Phillies Nation

That’s not too far from where I’m at, about 5 minutes or so.

Dipper, there were two reasons Kendrick didn’t get the nod for the double header. One, they didn’t want to use one of his major league options for a spot start only to send him back down. Two, he was not lined up to pitch, he had just pitched like three days ago. Carpenter was available to go that night.

I doubt the organization has as much faith in him as they did going into last season but to say they dont have faith is a bit overstated.

That being said, I would not be surprised to see Kendrick get the call up. He is ready to go on Tuesday and it would be his normal day. Though I would much rather see what Bastardo can do.

Amaro said tonight that short-term they will go in-house. I completely agree with this. I still think we need to bring up some of this talent we have.

Yes, it does fall on Antonio Bastardo’s day and he is by far the hottest hand the Phillies have in the minors right now. I’d love to see him pitch a major league game – it may be a little rushed, but he is drawing early comparisons to Johan Santana.

Watched Bastardo last Saturday — very impressive that game until it blew up.

Gave up a HR. But 11!!! Ks!

Keith, technically I guess Koplove got the loss. I think it was 4-3 Pigs when they pulled Bastardo.

Some observations from tonight’s game:

Having watched Happ pitched again, I feel a little uneasy about him. Again, Happ relied too much on the fastball. One reason why the pitch count rose quickly with Happ is the hitters were starting to get better timing. I think there were a total of 19 foul balls in his pitch count total of 96 in 5.1 innings. I heard one of the broadcasters during the game said that Happ has only two pitches (fastball and slider) and is working on a curveball on the sideline to add in future starts. Since a poster here (JeffS?) described Kendrick as “two pitch pony”, I’m beginning to think that Happ may qualify for that description as well.

In his first start against the Yankees, he used the fastball 81% of the time with a few sliders mixed in. It was effective the first time around because the Yankees hitters were confused as Happ went against the usual pitch selection (fastballs instead of an off speed pitch) on certain counts. One could say Happ was working “backwards” on pitch selection.

It worked the first time against a very good hitting team, the Yankees. However, in the majors Happ knows (or should) that you’re not going to get away with it for long against professional ML hitters and their natural ability to hit fastballs.

Happ is not overpowering with the fastball (sneaky, yes) and needs to mix in more changes of speed with his slider and hopefully he has a effective curveball in his limited repertory.

I don’t understand why people are so quick to want to give up the farm. I mean for nearly 2/3 of the year, Myers was as ineffective as any of these call-ups likely will be. I say we wait it out a while and try to get good value. I definitely don’t think we want to be giving up Donald, Drabek, and Basterdo.

By the way since they recalled Escalona does that mean Park gets a start or two then they make a decision (or trade) next week when JC returns?

Cairo wasn’t released already?

Cairo is still on the AAA team

Phillies only left 13 on base

I heard that Happ does have a larger repertoire of pitches, but grew to rely on only two when he moved to the bullpen. If that’s true, we will probably see his other pitches more as the season goes on.

The spot start that Carpenter came up to pitch in the double header landed exactly on the day Kendrick was supposed to pitch. In fact he pitched for LV the same day. Check your facts.

Wasting an option might be the reasoning or it could be they have no faith in him. We will see when they declare the starter for Tuesday

You both are right on Cairo – he was designated for assignment, effectively released. He was outrighted to AAA and re-signed there. So both are TECHNICALLY correct. He is not on the 40-man roster though, so we cannot blame him too much longer. We can just blame Eaton or Jeltz then. Kidding.