Good, Bad or just some of the Same

– PhilliesOutside –

Same sh-it different day…. Yes the Phillies are in the middle of
that time
of the month
‘, actually they are now on the tail end of it, with just 5 days
left, they have to get through the last few days with minimum damage to the
players and their psych, they have a couple of wins to bag before the end of the
month, then it’s all new, the month of June arrives and it all starts again.

In this time of phunks and stupidity, they have nearly been no-hit, they have
struggled to score runs, they
have even struggled to get hits. Jimmy Rollins has struggled to stay off the DL,
Ryan Madson is still wishing he hadn’t kicked that chair, while Brad Lidge is
thankfully still on the DL, although he keeps telling everyone his elbow is
fine, Really? isn’t that what you said last year.

Charlie Manuel has been keeping his cool, with a few changes here and there
to the line up, sometimes not making any sense to me, but that’s what baseball
is all about, being able to find those things that the manager does that doesn’t
seem to jive with the rest of what’s going on. It’s also good that you can see
things that you feel you would have done differently, lets face it, if you agree with
everything someone does all the time then you have to be brainless or just plain
stupid
, yeah okay you could be a (insert political party of your
choice)
,
but
we are talking baseball and that means June will see the world of fastballs,
sinkers, sliders and change-ups get a strange jolt in the equilibrium which will
see the baseball planets align once again and settle into a more balanced
universe.

At
a time when the All Star voting is well under way, the Phillies catcher
Carlos
Ruiz
suffered a knee injury earlier this month, is now back off the DL, but is
still suffering from some aches and pains, in an effort to try and change things
around he tried out a new catchers mask, going from the traditional to the
hockey style, needless to say by inning 3 he was back to his original style
mask. Charlie Manuel even sat him out of last nights loss, just to give him a
rest.

All the favorites seem to be in the running for the All Star Voting, but is
this proving it’s just a popularity contest and teams with fans that attend home
games actually punch that ticket, or they have fans that go online and vote.
Recently on the front page of the MLBlogs
(it’s gone now) they promoted the All Star voting and some blogs that
appeared to have relevant posts about the voting, one in particular, which I
will not name, due to probably selfish reasons, but the point being this blog
had 1 post, no bio, and looked as though it had been set up just for that
specific post, the post indicated views and selections the poster had made for
the All Star game, this was not an objective review, but a promotion of Yankees
and Reds players, where am I going with this, just trying to show some elements
of things where this has become nothing more than a popularity contest, or at
the worst a contest where players get selected because the fan base for that
team is larger, i.e. Yankees in the AL, the NL has a little more even
distribution of fan base amongst some teams, although teams like Florida,
Milwaukee and Washington will always lose out. 

Am I someone who sees a conspiracy in everything, maybe not everything, but
in today’s world probably most things that include some type of opinion based decision
has an ulterior motive, but that’s a whole new post, maybe even my next one.

We all think we know which State has some type of mojo working
against it, well I am here to tell you that the worst has to be Ohio, not
because I live there, although that maybe the problem, because they really can’t
win anything. The Cavs should have been in the NBA finals, with the players they
had, they were definitely the hot favorites to take it all, and some saw it
again last night, or those people that had nothing better to do with their
lives, saw what I am told was a guaranteed win for a girl from Ohio lose to some
guy with less talent in the final episode of American Idol with the only judge
who offered a real opinion. So for all people and teams Ohio based why bother,
oh okay.. it’s all in the fun of competing… yeah right…

 


Full Moon or Just Weird….

– PhilliesOutside –

The weather in Colorado wasn’t quite the weather one would expect for May
time baseball, so we still have one make up game to play after splitting what
turned out to be a 2 game series with the Rockies. Roy Halladay didn’t get
his
homecoming/birthday win, I am sure the weather being the weather he and all the
Phillies
players are happy to see Colorado disappear as their plane
climbed to
altitudes worthy of leaving Colorado.

I started this post on May 11th, then changed it and changed it and on May
13th got a little further, it’s now an hour before game time on the 14th, so we
are going to change some of the future, present and past tense expressions so
that I can keep most of the post, at least the next 3 paragraphs, after that we’ll try
and jump to current thoughts and hopefully have this posted by
midnight or early Saturday morning.

