Phillies top Marlins with style and structure

Ryan Howard's circus act home runs, including a tape-measure shot to dead center, led the Phillies over the Marlins 4-2. The victory also represented the team’s first start-to-finish home win, giving fans their first taste of nine controlled innings.

Sad as it sounds, yesterday's 4-2 win over the sub $15 million Marlins was the most complete home win of the season. The other two wins were walk-off nail biters.

Even with the ejections to Chase Utley and Charlie Manuel, this was the first time a game went according to plan, home or away. It included a nice, lengthy start from Brett Myers (6 IP, 2 ER, 3.04 ERA), and a significant look how the Phillies intend to use their bullpen. Ryan Franklin will work the seventh, Arthur Rhodes the eighth and Tom Gordon will close the door.

Manuel’s strict bullpen roles are often criticized for being too inflexible, but I’ve always believed relievers perform better when they know how they’re going to be used. Players have said the same.

Franklin, Rhodes and Gordon will become this year’s troika, occupied by Ryan Madson, Ugueth Urbina and Billy Wagner last season. When the calendar flipped to September, many experts thought the Phillies had the inside track to October because the back end of their bullpen was so strong.

Reserving these pitchers for situations like yesterday should have a positive impact on the rest of the bullpen, as Aaron Fultz, Geoff Geary, Rheal Cormier and Julio Santana will also settle into their roles. Fultz and Geary often worked in tandem last season and came away with career years.

Bullpen inconsistency, like the win/loss column, is another destructive side effect of weak starting pitching. This was a good first step in the right direction.

Bench
Yesterday was also a return to the time-honored tradition of playing the bench during a Sunday day game, and as it often happens, they won the game. Abraham Nunez and David Dellucci got the start at third and left field respectively, with Nunez sliding to second after Chase Utley was tossed.

For the season, the bench is a combined 13-for-83 (.156), including 22 strikeouts. Dellucci has been the biggest disappointment, going 0-3 with a strikeout yesterday to go 2-for-18 on the season.

So far, Dellucci has contributed next to nothing statistically, save for two very important additions: the ability for Manuel to rest Pat Burrell and Bobby Abreu, and great insurance in case one of them goes down.

At the end of spring training, the Phillies realized they were an outfielder short, and a left-handed bat short. Chris Roberson was the only candidate, but he wasn’t ready. Dellucci’s slow start shouldn’t come as a shock, considering he was ripped from a starting role from Texas just two days before the season.

Meanwhile, Nunez reminds me a little of Placido Polanco in that he likes to put the ball in play. Polly is more successful at it, but Nunez is a player of that same mold. In the few opportunities I’ve seen him, he looks to be a competent fielder.

Give it some time. Like bullpen, the bench will settle in.

Comments

[yt]

I certainly hope your right, but it seems tome to be awfully optimistic to a call a guy who has gone 2-18 .111 "great insurance" if Bobby or Pat go down (.305, .250).

I'm sure this will draw the inevitable "but it's early!" crys, but I have seen no indication as of yet that this guy deserves to be ahead of Victorino or even here instead of old man Coste.

[Carson Book]

I can only hope yesterday's win is a start of good things to come. If they can sweep or even win 3 out of 4 from the Rockies here at home,then the team will be on its way to recovery. However, the Phillies haven't done anything yet this season to suggest they will indeed take this golden opportunity and seize it!

Come on Phils, give us something to root for!

*Note: Scraton is on fire, winning the last 9 games...nice!

[xxx]

I personally believe Abe Nunez is a lot closer to Tomas Perez than Placido Polanco, both when comparing the two as overall players and, in this particular instance, when looking at their respective contact rates. Nunez struck out 63 times in 421 at bats in his "career season" last year and has whiffed 341 times total in 1910 lifetime at bats. Polanco's career high in K's (43) came in his first full season back in 2001 and has only struck out 245 times in 3265 at bats.

I think maybe the fact that Nunez can't hit and has no power to speak of makes it seem as though he is better at putting the ball in play than he really is. There's no right or wrong to his, of course, just trying to provide a differing opinion.

And as always...keep up the great work.

[Billy Mac]

I also don't see Dellucci being insurance for Abreu. He is strictly a left fielder and a poor one at that. Did you see his throw yesterday from left field ? It bounced 3 times before it reached the pitchers mound. He has probably the worst outfield arm I've seen on a Phils outfielder since Pete Rose. I understand the argument for getting your bench guys some work, but in no way should Burrell need to be rested. He was already off Monday and Saturday last week. By the way, Vicente Padilla is now 3-1, having pitched 7 innings of 3 hit 1 run ball on Thursday.

[J. Weitzel]

Tough crowd. 18 ABs, two starts for Dellucci. What you're saying could be true, but that's not enough to make conclusions about his arm in the context of Phillies history.

[dajafi]

Dellucci is a much better player than he's shown thus far. He probably does need to play some more, and let's not forget--as Jason hasn't--that Abreu wore down last season from overuse and that Burrell has an ongoing problem with his foot. Neither should get more than 150 starts or so. His early play notwithstanding, I think we'll be glad to have Dellucci before this year is over.

However, I'm with xxx as far as Nunez being much closer to Perez than Polanco. I'll grant that Nunez doesn't seem quite as undisciplined a hitter as Tomas was, but that's very faint praise.

[Adam]

I'm not going to compliment Dellucci for his start, but 18 AB is 18 AB. Just about every player goes through a stretch of 18 AB where they struggle at some point or another throughout the year, and so unless this drags on it won't be a problem.

While this might seem silly, what gives me some hope is the fact that--despite being near or at the bottom in runs, BA w/ RISP, ERA, Fielding, etc.--we're still 7-10, which obviously isn't good, but isn't as bad as you'd expect considering the statistics. Once our hitting w/ RISP levels out and our pitchers get settled down, we'll start to do much better. Of course, it would've been a lot nicer if they could've started the season that way...

[RickSchuBlues]

While it worked out according to plan yesterday, the rigid 7th-8th-9th routine is going to come back and bite Manuel if he doesn't learn to be more flexible. Ryan Franklin's a guy who should be able to go more than one inning, for one thing. The other thing is - and I know it's been mentioned before - the odds aren't particularly good that all three pitchers are going to be on their game every time out. If just one melts down, that could be your ballgame. If the first reliever is getting outs, why not leave him in awhile longer?

[J. Weitzel]

I don't have a problem with using Franklin for more than one inning, for example, the seventh and eighth. It still fits into his role.