{"id":556,"date":"2010-06-24T21:48:22","date_gmt":"2010-06-25T02:48:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=556"},"modified":"2010-06-25T07:47:50","modified_gmt":"2010-06-25T12:47:50","slug":"phillies-semi-weekly-report-card-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=556","title":{"rendered":"Phillies Semi-Weekly Report Card #7"},"content":{"rendered":"

Record in Last Seven Days: <\/strong>4-2<\/p>\n

Overall Record: <\/strong>38-32, 3rd in division (2.5 behind Braves and Mets)<\/p>\n

After a month-long hiatus, the Phillies Semi-Weekly Report Card finally makes its return.\u00a0 Since I handed out a slew of high grades and an A- Overall Grade for the 1st Quarter of the season, the team basically went into the toilet.\u00a0 On that day, May 22nd, the Phils had the best record in the NL (26-15) and the biggest division lead in baseball (4.5 games).\u00a0 As of a few days ago, they were barely over .500 and were 5.5 games behind the division-leading Braves, and sitting in third place, thanks to a 9-17 record since that May 22nd Report Card.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"rollinsWhat went wrong?\u00a0 Honestly (and luckily for me), I don’t really know, because I barely watched any games throughout that whole stretch.\u00a0 Obviously, the main thing that went wrong, though,\u00a0is the offensive firepower fizzled out to a staggering degree, led by two guys that I touted as MVP candidates a month ago, Chase Utley and Jayson Werth.\u00a0 The tough schedule also didn’t help.\u00a0 They played road series against the Yankees, Red Sox, Braves, and Mets in that stretch, and their only opponent with a losing record were the always-feisty Marlins.\u00a0 But this is a team, of course, with championship aspirations, and a tough stretch of the schedule is no excuse for not winning games.<\/p>\n

But, just like the team needs to do, we’re going to put that tough stretch behind us and get back into the swing of the semi-weekly report by handing out grades for just the past 7 days, a\u00a0week that has seen the start of a turn-around.\u00a0 This afternoon, they beat the Indians to complete their first sweep since mid-May.\u00a0\u00a0It was\u00a0an easy rout today, but the first two games of the series were both good, hard-fought wins.\u00a0 The kind of games that good teams win (even if they were against the lowly Indians).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Before we move onto the grades, we have the obligatory injury updates:\u00a0 Carlos Ruiz and Chad Durbin both landed on the DL this week, but both\u00a0should be out for the minimum 15 days.\u00a0 J-Roll returned from his second lengthy DL stint, and made his presence known on Wednesday night with\u00a0a walk-off 2-run homer.\u00a0 Dane Sardinha is up as the backup C,\u00a0and Mike Zagurski and Nelson Figueroa have re-joined the pen.\u00a0 Also, in a surprising move, Greg Dobbs was designated for assignment as the team decided to keep both Juan Castro and Wilson Valdez following the return of Rollins.\u00a0 You have to think Ruben Amaro will be in the market for a bat to replace Dobbs as the trade deadline approaches next month.<\/p>\n

Position Players:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>The offense really began breaking out of its LONG slump with a couple of wins at Yankee Stadium last week, and that carried that over to this week, for the most part.\u00a0 They didn’t do much on Sunday or Tuesday, but they scored\u00a0at least 7 runs\u00a0in all four of the other games.\u00a0Utley and Werth had really productive weeks, but Ryan Howard had the best week, with 11 hits and 3 homers, including\u00a0Friday’s performance against the Twins, when he was 4-4 with\u00a02 homers, a triple, and a double.\u00a0 Rollins started off 0-8 before launching that game-winner, to get Hit of the Week honors.\u00a0 And although it took him a little while to get the bat going,\u00a0his defense looked good right\u00a0away, as he stole a hit on a\u00a0groundball up the middle in his first inning back.<\/p>\n

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

Starting Pitchers:\u00a0 <\/strong>It was a fairly typical week for this group: rock solid, if unspectacular.\u00a0 Most of the starts were of the 6-7 innings, 3 run variety,\u00a0including both by Joe Blanton, which was good to see after his recent struggles.\u00a0 Kyle Kendrick had a rough go against Cleveland,\u00a0pitching 4+ shaky innings in a no-decision.\u00a0 The best start of the week was clearly Jamie Moyer, who had all his pitches working against Cleveland on Tuesday, going 8 innings and allowing 1 run on just 2 hits.<\/p>\n

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

Bullpen:\u00a0 <\/strong>When it comes to bullpens, the bad performances will always stand out more than good ones.\u00a0 That’s just the way it is.\u00a0 And so, when you look back on this week, the utter disaster on Saturday easily overshadows some solid work that the pen did at other times.\u00a0 The Phils entered the 9th inning with a 9-4 lead.\u00a0 Contreras and Lidge tag-teamed to give up the 5 runs to tie it.\u00a0 Durbin gave up the go-ahead run in the top of the 10th, but the Phils tied it up.\u00a0 Then, just when it seemed like they had taken the momentum back, Danys Baez promptly surrendered 3 runs in the 11th to complete the scoring in a gut-punch 13-10 loss.\u00a0 The final tally for those four relievers: 3.1 IP, 9 earned runs.\u00a0 Ouch.<\/p>\n

Scott Mathieson, pitching in the bigs for the first time in four years\u00a0following two Tommy John surgeries, showed a 99 MPH fastball on Friday night, but still gave up two runs.\u00a0 Due to all the roster juggling, the\u00a0team was forced to designate him for assignment before he pitched again.\u00a0 He has the kind of live arm that could be helpful down the road, so hopefully\u00a0we’ll see him back on the team before the end of the season.\u00a0 The high point of the week for the pen was following Kendrick’s struggles on Wednesday, when the pen put in\u00a0five innings of work, allowing one run,\u00a0setting up J-Roll’s game-winning blast.\u00a0 Making his first appearance since 2007, Zagurski looked solid, and he’ll have a chance to supplant Bastardo as the second lefty in the pen, behind Romero.<\/p>\n

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

Record in Last Seven Days: 4-2 Overall Record: 38-32, 3rd in division (2.5 behind Braves and Mets) After a month-long hiatus, the Phillies Semi-Weekly Report Card finally makes its return.\u00a0 Since I handed out a slew of high grades and … 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":[377,104,30,327,210,14,367,1040,218,1039],"class_list":["post-556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb","category-phils-weekly-report","tag-carlos-ruiz","tag-chad-durbin","tag-chase-utley","tag-jamie-moyer","tag-jayson-werth","tag-jimmy-rollins","tag-kyle-kendrick","tag-mike-zagurski","tag-ryan-howard","tag-scott-mathieson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556","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=556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}