The Phillies have arrived in Milwaukee for the weekend  and a 3 game series
against the Brewers, at Miller Park, a stones throw from the
Harley museum, a
hop skip and a jump from Chicago or a good 9 to 10 hour drive from me, and yet I
am still not going, sigh!

The first game tonight sees Jamie Moyer take the mound for the Phillies, on a
little extended rest, and a former
Phillies favorite Randy Wolf for the
Brewers. This will either be a pitchers duel in slo-mo or a home
run derby, neither guy has dominating stuff, but when location is close to
perfect either can be un-hittable, unfortunately if they are missing their spots
or if the offense is on key then the ball will be flying everywhere and we could
see, if not both one team hit double digits in runs or at least hits. I guess
this we will see before the nights out, since they are due to start in about
55 minutes at 8:10 pm (EST) or to those 24 hour clock buffs, 20:10 hrs (EST) or
if your adventurous and dealing in global military time then 00:10 hrs Zulu, or
if you were being military and local to the game it would be 19:10 hrs Sierra.

Not sure how I got onto time zone ramblings then, but there does seem to be
some things that just aren’t right with the world as we think we know it.

The
British elections ended in what can only be described as a ‘hung
parliament’
,
not going to explain that one, so google it, but make sure you read the right
answers if your really that interested, cause there are some US American takes
on what it means that are not very accurate.

Some US sports analysts, on the upcoming FIFA World Cup, think that
David
Beckham
has been aligned with the England team to help them defeat the
US squad.
Guys, Beckham is one of the best England players to have graced a soccer field,
if not for his injury, he would more than likely be on the England squad as an
active player, his presence alone will help the team, however, I am not sure his
purpose is to give England an advantage over the USA on June 12th, because quite
honestly if they can’t beat the USA, then they don’t deserve to be in the
tournament.

More natural disasters have occurred in the first 4 months of this year than
I can remember, with earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes and volcanoes all causing
more than enough destruction to last us the year.

Even baseball has some freaky things still going on even as we come to the
end of week 6 of the season, so tell me how do these things happen and it not
cause us to wonder if something weird is happening this year to everything.

How does the St. Louis Cardinals get swept at home by the
Houston Astros, who
had this seasons worse start of the year, when they went 0 – 8 and ended the
first 10 games 1 – 9.

The Los Angeles Dodgers managed to scrap together enough wins to reach .500
and still could drop below .500 before the weekend is over, as they play 3 in
San Diego
.

The New York Yankees are playing second fiddle to the
Tampa Bay Rays, who
have the best record in baseball at 24 – 10 as they finish the week out at home
to Seattle.

The New York Mets, Florida
Marlins
, Atlanta Braves are all left in the dust
as they trail the Washington Nationals, who
have managed to match the Phillies
with 20 wins at the start of Friday, and while the Mets
and Marlins go at each others throats the Nats
are in Colorado hoping for no postponements. 

Chicago looks as though it has a double curse, with the White Sox struggling
to have as good a record as the Cubs, who themselves are one of the few teams
living up to expectations, or down to them.

The BoSox, but for the O’s would be the laughing stock of the
AL East, except
they have been making an effort and are now above .500 and a good weekend could
make them challenge for 3rd place, if Toronto continues to suck at home,
especially as the Texas Rangers are in town and riding high a top the
AL West.

Well it’s almost game time so now I’ll watch the Phillies and
Brewers, before
completing this post….

It
came closer to a home run derby than a pitchers duel in slo-mo, with 3 homers from
the Phillies and 3 homers from the Brewers and it all started in the first
inning with 1 on and 2 out Howard hit a bomb deep to give the Phillies a 2 run
lead, after the Phillies scored again to
make it 3 – 0, it was the Brewers turn with
3 home runs in
one inning off Moyer to tie the game up, after that the Phillies never
looked back with Victorino on fire in the lead off spot and Ibanez and Utley
both going deep the Phillies took this first one by a final score of 9 – 5. We
do it all over today on Fox and tomorrow on ESPN, but they won’t be wearing the

70’s uniforms
. The only one who really looked at home was Moyer, who actually
made his major league debut against the Phillies when they were still wearing
this uniform.

