Miley Cyrus ?

Okay, so it’s not about Miley Cyrus, but as she progressed from Hannah Montana to the big leagues of music, so Wednesday night Dominic Brown entered the world of big league baseball and like Miley he did it with some pop, his was in his bat though not his song choice.

Brown has been the Phillies untouchable prospect in all the trades over the last few years, he is a skilled outfielder, with lots to learn and a bat reminiscent of that from Ryan Howard when he made his debut as a rookie. He helped the Phillies last night and proved that he can swing the bat, he just has to learn to run hard from the hit and not assume it’ll go out of the Bank, his running speed could have got him a triple last night but he ended with a double, regardless he still came into score in the inning.

Well the Phillies landed Oswalt. It seems the local Houston Fox station laid it’s claims and scooped the deal claiming it was all up to Oswalt to accept or decline, that was yesterday, today Oswalt accepted the deal and told Amaro Jr that he would be available to pitch against the Nationals on Friday in Washington.

For some unknown reason there are still people out there that don’t pay attention to things unless the media highlights it, so the repetitive question of “Why trade Lee and now get Oswalt “? has become as repetitive as Two and half Men re-runs, the question has been asked and answered a number of times, so I would suggest all those still in the dark about Lee being traded, do your homework before trying to re-hash this same old question.

Further claims that the Phillies front office and Amaro Jr’s in-experience is driving the Phillies into oblivion or at best a status currently reserved for the Mets, is nothing more than the bull sh-it Mets fans seem to be knee deep in at CitiField, just because the over-hyped Mets team is starting it’s now all familiar season ending collapse, doesn’t mean other teams will do the same.

The Phillies move within 2.5 games of the Braves as we approach August, last nights win gave the Phillies an 8 game win streak and an 11 game home win streak, plus it’s 3rd home sweep in succession. Today the Phillies take the show on the road to Washington, where Roy Oswalt will take the mound for the Phillies, hopefully Philly fans will make the quick trip to DC and give Oswalt a home feeling in an effort to help him keep the winning streak alive.

Just a distraction and a face saver for Bautista a Nats pitcher, Miss Iowa will throw out the ceremonial pitch before tonight’s game, she is definitely much better on the eyes than either Bautista or the guy he replaced, Strasburg, and if you know the story she apparently has a great sense of humor too.

 Useless stats 101 – Last year in August the Phillies acquired Lee which gave them a rotation with Lee, Hamels, Happ and Moyer, 4 lefties in the rotation, this August the Phillies now have more Roy’s in the rotation than lefties.

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World Cup Kicks Off ….

– PhilliesOutside –

Yes this is still a baseball blog, yes you are still on MLBlogs, but it is my
blog, and since Foxsports decided to cancel and remove my FoxSports blog, I
might add without any notice or reason, I can only think or believe that they
didn’t not see eye to eye with my views of them or their coverage of sports, and
as I told them, quite honestly they can ‘go forth and multiply’.

Which leads me into the next segment nicely, because, as most of you know the

FIFA World Cup
starts today, for the most part the game that is being
highlighted by the American media is tomorrow, USA vs. England. It is this that
links to my message to FoxSports, the media here in America seems to be finding
ways to convince itself that it can easily win the game against England, now
okay, it may not be very popular here, but outside of this nation everyone knows
that America and it’s population believes it is the greatest in the world at
everything
, lets face it they even recreated the world atlas so that America was
in the center, where as the rest of the world use the zero hour timeline as the
center. Anyway I digress, a recent post by ‘Yahoo
Sports Dirty Tackle’
is telling us that the referee’s for the World Cup have
learned all the English obscenities in an effort to send off England players,
hence giving the USA team the advantage. Okay all those non-knowing football
people, (that’s soccer to those uninformed people, yes football is played
with your feet),
when a referee sends you off (ejects you) you are
not replaced by another player.

I think Yahoo Sports is trying to convince itself that just maybe this year
football (soccer) in America may start to pay dividends, because they also want
us to believe that WAG’s are going to somehow cause the England squad to play
badly. This time Martin
Rodgers for Yahoo Sports
is trying to convince us, just one problem Mr.
Rodgers
, Victoria Beckham
is not really a WAG and your slide
show
depicting 15 woman who apparently are going to party so hard it’s going
to knock their men off their game, well check it out Mr. Rodgers, because out of
15, there are actually only 4 of women associated with actual England players, 3
of them the players aren’t even at the World Cup, there is a U.S.A. players
girlfriend, and the rest are from other European teams, hint just cause the
player plays for an English Premier club doesn’t mean they are English
playing for the England team.

Maybe that’s the problem with Ryan Howard, his girlfriend, reportedly his new
contract
allowed him to do a trade of his own, he allegedly traded in the
‘Eagles Cheerleader’
for a ‘Victoria’s Secret’ model. Well wouldn’t you upgrade
something if you got his contract.

