...With each passing day, it becomes more clear that the Phillies just do not have the pitching to get over the hump and become one of the elite teams in baseball. But, of the ten home runs the Mets hit against the Phillies, many of them came off of some damn good pitches down in the strike zone, if not out of it. Yes, the Phils need more horses, but the Mets would have made a lot of good pitchers look bad at times this weekend.
...Chase Utley, along with Aaron Rowand and Cole Hamels, was named to the National League All-Star team. What you might not have noticed is that Utley is on pace for a truly historic season. Prorating his performance to this point over 162 games, Utley will end up with 62 doubles and 30 home runs for the season. If my math is correct, in the history of baseball, no player has reached the 60/30 mark before. Coincidentally, it was another Phillie, Chuck Klein, that came the closest with 59 doubles and 40 home runs in 1930.
...Why was pitching coach Rich Dubee not one of the coaches given a pink slip in the off-season? What has he done for the Phillies? Brett Myers is one of the few pitchers that has improved under Dubee, but most have either held status quo or regressed, and Myers has fallen to injury (if you don't think a degree of injury-prevention is part of a pitching coach's job, you are mistaken). Ryan Madson has regressed, Geoff Geary has been up and down, Gavin Floyd never could make the jump from AAA and now that he is out of the organization has a 3.10 ERA... the list goes on and on. To be fair, Dubee has never had anything like the staff of the 1970's Orioles or 1990's Braves to work with and Kyle Kendrick's starts this season have been a pleasant surprise, but at the same time, its interesting to look across the field to Rick Peterson and marvel at the work he's done with the Mets starting staff, which wasn't exactly expected to be as solid as they are this year.
...We've given a lot of attention to what the loss of Freddy Garcia means to the Phillies chances in 2007, but we tend to forget the cost his injury could have on the future of the Phillies. David Cameron at USS Mariner examined the effect of letting free-agents walk at the end of a season, and there's a good chance that the Phillies will miss out on some prospects they may have had if Garcia had been able to pitch a full schedule.
...Finally, it was great to see Chris Coste return to the big league roster [where he should be all along... I can understand the Phillies keeping a twelfth pitcher on the roster if they were 12 good ones, but there is always at least one that Charlie Manuel pitches barely once a week... wouldn't it be more valuable to have Coste around instead?] and hit a home run in his first at-bat. By the way, faithful BS&S.com reader Tony unearthed a video of Coste talking about the first time he got the call to come to the major leagues last season:
