Saturday chat: Phils get a crack at phenom Strasburg

Hard-throwing right-hander Stephen Strasburg (5-3, 2.97) makes his first start against Kyle Kendrick (8-5, 4.45) and the Phillies tonight in the second of three from Citizens Bank Park. First pitch is 7:05. (Getty Images)

Preview: For once, Domonic Brown will be the one giving advice on an opposing pitcher. Strasburg and Brown faced off earlier in the the season when the two were in the Eastern League. "Just see the ball and try to get after that fastball, just like they would tell me," Brown told Ryan Lawrence of the Delco-Times yesterday. "He throws hard but he can locate his fastball any time he wants. Plus he's got the off-speed stuff. It's tough to hit a pitcher like that when he's on." ... The Phillies are trying to keep pace with the Braves, who won another one in their final at bat yesterday. Atlanta holds a 2.5-game lead over the reigning division champs. ... Elsewhere, Ryan Howard is expected to make a rehab start with Triple-A Lehigh Valley tonight. Howard, who had his No. 29 retired before yesterday's game in Lakewood, went 1-for-2 with an RBI double for the BlueClaws, giving him 92 RBIs for the Low-A affiliate, which set a franchise record.

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Comments

[BloodStripes]

Howards AB was a BB waiting to happen and he K'd

[Sophist]

Good work, JC.

[bay_area_phan]

That's the best Romero has looked in awhile.

[Old Phan]

Another good job by J.C.R.

[Sophist]

Fatalotti - the Braves offense is putrid. But, yeah, Phils got shut down by a wildly effective Marquis (4 BB and 4 H) and Strasburg.

[aksmith]

Should be interesting tomorrow when the Phillies have no lefthander available in the pen because Charlie used him for four batter in a game behind by four runs. Who gets out lefties tomorrow? Durbin and Madson, I guess.

[Sophist]

Although if the Phils score 0 R against the post-Slaten BP, I will be pissed.

[Fatalotti]

Sophist...and everyone else the Nats have used. Teh Phillies have only scored runs against Marquis and Strasburg.

[Sophist]

Fatalotti - if you want to believe the Braves offense is good, go ahead.

[Hope SE]

We are so poor against these lefty curve ballers.

[curt]

The 2010 Chase Utley:

Mar and Apr .431 .550 .275
May .360 .485 .278
June .359 .368 .276
Aug .353 .333 .267

[bay_area_phan]

Sophist: You keep saying the Braves' offense is putrid. Yet, their team OBP is higher than ours and their OPS is only .01 lower.

The Braves are definitely not an offensive juggernaut, but guess what? Neither are we. A lineup with Rollins, Victorino, and Ibanez is a lineup with a lot of outs in it. And, unlike the Braves, some of our main out-makers hit high in the lineup.

[Fatalotti]

Who said I think the Braves offense is good? Their inability to hit the Nationals was used as evidence that the Braves offense is bad. Well, the Phillies have looked FAR worse against the Nationals their first two games, but so far, but it's just a blip in the radar I guess? The Phillies have a better offense, but they're really laying an egg these last two games.

[Brett]

Fire Gross.

[Sophist]

BAP - first, I'm not talking about the Braves season offense. I'm talking about the lineup they're rolling out right now. Second, Ibanez has a .350 OBP. That's not a lot of outs. The Phils have hit a little scneid here in the past three games but their offense has been climbing the NL ranks for weeks now. The Phils have averaged over 5 runs a game in their last ~30 games.

[Sophist]

Fatalotti - the Braves offense against the Nats and everyone else over the past 50 games was the evidence their offense was bad.

[Fatalotti]

Well, it doesn't apepear to get any better for the Phils' offense tomorrow, since Oswalt is starting, and NOBODY scores for Oswalt.

[bay_area_phan]

Well, if we're talking about the lineups they're rolling out there now, then Ibanez is back to being the significant drain on the lineup that he has been for all but about one month of the season. Not to mention that our 2 best hitters are both coming off injuries. In Utley's case, it's a thumb injury so there's no telling how long it might take for him to start hitting again.