Saturday
we will find out if the distractions that Yahoo Sports claims will have an
effect on the England team. I did notice that Yahoo Sports doesn’t reference the
insider claims that the U.S.A. team may target Rooney (England
striker)
in an effort to either injure
him or get him banned, since he is known to have a temper which is quick to come
to the surface.

Other effects could be the fact that back in England there has are some
people intent on making it hard to
show support for the team
and display the St. Georges flag, due to
claims of it being
offensive and possibly incite anger and violence from people who aren’t English,
personally again those people can ‘go forth and multiply’ , a national newspaper is giving away the
St
Georges
flag free with every copy of it’s newspaper tomorrow, only in England
though.

Those that are into the FIFA World Cup enjoy and show support for your team
at every opportunity, for those that aren’t into the FIFA World Cup, ‘WTF are
you doing reading this far down this post’….. GO
ENGLAND!!!


Mets (Muts) Pound Phillies

– PhilliesOutside –

It is clearly obvious to anyone who has been watching the Phillies that the
offense has been on the 15 day DL along with Jimmy Rollins, Joe Blanton and now

Ryan Madson
. Blanton is scheduled to reappear this weekend with the possibility
of being back in the rotation this coming Monday against the ST . Louis
Cardinals
. Pitchers made it back into the bullpen, J.C. Romero last week, which
didn’t seem too successful and Brad Lidge yesterday, which was also not very
reassuring.

The offense though has been the most absent, after an excellent start to the
season there has been a distinct reduction in output since April 16th, there was
a brief appearance, a glimmer that maybe they were heading back on the right
track around the 22nd of April, but since then nothing, zero, zilch, nada,
nowt,
stuck somewhere between spring training and now in a twilight zone for
baseball, the offense is scheduled to make an appearance anytime during the next
few days and from there slowly pick up speed and increased numbers till the All
Start Break then it will be time to see if they make it back from the mid-term
break.

This offensive malfunction doesn’t however excuse all the errors
and mistakes that have been made in selecting which player does what and when
they do it, I know we’ve lost a few so it has to be the managers fault, wrong, that’s
not what I am saying, but he does have some role to play in the events that lead
up to the losses. Last year we saw Charlie Manual in a situation that
allowed this type of graphic….

….this year however, unless more thought is applied to
situations things will be very different, and I want to be fair to Charlie,
it’s not all his fault, he relies heavily on Rich Dubee for up to the
minute information on members on the pen and listens to recommendations on who
should be utilized and when, but there are times when even a novice such as
myself can tell that certain pitchers shouldn’t be used in certain situations. It
has to be the only time a major league ball club manager can safely say, it was
down to the Dubee.

We have in the bullpen a pitcher who is a rule 5 draft pick, who
we keep in the pen because if we don’t he
has to go back to where he came. In reality he belongs in the pen, he serves a
role and he’s good at it, but put him in the wrong place or situation and he’ll
have a bad day as would most of the pitchers out of the pen. Last nights game
against the Mets was a key example of right and wrong pitchers for the
scenarios, Baez is not a 2 inning guy, why was last night the time to try
and find out, it wasn’t, it shouldn’t have been, cause we already new the
answer, but for some unexplained, x-file type reason we had to confirm something
that we already new, after he pitched in his second inning and didn’t get any
outs, but gave up 4 runs, it was time to bring in the rule 5 guy, Herndon,
who went on to pitch 2 scoreless innings, he did let a inherited guy score, but
nothing against him.

Today the Phillies and Mets go at it nationally on
Fox, oh whoopiii, we get to listen to a bunch of no knowledge numbnuts a-sssswhipe’s
ramble on about how good or bad players are when they don’t even know anything
other than what they read in the columns from the biased reporters of either FoxSports
or ESPN. Talking of ESPN, we get the joys of watching and
listening to all the action from them on Sunday night.

Anyone who has any interest saw or heard the Mets pound
the Phillies last night, the rivalry makes it hard to stomach, but I have
to say the Phillies made it easy for the Mets. There was signs of
talent back in the Mets lineup, sorry all you Mets fans, but I
dislike Reyes with a passion, not because he’s a Met, but
because he gives the appearance of having an arrogant, holier than thou
attitude, his actions indicate that he believes he is bigger and better than the
game itself, so for me, he is not one of players with talent on the Mets,
however Jeff Francoeur and David Wright showed up to play and play
they did, Jason Bay also made the right choice and opted out of the BoSox
for the Mets in the off-season. Rod Barajas, okay he hit 2 homers
last night, but guys he’s a 3rd rate catcher at best and should be kept on the
bench for emergency use only, preferably behind a glass, with ‘break in case of
emergency’ on it.

So it’s big pat on the back for the New York Mets, but
it’s still early in the season, so no breath holding hoping you’ll go all the
way, we don’t want a rush of people turning blue in New York,
cause I think that’s happening in LA at the moment and it’s not
from breath holding.