 


Phillies Blast 10 against the Mets….

– PhilliesOutside –

It would seem that after my rants of a Phillies absent offense being on the
DL, that someone took note and decided to allow them a day out at CBP today, it
was as if someone had turned back the clock 2 weeks, the bats
popped and the
runners ran, in fact the only Phillie not getting a hit today was Polanco, who
still doesn’t seem right since he was dinged with a ball last week.

There was no need to worry about Manuel and his Dubee making the right choices on
who to relieve who, since there was only room for just one guy on the mound today. This was a game
of play by numbers and for the Phillies the numbers worked out just fine. After
a 10 run game yesterday saw them losing 9-1 today the 10 run game was a complete
reversal with the Phillies winning 10-0, shutting out the Mets on a day when
there was only 1 home run that scored just 3 of the 10 runs.

It was of course a ‘Happy Halladay’ in Philadelphia, the ‘Doc’
threw 118
pitches through 9 innings and allowed just 3 hits, a hit batter and a walk with
6 strike outs. This is Halladay’s 3rd complete game this season and his 2nd shut
out, it’s early in the season, but we all like percentages and right now he’s
throwing 50% of his starts for complete games and 66% of them are shut outs, but like the division standings
it’s going to all look different come September.

The Phillies offense managed to jump start off the glove of Reyes, it
couldn’t have happened
to a nicer guy, (he says in a very sarcastic tone), it was a play that
you would expect your shortstop to make, especially if your pitcher had a 27 inning
scoreless streak going, but fortunately for the Phillies, Reyes isn’t as good as
his hype or his own self image. This was followed by another blooper and
miss-play, this time by Cora and from there it went down hill for the Mets and
the Phillies looked like they did 2 weeks ago, they knocked Pelfrey for 6 runs
in the 4th inning, the final scoring play of the inning was a Victorino 3 run
homer, with 10 runs on the day in a Phillies game you’d expect more than just 1
homer, but that’s all it was 1 homer and that came off the bat of Victorino.

Some may say that Pelfrey got the short end of the stick here, with both
Reyes and Cora making bad plays to allow the Phillies to stretch the inning out,
but in reality the time was very limited for Pelrey to continue his scoreless
streak, after all his last outing on April 25th against the Braves was a rain
shortened game of barely 5 plus innings and he threw 106 pitches with 5 hits
then, so you knew someone very soon was going to knock him around, I am just
glad it was the Phillies who reaped the benefits.

Today is the rubber match, it would be nice for the Phillies to take
this and win the series at home against the division rivals, it’s still early in
the season so the rivalry thing is less emphasized, but still it maybe the one
that got a away that comes back to bite you in the rear later in the season. I
also just like to see Jamie Moyer win, so that all his critics will shut
the hell up.

April

The month of April has closed out what clubs are on the surprises list for
end of April…

American League:

Baltimore Orioles for having the worst record in baseball

Boston Red Sox for being worse than the Blue Jays

Tampa Bay Rays for being the best in the East

ChiSox for being the same or worse than the Tribe

Seattle for being the worst of the AL West

Oakland for being the best in the AL West

National League:

Washington Nationals for being good enough to challenge for the
top of the NL East

Atlanta for allowing a no hitter to be thrown in their ball
park by the visiting team in the first month of the season

St. Louis for being the team to let the Astros
break there ‘O’fer win streak at the start of the season

Pittsburgh for not being the worst team in baseball and for
there recent losing streak

Dodgers for going from best of the West in 2009 to the worst of
the West in 2010

San Francisco for not seeing your home town name spelled wrong
on the front of a players shirt

San Diego for being best of the NL West

 

If your team didn’t make the list that means they were doing what they were
supposed to do, either win, be average or just flat out suck. Here’s hoping May
brings out some element of normality to some areas of the game.

 

 


Vote…Vote…Vote… Who’ll be the first to 20…

philliesoutside 41

As we quickly skip over the fact that the Phillies lost yesterday to the
D’backs in a display of how to throw the home run ball, I am moving onto another
form of wins and loses.