[Bruce Ruffin]

Umm, like the Phillies are losing? Like, by a lot? And Stratsburg is hurt? SCORE SOME !@#$ RUNS, NL Champs!

Whew, now I feel better. Can someone please explain how the ’10 Phils are a playoff team? Sorry fellers. Tough week for a vacation, with a bunch of BS going on. Right now, I’m really, seriously annoyed that the Gnats own us this year.

[Sophist]

Olsen since he came back this summer: 4 starts, 18.1 IP, 18 R, 1.602 WHIP, 9 K, 5 HR.

Phils better score some runs tomorrow.

[Sophist]

BAP - okay. All the Phils are washed up.

[Sophist]

Phils are 6-4 against the Nats coming into tonight.

That was a terrible AB from Schneider.

[Fatalotti]

Well at least the Braves and Giants are working with us today.

[Atlanta Phil]

When are the Phils going to start hitting? We make every opponent pitcher look like Doc Halliday! In 15 innings against the Nationals we get 2 runs and seven hits! It seems as if we haven't hit a HR other than Brown's in a month! Oh yeah that's right Greg Gross didn't hit HRs! In case you haven't look at the forward schedule the Braves only play one more decent team and thats the Cardinals!I guess we just need to "the faith" that things will work out.

[Old Phan]

Good swing, Mr. Roll.

[Sophist]

Only major difference between the Phils schedule and the Braves is that the Braves have 4 against the Cards and the Phils have 3 against the Padres.

[bay_area_phan]

Sophist: That's not exactly what I said.

I was merely trying to illustrate that you sometimes have a habit of overstating the opposition's weaknesses and glossing over the Phillies'. We agree that the Phillies' offense is better than the Braves (at least it should be). But the Braves' offense is neither as bad, nor the Phillies' offense as good, as you make them out to be.

[Old Phan]

Nuts.

[Sophist]

From July 22 to Aug 18 the Phils scored 134 runs in 25 games. I guess they forgot how to hit a couple days ago. They did strand about 9 runners last night.

[Fatalotti]

Well, the fact that Charlie is using Durbin and Contreras as opposed to Baez means that he has not quite given up on this game, even though it seems like the hitters have.

[Sophist]

BAP - How good have I made the Phils offense out to be?

[Fatalotti]

I guess McCarthy didn't know that the count was 3-1 prior to that pitch.

[Fatalotti]

McCarthy's a liar. He distinctly said, "Dunn takes the ball low", so he obviously knew it was a ball.

[passinthru]

In the past 3 games (incl tonight) - how many runs have the Phillies scored?

2,1,1 (not enough to win many games)

their offense needs patience and a kick in the rear.

[Fatalotti]

And that's your game.

[Old Phan]

Ouch, Chad.

[Sophist]

No one would argue the Phils have had good AB in the past 3 games. But it's funny how quickly people forgot how many runs they've been scoring for the past month plus.

[passinthru]

bad chad (or over used chad tonight)

this one is over...

the trend braves lose - phillies lose...

[Alex]

Sophist- Do you know off hand how many of those runs were earned? Seems like a lot of teams have been giving them runs.

[Fatalotti]

Sophist, but that's our point. No one expects them to score 5 runs every night, but you can control whether you have good ABs every night. There was a game earlier this season where Hamels beat the Red Sox (went 7 IP and gave up one run). You know what, I came away from that game so impressed by Hamels because he had beaten a team that consitently throughout the night gave him tough ABs, worked counts, fouled stuff off, and was only beaten because he was that damn good. Point being, good ABs are like hustle; they should never succumb to a slump.

[Old Phan]

Don't the Phils have the best (or one of the best records) in the month of August? They must be scoring some runs.

[Sophist]

Durbin throwing a lot of pitches in a 7 run game here.

[3r0ck]

Ugly game.

Anyone see the green laser pointer on Dunn when batting in the top of the 9th?

