Phuckin’ Phillies

The Phillies line-up is amazingly agonizing. One one hand you have the hottest player in baseball, Chase Utley (.364, 9 HR, 18RBI, homers in 5 straight games) and the surprising Pat Burrell (.354, 7HR, 19RBI). On the other hand, you have one of the saddest hitting line-ups out there: the Phillies’ starting line-up has 2 players hitting .250 or under and THREE PLAYERS HITTING UNDER .200 (Bruntlett – .174, Howard – .193, Ruiz – .196). That’s just unforgiveable.

BA Position Player
1B Howard 0.193
2B Utley 0.364
SS Bruntlett 0.174
3B Feliz 0.206
C Ruiz 0.196
LF Burrell 0.354
CF Werth 0.267
RF Jenkins 0.250

Howard’s slow start is usual, but somewhat annoying after his arbitration payday ($10 million this season). Not only that but he has not seen a pitch this season that I couldn’t whiff at. He needs to stop and look at a couple of pitches. Ruiz and Feliz are useless. Neither one is hitting worth a damn, and are even worse when hitting with players in scoring position (hence 4 and 8 rbi, respectively). Why Chris Coste isn’t starting at this point is beyond me, even with Ruiz’ slight edge in fielding. The Phillies answer to the departed Aaron Rowand – Geoff Jenkins – is underwhelming even his detractors (that is, me). I wondered what they were thinking – they didn’t need more power, the needed someone to get on base to compensate for the strikeouts they are famous for. Instead they got a strikeout threat with a career .267 average – and he’s not even doing that. And Eric Bruntlett is a bad fielder and a worse hitter – my blind grandmother could hit better than .174!

So, let’s see – the ‘big’ free agent signings this year were Jenkins (.250, 1HR, 3RBI) and Feliz (.206, 3HR, 8RBI) for $8,000,000. The guy they let go – Aaron Rowand – is getting $9.6million and hitting .340 (although with only 1 HR and 8 RBI on a bad Giants team). And don’t get me started on the pitchers they let go (Lohse, Gavin Floyd, etc.). It’s phrickin’ nuts that they have bad hitting this year from most of this line-up! If not for Utley and Burrell, the team average might be hovering around the Mendoza line!!

Updates

I wrote the above during last night’s game. By the end of the game, Ryan Howard had hit the Mendoza line (.200) and Ruiz and also managed to make it above .200 (.212). But Feliz dropped to a paltry .203 and Taguchi has added his astounding .240 average to the mix.

To put the batting woes in perspective, here are the cumulative stats for the Phillies, including last night’s win against the Rockies, vs their stats if you pull out the only 3 performers they have (Utley, Burrell and Rollins in limited action):

Runs Hits HR RBI AVG Strikeouts
2008 Phillies 94 181 33 73 .260 140
Adjusted 56 117 15 49 .229 108

Notice the difference?

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2 Responses to “Phuckin’ Phillies

  • I 100% agree with you on Jenkins. I really did not understand the excitement over the guy, he’s a strikeout machine. So has been a disappointment as well, he’s the worst defensive sub since Chris Roberson. I’m OK with Bruntlett and Feliz, we knew what we were getting and after a few shaky games, they have proven to be capable fielders.

  • So is a backstop – they need to have more production than they do to be on the team. It’s like Steve Jeltz and Rich Schu all over again!

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