Morning Roundup: “I like first place” – Charlie Manuel

madden 09

Three lines on their world:

1. Brett Favre is now a Jet. 
   Perfect – playing in New York
   should quell the media frenzy
2. The PGA Championship kicks off (sans its’ two-time defending
   champion)
3. and a day after I wrote like six emails to my Cardinals’
   friend DRex about how Pujols isn’t the MVP Jose Alberto goes 4-4 with a slam. Good thing DRex’s work blocks this site.

Three lines on ours:

1. The Phillies put some more distance between themselves and
   the rest of the East
2. Lito Sheppard is down to fight his owner
3. And the Sixers officially one-up the Flyers by scheduling
   their final Spectrum game in the regular season

Phillies, Birds, Sixers, Flyers and a single post from a
typewriter after the jump

PHILLIES

For whatever reasons the Phillies score runs for Kyle
Kendrick.  With their 5-0 win the team
improves to 16-7 when the righthander throws as he gave the Phils six strong
innings, giving up no runs despite giving up four hits and five walks along the
way.  He let runners get to scoring position
in five different innings yet kept them off home plate in all of them.

Meanwhile the Phillies got to the Marlins’ Anibal Sanchez
once again.  The righty is 0-2 against
the Phils and 13-3 against everybody else on the planet. 

The heroes were Mike Cervenak who got his first major league
hit and RBI all in one when he knocked in Eric Bruntlett in the bottom of the
sixth, Kyle Kendrick, who kept the Marlins off the board for the first six,
Chad Durbin, who is on some 1999-Pedro type shit from the bullpen as of late,
and Ryan Howard, who is a monster of a man. 
Fun to be able to list that many.

The Phillies look to put the Marlins 3.5 back when they send
Cole Hamels (9-7, 3.37 ERA) to the mound against Florida rookie Chris Volstad (2-2,
3.25).  The Phillies haven’t been giving
Hamels any run support and can’t score during the day, so look for a surprise
offensive eruption.

Other Notes …

• Kyle Kendrick knocked in his second run of the season with a
  groundout to short in the second
• Anyone who suggests that Ryan Howard is a product of
  Citizen’s Bank Park doesn’t watch baseball.  He hit a bomb the other way tonight and is
  back to hitting like he was during his MVP season.
• The Phillies sold the Bank out again, which makes me proud
  to be a fan and happy to have a press pass
• After a miserable road trip Jimmy is bouncing back. He had two more hits yesterday
• The Phillies have homered in 14 straight games
• Ryan Howard re-tied Adam Dunn for the major league HR lead
• Cole Hamels hasn’t won a game in over a month – his last win
  coming July 3^rd.  He has never
  gone six straight starts without a victory in his major league career
• The Phillies have lost all three times Hamels has pitched
  against Florida
  this year
• Lefty Gio Gonzalez, who the Phils traded for in the Jim
  Thome/Aaron Roward deal, then traded back to Chicago in the Freddy Garcia deal
  (he was traded again, this time to
  the As over the offseason) made his major league debut in Oakland Wednesday. He
  went six innings, allowing three runs on four hits and two walks
• Marlins All Star second basemen Dan Uggla is batting .198 (19-for-96)
  against left-handed pitching this season

Now, who said what …

In his notes David Murphy looks at what the Flash Gordon
injury means to the bullpen and more. SKIP

Zolecki’s say that Adam Eaton has been getting shelled in the
minors, Tom Gordon had a setback, Cole Hamels has been struggling and more. SKIP

In his notes Randy Miller talks to the scout who watched Freddy
Garcia pitch, notes that the Phils can run on Chris Volstad, and says that Gordon’s injury could be
serious (dispelling previous reports). READ

Mike Sielski takes a look at what makes Kyle Kendrick
effective (one pitch and some luck). FYI, that last line makes more sense if
you know it is a Kendrick quote – I’m guessing that was unclear to his desk).
READ

Jim Salisbury writes that Kyle Kendrick gets results.  Since baseball is a results-oriented
business, that’s important. SKIP

*if you can only read
one Ken Mandel has a fun story that he worked hard to get (little known fact: Mike Cervanak is
a superstar) about Korea
and the Phillies. READ

Todd Zolecki managed to get this note about Tom Gordon up
before me, even though he had to go through a desk and I could just post
it.  Serves me right for trying to find a
hilarious picture, I suppose.  Anyway, Gordon has mild soreness and is flying back to Philly to get it checked out.
You won’t see it here, but later it turned out that this could be serious. SKIP

ESPN Ranked the top ten contenders’ bullpens, putting the Phils
3^rd.  Neither the Mets nor the
Marlins were ranked. READ

Ben Watanabe looks at the Phillies bullpen, doesn’t come
away with much. SKIP

Paul Hagen says that Major League baseball is getting
instant replay, and even the traditionalists are starting to believe that that
is a good thing. READ

*if you can only skip one Paul Hagen
writes that the NL East is a toss-up, but misses badly on why.  He claims that the Phillies weakness is an
overworked bullpen when they have pitched the fewest BP innings in the National
League; and labels their ability to hit home
runs as one of the Marlins’ biggest plusses, which may be true but seeing as they have hit less home runs than the Phils, it probably won’t seperate them.  For what its worth ESPN runs percentage ranking, which uses real actual numbers to predict how teams will fare down the stretch. Here is their explanation

The key is estimating how many runs each team will score, on average,
against every opponent on its schedule. Coolstandings takes into
account factors such as home vs. away team performance, remaining
strength of schedule, run differential and league scoring averages.
Previous season performance is also used, especially near the beginning
of a new season.
Coolstandings even takes into account all of the MLB tiebreaker scenarios when determining divisional and wild-card chances.

Anyway, according to Math – and in a numbers game math generally tops Paul Hagen’s intution – the NL East isn’t a toss up.  All of which, I suppose, is just a long way of saying SKIP

EAGLES

I’m late on this one (it came up late Tuesday and I missed
it yesterday), but Mike Sielski has a good look-in on what the Birds’ past says
about McNabb’s future. READ

Les Bowen looks at the difference in the way that the Birds
are treating Brian Westbrook and the way they are treating Lito Sheppard. READ

Bob Brookover writes that Jeffrey Lurie has infuriated Lito
Sheppard. READ

Les Bowen writes that Brian Dawkins hasn’t heard from Shawn
Andrews yet, Stewart Bradley is going to be the focus of attention tomorrow and
more. READ

Bob Brookover looks at the possibility that other players
are going to taunt Andrews on the field (spoiler alert: they’re not). SKIP

In his notes Les Bowen writes that the Eagles are throwing
some fades, Reggie Brown left practice and more. SKIP

Rueben Frank’s notes look at the Westbrook contract talks,
tomorrow’s preseason opener and more from camp. READ

Reuben Frank says that Lito is pissed. SKIP

SIXERS

The Sixers’ schedule was announced. SKIP

And they’re playing one at the old Spectrum. READ

So remember how I said that damn near everyone has a Sonny
Hill anecdote?  Well the Golden State
Warriors’ announcer (or something) chimes in with one here. READ

FLYERS

In August I should just probably make ‘FLYERS’ a weekly
section. Until then, skip

TODAY and MORE

Business Person Special with Cole Hamels on the mound, so go
Phils. If you’re at the ballpark on a Crackberry (or an elaborate child’s toy) and hit me up with a witty observation about the game/crowd/day I promise to
publish it as my own.

Everyone else as always, feel free to email with
any questions, suggestions, comments or complaints.  

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 7th, 2008 at 8:55 am and is filed under Morning Rounds. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.