, and promptly surrendered a homer.\u00a0 Other than that: a poor outing from Durbin on Tuesday.\u00a0 Madson blows the save on Wednesday, and Figueroa very nearly blows it again an inning later (only an outstanding play from Brian Schneider saved the lead).\u00a0 And Danys Baez got shelled for four runs on Friday.\u00a0 Now Madson is on the shelf for a month, and the concern is building, but we still have to see how this situation shakes out.\u00a0 There is time.<\/p>\n

Grade: <\/em>D<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ahead This Week:<\/strong>\u00a0 Joe Blanton makes his season debut tonight as the Cards come to town for 4 games.\u00a0 They’ll miss Chris Carpenter in the series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Record since last Report Card: 3-3 Overall Record: 14-10 (1st\u00a0in\u00a0division) Well, it was a third consecutive 3-3 week, but\u00a0last week was fairly uneventful, while this week was not.\u00a0\u00a0Off the field, Ryan Howard became the sports story of the week after … 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":[210,16,309,218,213],"class_list":["post-543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb","category-phils-weekly-report","tag-jayson-werth","tag-phillies","tag-roy-halladay","tag-ryan-howard","tag-ryan-madson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543","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=543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}