Philadelphia Phillies

Tonight J.C. Romero will begin his rehab assignment with the Lehigh Valley IronPigs. Romero currently has 14 games left on his suspension and is eligible to start pitching in the minor leagues under the suspension rules. Pitchers suspended for more than 26 games can appear in minor league games starting 16 days before the suspension is lifted.

Romero will get the start tonight and you can figure he will go for an inning or two.

I was wrong.  I was so very wrong.  I want to apologize for my mistake.

When word started to spread that the Phillies had acquired Raul Ibanez I read all the on-line debates that started on message boards everywhere. Many fans were not happy with the signing of Ibanez, and the subsequent departure of fan-favorite Pat Burrell that the signing signaled.  Some said that the lineup was too lefty heavy now. 

After a rough 5-8 stretch, the Philadelphia Phillies ran into the right team at the right time. After playing the Mets, Cardinals, Braves, and Dodgers, the Washington Nationals were just what a slumping team needed.

Jimmy Rollins, who came into Saturday with a .199 average, improved his average to .222 by accumulating seven hits in the series.

Chase Utley, who hit .342 in the month of April, is hitting .195 thus far in May and is now hitting .291 overall. Oddly enough, the downfall in Utley's average began the day after he sat out a May 5 game against the Cardinals.

When the Phillies signed outfielder Raul Ibanez in December, Phillies fans questioned the decision.

Ibanez never received much publicity playing for a bad Seattle Mariners team on the West Coast, so to the common fan he was an unfamiliar face and name. He was 36, turning 37 in June.

He was a left-handed hitter, even though the Phillies already had lefties Ryan Howard and Chase Utley in the middle of their lineup. An even bigger reason the Philly faithful were skeptical of the signing was because it meant the team wouldn’t be resigning fan favorite Pat Burrell.

It was a long, warm night.

It was one where quality came with quantity...12 innings of it. 

But it didn’t start out that way.  After the first inning, it seemed like it was happening all over again.

Lest you think that the Philadelphia sports scene is all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows these days, let me point out a sobering truth. The Phillies have not played well at all this season.

In fact, I find it just short of amazing that they are even at .500 through 32 games, roughly 20 percent of the season. 

I’m a woman and I'm a lover.  By design one makes me do the other. So after yesterday’s 5-3 loss to the Dodgers, I left all the hating to the man I married, whom we’ll now call “Husband Vader.”