[Bruce Ruffin]

Nice start on our march toward the NL East flag. Dammit, I hope RAJ's pursuit of the Viceroy white whale -- all the while leaving us with a 3 man rotation-- ruins his sleep until sometime in March, 2011.

[Fatalotti]

Bruce, that's incredibly short sighted. We didn't sacrifice 2 pitchers to get Oswalt and we didn't give up any pitchers in the trade other than Happ. who was replaced by Oswalt. If you want to argue that he should have gone after a BP piece or an offensive piece fine, but he did nothing but strengthen the rotation. I mean who would you rather have:

1) Halladay/Oswalt/Hamels/Blanton/Kendrick

or,

2) Halladay/Hamels/Blanton/Happ/Kendrick

?

[Old Phan]

Bruce, you can't be too angry with RAJ for signing Vice Roy, can you?

[Sophist]

No way. Damn.

[Old Phan]

Wow. Nice catch.

[Matt]

Tip o' the cap right there.

[Fatalotti]

You know what I took away from that last play? Chase is smart as hell. He purposely moved back in front of the first baseman for the express purpose of blocking that throw.

[Sophist]

This ump has been pretty frustrating tonight.

[Sophist]

Yeah, Fatalotti, feel like I've seen him pull that move before.

[Old Phan]

Not taking anything away from Uts, but where else was he going to run?

[passinthru]

Jonny Venters 1.17
Billy Wagner 1.68
Eric O'Flaherty 2.30
Peter Moylan 2.92
Takashi Saito 2.93
Kyle Farnsworth 3.40 (nl only)
Cristhian Martinez 3.95

Wish r00b would have spent little more time and money gettting help here as well as the SP
It appears the Braves pen is better than the Phillies pen

[Sophist]

Ugly game in the 1st and ugly game after the 5th.

Phils have the pitching advantage tomorrow. Win the series.

[Old Phan]

Morgan gestured like he was going to throw that ball to the crowd and faked it.

[Sophist]

No question the Braves pen is better than the Phils, but if you think that's because of money spent you're mistaken. Phils have one of the most expensive pens in baseball. You don't get a good pen by spending money on it.

[Old Phan]

I don't know about the thirst inning, but the first inning was the worst inning.

[Fatalotti]

If Chase were on first base, that ball would have gone off the wall. OP, when they showed the view down the line from 1st to 2nd, Utley noticably shifted to his right to get down the line running directly from second to first, even though he didn't have to get to back to the bag. He also moved right in front of the first baseman's glove. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it looked like he was moving to block the throw.

[philwynk]

That was one ugly game. Hope tomorrow's is better...

[curt]

Yeah, KK pretty much robbed the crowd of any suspense before they even found their seats.

[Bruce Ruffin]

Dammit, Fatalotti -- I stunk it up in HS ball and got the message. I don’t profess to know ML ball’s day-to-day mantras, or its management. Regardless, I’m feelin’ no confidence at all with a 4 and 5 of Blanton and Kendrick.

The '07 or '08 Phils would have feasted on these losers. That's all I've got. Again, dammit, it hurts.

[Old Phan]

It was a drag that they couldn't gain ground on the Bravos, but if there was a game they might lose, it was God vs. KK.

[Mick 0]

Ruff:

The same '08 Phillies that lost 2 of 3 to the Nats from 9/1-9/3?

Luckily, that's all you've got.

[passinthru]

Ryan Madson 3.23

The Phils' pen..

Chad Durbin 3.38
Jose Contreras 3.51
Brad Lidge 4.13
J.C. Romero 4.26
David Herndon 4.46
Danys Baez 5.27

the FO overspent or mis-spent in areas, which left them short in resources to get BP talent. They lacked the talent/ability to find good BP talent (offseaon) and sign them to 1 yr term contracts...

ex- when baez svcks like he does, r00B needed to get another BP arm in a trade; take the hit on the bad contract.. it was a lack of resources that limited r00B to go get some addl bp help in July or August..

ex2 release baez and keep figgy- who was fully effective in a Phils uniform

why keep baez ( i know why ) and release figgy - that to me made no sense at all

[Sophist]

Bet you Strasburg is done for the year. He gets an MRI tomorrow on that forearm strain.