There are some teams that have surprised me this year, including the Oakland
A’s 8-4 success at home and Pittsburgh’s need to self destruct on the road. The
national League seems to be on course with the exception on the Dodgers still
trying to find a way to get above .500 and Arizona and we can’t forget about the
Mets, who claimed the injury curse as their demise last year, but are struggling
to prove last years team was any worse than this years (almost) injury free
team.

The team that stands out this year as being the team that are on schedule to
get their own realty TV show, because that’s what happens to losers, they get
given air time by NBC, Fox, ABC, CBS or some off the wall station that’s funded
by one of the supposed big 4 names. This team is the Baltimore Orioles, a team
that has been a mediocre average team in a division that has them surrounded by
teams that are self proclaimed awesomeness teams, and the Tampa Bay Rays, who
seem to manage to prove the point that you can compete without breaking the bank
as long as you have some baseball sense, which by the way isn’t very common,
hence I didn’t call it common sense, as that would be an oxymoronic occurance.

Anyway I have again digressed from the point of this post, it is of course
the number 20, be it wins or loses who will get there first, normally it is all
about reaching 20 wins, but this year the O’s, (aptly named) are on the brink of
reaching 20 loses before anyone gets 20 wins, so I just wanted to see if anyone
thinks a 20 win is possible before the 20 loses of the O’s.

 

Vote now:

Who will get to the magic #20 first?customer surveys


Moyer Gets Win 260, Phillies take series in Atlanta

philliesoutside 41

Phillies take 2 of 3 from Braves in Atlanta, Jamie Moyer gets win number 260
for his
career, (not the season), he is now 2-1 on the season. Before this season
began, most were raving about the Braves pitching, and rightly so, they have
some excellent pitching, but those raving on the Braves were saying how bad the
Phillies pitching really was and really had it not been for 2 errors in last
nights game by Utley, 1 receiving the ball from Castro and the other throwing to
Howard, the Phillies starting pitching would have shut the Braves out, the 1st
game the bull pen gave up all the runs in the 9th and 10th innings, game 2
Braves got no runs and last night, they scored 2 unearned runs on the errors and
then 1 more in the 7th off Chad Durbin.

The Phillies aren’t the only team with the pitching rising to unexpected
levels this early in
the season, seems the Oakland A’s managed to confuse the Yankees yesterday, long
enough to get the win and it also seems as though they urked A-Rod enough to
walk across the mound on his way from 3rd to 1st in the 6th inning. Dallas
Braden unleashed a tirade of verbal disdain on A-Rod for his actions, not only
at the end of the inning, but after the game with the press too, I think he
just wanted to make a point that he wouldn’t be bullied by a member of the ‘Evil
Empire’, A-Rod acted dumb(founded) like he’d been accused of taking PED’s or
something, and then proceeded to remark on how long Braden has been in the bigs
and how many wins he has to his credit. Unanswered questions that should be
answered for us to really understand who is acting like a spoilt bratty rich kid
and who is acting like a baby:

1 – Is there an unwritten rule?

2 – Would A-Rod have crossed the mound with say Brett Myers on it?

3 – Would a big deal of been made of this if it had been a rookie from
Washington or Pittsburgh
or Cleveland instead of A-Rod?

4 – Does anyone outside of Oakland care?

Other pitchers who I think warrant a mention for being better than people
thought they would be is Sheilds of the Tampa Bay Rays, who got his 2nd win
yesterday in another display of demolition in Chicago as the Rays bashed in
another double digit score against the team that may need a presidential pardon
to escape the backlash of its fans come the end of the season.


MLBlogosphere – Latest Leaders – March 2010

Did I miss this or did it not get promoted..? am I allowed to do this..? is it updated or is it still being worked on..? all questions I can’t answer… oh well, with a day off yesterday and not winning the cookie contest, (sob, sob), things are slow so here is the list that I missed, how about you..?

MLBlogosphere Latest
Leaders – March 2010


I’m thinking maybe our illustrious leader Mark is working on that wish list, or more importantly my visitor magnet, so people just come to my blog.

Thanks to all who read by the way, I did make #26 on the list…

Although I need one that will stop people like the dude from this post ‘Real Men of Genius’ write stuff like this: “I don’t care about your Phillies and your crappy blog.” compliments of

Phillies, Mets, Yankees, Red Sox, Rays, Blue Jays, Orioles, Twins, Tigers, White Sox, ChiSox, Indians, Royals, Angels, Rangers, Mariners, A’s, Athletics, Marlins, Braves, Nationals, Nats, Cardinals, Red Birds, Brewers, Reds, Astros, Pirates, Dodgers, Rockies, Giants, Padres, Diamondbacks, D’Backs, Arizona, San Diego, San Francisco, Colorado, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Houston, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Louis, Washington, New York, Atlanta, Florida, Philadelphia, Oakland, Seattle, Texas, Kansas City, Cleveland, Tribe, Detroit, Minnesota, mini-soda, Baltimore, Toronto, Canada, Tampa Bay. Boston, BoSox

Jimmy Rollins could be on DL from today, so the great dilemma will be who to put on the bench instead of Castro, while he fills in at shortstop…. how about Brown, I know most think he’s not ready and it could hurt him sitting him on the bench for 2 weeks instead of daily play in the minors, but I say, he’s paid to do a job let him do it….

 


Phillies Win Home Opener….

Phillies home opener against the Washington Nationals may not have played out the way Cole Hamels wanted it too, but he still got the win even after giving up 6 hits and 4 runs through 5.2 innings having thrown 109 pitches.

Well I had started to call the Nationals the ‘Pesky Gnats’ since they can be a little troublesome as the Mets found out, then I got to thinking, well I don’t want to insult to many people early on in the season, I have almost met my quota for April and it’s only the 12th, so I checked to make sure there are no ball teams using the name. I guess they say you learn something everyday, well I found out the Savannah Sand Gnats exist and I was even more surprised to find out they are a Mets affiliate, that I think is just too funny considering the trouble they had with the ‘G-less’ Nats over the weekend.

Back to the game, 5th inning Chase Utley hit his bomb as part of the 5 run 5th, which obviously got Utley running the bases…

utleybaserunning.jpg

…add the 5 runs in the 5th to the 2 runs in the 4th and that was it for the Phillies, the ‘G-less’ Nats scored 1 run in the 2nd and 3 in the 4th which was all they could muster, the Phillies used Ryan Madson to close the game….

gameend.jpg

….while Lidge is in recovery, Madson picked up his second save of the season to give the Phillies a 7-4 win.

Day off tomorrow, so all eyes are on the Yankees home opener against the Angels, no I haven’t turned my AL allegiance to the Yankees, I will simply be watching to see if I win the ‘Cookies Contest’ from ‘Confessions of a She Fan’, if you didn’t already enter, then tough luck too late, if you did hope you didn’t pick the same score as me ’cause I never win, but if I do win the cookies they will be going to someone who’ll be far more appreciative of cookies in a Yankee Stadium tin….

coasfcookiecontest.jpg

….so for tomorrow only go Yankees beat the Angels by a score of 7-3.

Other News
Jimmy Rollins was out with a calf strain and Jayson Werth was replaced in the outfield with hip soreness. How long either will be out is unknown or if they will be out past the day off tomorrow.


Real Men of Genius….

We’ve all heard the Bud Light radio commercials making good humor of certain creativeness of over zealous guys, if you haven’t listen up…..

http://www.soundboard.com/sb/playerskins/singleTrackPlayer3.swf?&txtColor=0xFFFFFF&trackURL=http://www.soundboard.com/mediafiles/MzQxODcwMzM0MTg0OA_f9FbqYeM_2fRo.mp3&vol=70&action=start&title=Over%20Zealous%20Foulball%20Catcher&photo=http://www.soundboard.com/memberphoto/7286703728681.gif

Well here’s a couple of Real Men of Genius….

wade-mills.jpg

….who continued with the Budweiser advertising theme last night. At the start of the game which continued for just 2.2 inning, these Real Men of Genius in actions alone said to the Philadelphia Phillies….

budnorris.jpg

….‘This BUD’s For You’, and the Phillies soaked it up for 3 runs in the 1st then continued to hit, but for the saving grace of this lone Astro on more than one occasion….

bourne.jpg

….the Bourne Supremacy, the Phillies would have probably scored well into double digit runs last night.

