Philadelphia Phillies

Seeing Jose Contreras getting a day off on Friday was not surprising. He is 39 years old and had appeared in four games in five days. According to Matt Gelb of the Philadelphia Inquirer (click here for the article), he had thrown 72 pitches over that stretch. 

The season is only 10 percent over, give or take depending on the the number of games each team has played. Hardly a milestone moment that allows early returns to hold any significance.

But it does offer a little more of a view than preseason predictions, does it not? Predictions that I did not make.

Thus, in election night coverage style, I will look at the early returns and make projections. These are the teams I forecast as winning the races for the eight playoff spots in order of record:

Gold Notes

The top of the third inning of the Phillies vs. Brewers Wednesday matinee was a wild, mistake-filled affair.

As Rickie Weeks, the Brewers second baseman and leadoff hitter, stepped into the box to start the second inning against Phils starter Cliff Lee, CSN's play-by-play man Tom McCarthy took note of a stat that he tossed to his longtime broadcast partner Chris Wheeler.

The Phillies' starting pitching rotation has drawn many comparisons to the 1996 pitching staff of the Atlanta Braves. The Braves pitchers had a very strong season from their pitchers, but they lost in the World Series to the New York Yankees, four games to two. 

So how will the Phillies finish this season? 

In this past week in Phillies baseball, the Philadelphia Phillies won three of their five games, bringing their NL East-leading record to 9-4.

The week (defined for our purposes as Monday through Sunday) concluded with a hard-earned 3-2 win over the visiting Florida Marlins, who would have tied the Phils for first place with a win.

The Philadelphia Phillies are just over two weeks into the 2011 baseball season, and their super star second baseman has yet to take the infield.  Unfortunately, at this point there is no guarantee that Utley will take the field this season.

So far the Phillies have done fine without Utley, going 9-4 without him and sitting atop the NL East division. The pitching staff has, at times, looked as though they might be able to carry this team without anyone at all playing second base.

Bill Simmons calls it the Ewing Theory.  Other sports fans have associated the phenomenon with Peyton Manning, Alex Rodriguez, Tiki Barber and Drew Bledsoe. But in Philadelphia, there is only one player who should come to mind:

Bobby Abreu.

In Friday night's series opener against the Florida Marlins, Roy Oswalt pitched four innings of no-hit baseball and looked magnificent. After allowing a solo home run to Logan Morrison to lead off the fifth inning, he still pitched well, allowing only one more run through six innings of work.

However, at the start of the seventh inning, something was wrong.

"They can't hit." "They're too old." "They're all inured." These phrases were all uttered toward the Phillies lineup leading up to the 2011 MLB season. Now, eleven games into the season, the Phillies have been proving these critics wrong. The Phillies are 8-3 and they have scored 66 runs. Also, they have hit a remarkable .318 AVG, and have a tremendous .386 OBP which leads the MLB.

**This is an article I wrote after Harry Kalas passed away on April 13, 2009.**

Things certainly will not be the same in the Phillies' press box this 2009 season; despite the following-up of a most memorable championship campaign. Philadelphia, a city which has been gifted with the greatest of voices the world has seen, now have lost quite possibly the best of them all: Harry Kalas.