[Sophist]

When you type "torn flexor tendon" into good the third result is Ben Sheets.

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090205&content_id=3801488&vkey=hotstove2008&fext=.jsp

The reason he missed the 09 season.

[Sophist]

Sheet also re-tore that tendon late this year.

[Bruce Ruffin]

Sophist -- God forbid if the Nats are better than us right now. They absolutely spanked us -- with the Second Coming down for the count, and in for an MRI, validating a torn flexor tendon.

Back in the day (2008?), the Phils would have had their way with such an injured opponent.

[Sophist]

Bruce, yep, the Phils were 27-9 against the Nats in 2008-9. They're a better team now, though, and the Phils have 7 more games against them.

[Sophist]

oh, but no, the Nats are not better than the Phils right now. They're 53-70 this year.

[Bruce Ruffin]

Back to the old mantra:

Just win, baby!!!!

[Sophist]

Everybody is losing today for now. Padres lost, Braves lost, Reds down 3-0 early, Phils lost, and Giants lost. Could be a good day for the Reds, who finally won a game after losing 5 in a row.

[Sophist]

I mean a good day for the Cards, of course.

[limoguy]

Always amazes me that poor performance is an accepted thing in sports and yet very few of us have jobs where we could easily get away with a few bad days in a row or being in a slump of several weeks duration. Or, to do well every other day or whatever. I am thinking of Kendrick in this because I believe somebody posted recently that 50% of his starts are Quality Starts. I would have lost my job long ago if I only performed well 50% of the time.

I know I'm probably not thinking of this the right way but inconsistency just bothers me.

[Fatalotti]

Wow, I was just reading that in 1999, the Jays could have put out a rotation of Rogers Clemens, Chris Carpenter, Pat Hentgen and Roy Halladay (as their 4th starter). I thought we had a good rotation.

[RR]

The average worker might get tossed from his job if he were the office "Kendrick," because the company can find a replacement easily enough; however, Kendrick the inconsistent starting pitcher keeps his job because there's no one around to take it from him. The job of baseball player is more difficult than the average working stiff's job, is performed in public and subject to intense scrutiny and pressure, and produces greater value than most jobs. I, for one, don't miss having 45,000 people watch me while I work.

[Old Phan]

Baseball is about failure. That's one of the things that is so great about it.
Personally, I always found it to be the hardest sport to play.

[Tray]

I was just about to say that being able to pitch is almost undoubtedly a rarer skill than whatever it is limoguy does. No reflection on limoguy; it's just that even fairly rare talents like being a great surgeon or attorney are far more common than being able to pitch on the major league level.

[limoguy]

I understand what you guys are saying but it still doesn't explain inconsistent performance and it doesn't make it any less maddening.

[Dukes]

Other than the piss poor performance by KK the key was the Utley and Howard at bats in the 8th (might have been the 7th). Proof again that a good lefthanded specialist can eat the two of them up. I don't think he threw a strike in either of those at bats.

This will never happen, but I'd love to see Werth split the two of them up. I know he isn't hitting lefties especially well this year, but current day managers will make the pitching change a lot of times just because of the matchup.

[EastFallowfield]

Rainout today?

[dlhunter]

Some hack on Sports Reporters this morning called the C**** L** an example of Rube's good leadership, because it "brought Philadelphia two aces, Roy Halladay and Roy Oswalt". Wah?! And regardless of how you feel about the whole thing or how much it's been discussed here, why bring it up now? Aren't there more topical issues for "Sports Reporters" to discuss in late August? Just bizarre.

[Sophist]

Dukes - Utley is a .281/.390/.496 hitter in his career against LHP ( .265/.413/.554 this year and .288/.417/.545 last year), but I wonder if LOOGYs have more success against him. I bet they do, but "eat him up"? Not sure about that.

Feliciano is the LHP he's faced the most, and a left-handed specialist, and Utley's career line against him is .250/.351/.531 (37 PA).

