BillyV's Blog

3/30/08

 

Tomorrow, they start playing games for real.  The question is, are the Phillies for real?  Can they repeat as NL East champs?

I don’t especially want to bust everyone’s bubble.  But I keep reading where Manager Charlie Manuel and everyone else associated with the Phillies says it’s a foregone conclusion that the team will score a lot of runs.  I even read one newspaper article about how this year’s Phillies might break the team record for runs scored set back in 1930.

 

I doubt it.  First of all, they let Aaron Rowand go and they brought in Geoff Jenkins.  Rowand hit.309 and Jenkins .255 last year.  That’s a loss of more than 50 points of batting average in a critical spot in your lineup.  Jenkins might be able to match Rowand’s 27 homers from last year—he hit 21 himself.   But at the same time, I’m a little tired of hearing the Phillies say that Jenkins, and Pedro Feliz, who hit 20 with San Francisco, will hit 30 or more thanks to Citizens Bank Park.  (More homers were hit in CBP last year than any other park in the league.)  The park helps opposing hitters just as much as it helps thePhillies. Whenever they get a new pitcher, you don’t hear the Phils say, “Hey, he gave up 20 homers last year, so he should give up 30 in our park.”  So it’s a little disingenuous to mention it with regard to their hitters, but ignore the fact that it also helps opposing hitters against their pitchers. 

 

The area of concern, again, is not power, it’s average.  Jenkins and the other three guys in the second half of the lineup are all .250 hitters. You put the pitcher up at the end of that lineup and you have five straight guys, more than half your hitters, who are .250 hitters or worse.

 

I do expect Carlos Ruiz to significantly increase his average, though.  But Jenkins, Feliz, and Pat Burrell have been around a long time, and there’s no reason to expect a sudden increase in their averages. 

 

As far as the pitching, I think Brett Myers and Cole Hamels give them a solid one-two punch at the top of the rotation.  Kyle Kendrick, an extremely pleasant surprise after being called up from AA ball and going 10-4, needs to prove it was no fluke.   We old heads remember how similar Bruce Ruffin was in 1986 when he came up from AA (to replace the legendary Steve Carlton) and went 9-4.  He had a losing record the rest of his career.

 

At the back of the rotation, Adam Eaton should be improved over last year.  It’s virtually impossible not to improve on his sickly season, in which he had an ERA of 6.29.

 

The bullpen is a big concern. 

 

Much as I despise the New York Mets, they once again did what the Phillies didn’t do—they targeted a big name in the off-season.  They’ll pay Johan Santana 23 million a year, and he’ll return the favor by leading them to a division championship.  Unfortunately, Phillies fans will once again have to go back to settling for second place,  just as the Phillies settled for second-tier free agents in the off-season.