The Early Going

We’re six games into the season and if you’ve been following the Phillies in the early going you have to be borderline giddy about the way they have played through two series. Their record stands at 3-3 but today was the first bad game they played all season, an 8-3 sweep avoiding win by the Chicago Cubs. This entire post can be taken with a grain of salt considering that we’ve got 156 more of these ball games to go but several offensive question marks have looked better than expected in the very early going.

We’ll start with the goo- scratch that, outstanding. Chase Utley has come out firing on all cylinders proving for the millionth time that spring training numbers have little bearing on the regular season. He is 11-24 (.458) and he’s hitting for power, with 3 doubles and 2 home runs and is second in the NL in slugging percentage (.833). His homers in the first two games of the Cubs series proved to be enough margin for Roberto Hernandez and Cliff Lee to procure back-to-back wins at Wrigley. You know Ryno had to love watching a power-hitting 2^nd baseman in Chicago.

Utley has been the star in the early going but the Phils offense has been surprisingly stellar. Even in the loss today they had chances inning after inning but just couldn’t come up with a big hit, going 1-15 with men in scoring position. As a team the Phillies are currently 3^rd in the NL in batting average, 4^th in slugging, and tied for 2^nd in home runs.

Aside from being possibly the slowest man in the NL, Ryan Howard has looked decent at the plate.  He went 0-5 today to drop his average to .240 but if you only saw the box score then you wouldn’t realize this was not a bad day at the plate for the big man. You’d certainly notice that he didn’t K, but you wouldn’t know that he hit 3 balls to the fence on the fly and also was beaten by the shift when he sent a tracer into short right that was caught by the Cubs 2^nd baseman.

On Wednesday night the Big Piece was seeing his 2^nd left handed starter in a row.  Rangers’ southpaw Robbie Ross hung a slider in a tie ball game with Carlos Ruiz on first and Ryan Howard didn’t miss it (I wish you all could have seen my reaction to this home run. Let’s just say my daughter was no longer sleeping by the time Howard reached home plate). He blasted his first home run of the season off a “Welcome Prince” sign in right center field. It was Howard’s second extra base hit off a lefty in as many nights, he had six total last year. Of course, Howard did seem to be trying to set some sort of first week record when he Ked 10 times in the first four games, but he only has one strikeout in the last two games.

Humor me and have a look at Howard scoring from 1^st on a double by Dom Brown. Is he okay?

Of course, it was not all roses for Ryne Sandberg’s ball club this week. The Rangers were able to take two out of three from the Phils despite being outplayed in all 3 games. The glaring question mark that is the Phils bullpen now just has a glow to it that gives you constant worry in the pit of your stomach. For instance, John Mayberry hit an 8^th inning two run pinch-hit home run Friday afternoon to push the Phils lead from two to four. Before that ball landed, I was just ecstatic that Sandberg wasn’t going to have to go to Jonathan Papelbon in the 9^th.

The Phils bullpen by committee blew a one run lead and then blew a tie ball game in the bottom of the 9^th in the second game of the season. AJ Burnett pitched effectively for six innings but Jake Diekman gave up a run for his second consecutive outing. Then Mario Hollands made his major league debut in the 9^th inning of a tie ball game and he walked the leadoff man. Guess what happened to the leadoff man?

If that didn’t feel bad enough Jonny Paps had to give the entire fan base the cross between a kick in the dick and gut punch in his first save opportunity of the year. Pap came in and was downright atrocious. He had a two run lead to work with courtesy of the Howard home run and a brilliant seven innings from Kyle Kendrick, but five might not have been enough. He faced seven batters and got one out.  He gave up four hits, which were all hit hard after he left his scorching 90 mile per hour fastball up in the zone. To make matters worse he walked the final two batters of the game. Walk off walks are not a good feeling. Thankfully he rebounded nicely to pitch a 1, 2, 3 9^th to finish off Cliff Lee’s shut out on Saturday.

All in all, the Phils played pretty damn good ball this week and certainly played better than expected. The starting pitching was solid, save Cliff Lee opening day. We all knew the bullpen was going to be brutal and the first week certainly solidified those opinions. However, the offense, at least for the first week, has a different feel to it. It isn’t that dead fish handshake offense we’ve seen so much of the last two years. Even though they went down 4-0 in the first inning today, I didn’t have that “this game is over” feeling I would have had at almost any point in any of the last two seasons. Every one in the lineup seems and feels like they are capable of sparking or continuing rallies. Even John Mayberry has been dynamite off the bench. I can’t ask for much more than that.