The next highest LHP reliever is Ohman: .286/.444/.357 (18 PA).

I'd think the take-away from those AB is that having Utley and Howard rusty in August may not be as good as having them not rusty. Although with Utley there was always that concern about him wearing down as the season progressed.

[Sophist]

Utley had only faced Slaten five times before last night but he was 2-5 with a 2B. Utley's left-handed, but in his career he can hit lefties just fine. The question is how long it takes for him to get his timing back.

[Sophist]

Speaking of lefties, though, Utley is 5-30 in his career against Olsen with 3 HR and 1 2B, 3 BB and 10 K. A .167 BA but a .500 SLG. Wonder where we'll see him bat today. He hit that HR this April, and struck out in his 2 other AB.

Howard on the other hand is 14-32 against Olsen with 3 2B and 2 HR (1.204 OPS). And Werth is 10-20 with 3 HR and 2 2B. Thought maybe Ibanez would sit today, but I bet Manuel will play him because he's 5-10 with 2 HR off Olsen. Not sure you should make decisions on 12 PA, but managers usually do.

The takeaway here may just be that Olsen is a very hittable pitcher sometimes.

[Dukes]

Sophist: I know that Utley has just as good numbers (often better numbers) against lefty's as righty's. The question is the good lefthanded specialist late in the game. And yes, something to consider is their health. At this point I'm not sure Wilson Valdez would give you any less than Utley at the plate (although I know the mere presence of Utley makes the lineup better). Utley needs to find his stroke and fast.

And about the Braves and their comebacks. They come back so often because their pitching holds it close. Plus, they put great at-bats together late in the game - being extremely patient and taking a lot of walks. When your pitching staff holds it close a slightly above average offense (which is what the Braves are) can come back quite often.

[Fire Tmac]

Utley benched today. Valdez batting 8.

[Sophist]

Dukes - I cited the two LOOGYs Utley has faced the most. Are you saying Valdez could have a .530 SLG and a .350 OBP against Feliciano? Look up his numbers against left-handed specialists. In a small sample he even had good numbers against the guy he faced last night!

Utley's career numbers late & close: .268/.393/.472.
Utley last & close last year: .229/.393/.500.

I think this is more perception than reality. He's not as good against left-handed specialist as he is everyone else, but hie OBP is around .400 late and close!

today's lineup: Rollins 6, Ibanez 7, Polanco 5, Howard 3, Werth 9, Victorino 8, Ruiz 2, Valdez 4, Oswalt 1

[Sophist]

Dukes, I almost get the sense you didn't read my post. Against the late inning specialist Utley has faced more than any other he's a career 250/.351/.531 (37 PA) hitter.

[Sophist]

Oh, you're saying "at this point" for Valdez. I can see your point there, although Utley will find his timing. I just think the left-handed specialist point is more perception than reality.

[NEPP]

Utley benched...god forbid we play our full lineup for once.

[Dukes]

Sophist... You are going over the top here. I was saying that since Utley has been back he has not hit much better than Valdez. And I'm not alone in that line of thinking, Valdez is starting in his place today. I am in no way saying that Valdez is the better player or should hit for Utley against lefthanded specialists. That would be crazy.

Two separate points I made: 1) I think they need to split Utley and Howard with Werth in the middle (next will be an influx of Werth's bad numbers against lefty's, I know). But I think they should do it because a lot of managers would take the lefty out to face Werth just because he's a righty.

2) We might have been too eager to get Utley back because he wasn't ready. The argument can certainly made that a rusty Utley is better than Valdez every day of the week. But look at the numbers and I'm not so sure because Utley is VERY rusty right now and certainly could have used some more minor league AB's.

[Hope SE]

Re the LOOGY problem: The best antidote that was the way Howard was hitting lefties this year before he got hurt. I don't have the stats, but during July, June, most if not all year, he had been hitting them much better than career. Hopefully, it doesn't take too long for him to get that eye back.

[Hope SE]

Should say: "antidote to that".

[EastFallowfield]

Yo, newer thread