The Phillies bats have been alive from day one, there was just one guy who was on a 3 game slump, and he managed to pop a couple of big hits last night…

ibanez.jpg

…so, welcome to the list of hitters Raul Ibanez. The Phillies in just 4 games have managed to send 151 hitters to the plate, who have produced 32 runs on 52 hits. Only 4 homers so far but they have 29 RBi’s covered 81 total bases, walked 26 times and more surprisingly they have only struck out 18 times.

As they remain in Houston over the weekend, tonight the ageless wonder, Jamie Moyer, takes the mound for the first time this season.


Inside Washington…

Washington is still in turmoil and has been exposed in a similar light to the outing of J. Edgar Hoover, yes I can confirm from ‘inside sources‘ that more cross dressing is going on in Washington than you think. This time it’s not some guy that has similarities to that of Adolf Hitler, just with different hatreds, yet weird secrets. It’s not some super scoop of President Obama in the First Lady’s, closet playing dress-up, this my friends is a simple cross dressing in plain sight, like that of Milton Bradley in a Mariners uniform instead of a Cubs uniform, it is non other than the leader in Washington

nats-riggleman.jpgRiggleman, dressed as a manager with his friend and cohort John McLaren dressed as a bench coach, yes these two are playing role reversal and they still can’t produce a winning team.

While the Atlanta Braves and the media hype around them promote the newbie Heyward to heights of greatness that he’ll never live up too, the Washington Nationals and it’s media barely make a ripple over the existence of the short stop Ian Desmond….

nats-desmond.jpg

…and while they don’t give this kid more national coverage he will be in danger of loosing out in a fight for the Rookie of the Year purely because of media hype and coverage.

This however is not uncommon in Washington as we have seen in the past and continue to see as they play down one of the best 3rd basemen in the National League…

nats-zimmerman.jpg

Ryan Zimmerman. This maybe Washington’s way of hiding the facts so they don’t lose the fight, had this been any other town then Zimmerman would have been in a different uniform by now gathering the glory of at least some post season games, instead he has to sit back and accept that quietly he will get his ‘Silver Slugger’ and ‘Gold Glove‘ awards without any national media coverage.

What else was uncovered in Washington this week, yes more role reversals, an unusual one this time involving Ryan Howard. The normally over-bearing size and height of Howard makes others feel and seem somewhat miniature in stature, however at first base this week…

howard-dunn.jpg

Adam Dunn gave Ryan Howard a small glimpse of that same feeling.

The Phillies are set to finish a 3 game stand in Washington today and hopefully continue the onslaught of runs, with 19 in 2 days it’s looking like a fruitful road trip has begun well for the Phillies. They will move on to Houston Friday and face a demoralized Astros, who were taken apart by the Giants over a 3 game set this week.


A New Begining….

It’s finally here. Spring is Sprung…

springavatarBYEBYE.jpg


…all the cheap shots at the American League teams are out of my system, until something really horrendous happens, it’s time to focus on the task at hand, supporting the Philadelphia Phillies through thick and thin, taking all the abuse other fans can give, and giving it back in the same good humored rivalry it is all meant.

Accepting that when my team does something, which to the average human, is totally off the wall and far out there, they are doing it for the best interests of the club and not to spite the fans.

Everyone gets a clean slate, even umpire Ed Rapauno, gets a fresh start and can step out without fear of humiliation in Philadelphia, until that first call anyway. It’s a time when Jimmy Rollins and Jose Reyes have the same number of stolen bases, or a time when even Brad Lidge is no longer a…

kloser.jpg


…loser.

It truly is a special time, the Cubs have the same record as the Cardinals, Milton Bradley has as many RBI’s as Albert Pujols, and any player can claim to equal Ryan Howards home run quantity.

The time has come to start waving those towels, the time has come to grill in the parking lot, the time has come to never be short of beer, the time has come to start screaming LET’S GO….


PHILLIESRED.jpg – peter



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