Rodrigo Lopez pitched last night and Phillies fans went crazy and gave him a standing ovation at the performance he turned in on Game 1 of the July 4th weekend homestand on Friday night.

The Phillies brought out the offense and shelled the Mets with a spat of 3 runs in the first and then added on plenty more to put this game into the win column and give the team a much needed boost after the last two weeks of gloom.

Jimmy Rollins went 2-5 with 2 RBI in this game, and he sparked the Phillies giant display of fireworks style offense on Friday night. Shane Victorino had a 3-5 night for the Phils and Chase Utley went 2-4 and Jason Werth added a homerun for the Phillies. Another Jimmy Rollins note as reported by Todd Zolecki on his blog, Jimmy had some Michael Jackson songs in his corner on Friday night, he had Billie Jean and Smooth Criminal playing before he batted and this may have helped him out of the slump he has been in. Jimmy is back!

Lopez gets his first win for the Phillies, he surprised all who early on suspected he may not win this game. Broadcasters on WFAN, the New York sports radio station, couldn’t wait to see the Mets hit against Lopez and now the probably wish that they could take these words back. This turns out as a much needed move by the Phillies, and it’s one that shows that perhaps it doesn’t take going out and splashing millions of dollars out on a free agent pitcher to solve some of your pitching problems.

The weekend series continues with the 4:05 PM Fox Saturday special game of the week with the Phillies and the Mets later today.

http://www.fightinphillies.com/2009/05/chasing-250-moyer-gets-another-chance.html

If you have reservations for March 2009, you may want to double check
whether or not you’ll even see the familiar stars on the Phillies this
year down in Florida. That answer could be, “no”. A lot of the Phils
will probably be getting the call for the World Classic and their own
home countries. Hamels for the USA along with Utley and Howard. There’s
goes two thirds of the team’s stars for goodness sake. So this year, I
probably won’t be going down for Spring Training as the stars will be
thin for all the teams probably.

Check your reservations!

Rich Baxter – Fightin Phillies Blog

I am a Jamie Moyer fan. He goes to the ballpark to win, he signs
autographs, he’s a family man, and he singlehandedly dug up the
pitchers mound and took it home after the Phillies won the World Series
in 2008! How can’t you like a guy like that?

Jamie Moyer
had a career year last year, he almost beat Cole Hamels out for the top
pitcher on the team. He had the most wins of any Phillies pitcher last
year with 16. This could be the pinnacle of Jamie’s career last year.
Jamie was born in 1962 and made his major league debut in 1986. He is
46 years old now, and yes he had a great couple years with the
Phillies. When he broke in with the Cubs he made $60,000 in 1986, last
year he made $6 million pitching for the Phillies, the year before he
made $6.5 million. During the years from 1998 through 2008, Jamie has
made 62.8 million dollars from his pitching career according to
Baseball Reference.com. Not too shabby. You can buy a co-op in Queens
for that kind of money and still have a few million to play around with
at the end of the day.

During the season Jamie pitched
really well, he logged 196 innings for the team and amassed all those
wins. In the playoffs, it was a different story. Jamie got absolutely
blown off the mound against the Dodgers in a nightmarish game for him.
I thought I saw Jamie’s last pitching as a Phillies player that game.
Not that one game tells a story, but Jamie had gotten away with that 78
mile pitch all year, but now it seemed like everyone was on to him. He
couldn’t buy an out if he wanted to. I was surprised that Jamie started
a World Series game, I really was, the Dodgers had nearly torn him
apart in the NLCS, and his 40.50 era proved it. It was perhaps the
worst start by any Phillies pitcher in the playoffs in recent history.
He did get that World Series start in Game 3 and he caught the young
Rays off guard, he pitched 6.1 innings and scattered 5 hits with 5
strikeouts with 3 ER in a no decision for him, but the Phillies went on
to win the game with a run in the bottom of the 9th inning and win 5-4.

My point is Jamie Moyer trying to be too cute? He’s 46 now and if the
Phillies offer a two year $15 – 16 million dollar deal, if I were him I
would grab the nearest pen and start signing my name to the contract.
He’s not a guy who’s going to command $10-12 million a year for two
years let’s face the facts. If fact, if the last two outings Jamie had
were any indication of what is to come from him, who ever signs him
could be in trouble. The Dodger game told a big story, Jamie can’t hide
from it. He’s got a 83 mph fastball on a good day and it really seemed
like it could have been all over for him in LA just a couple months ago.

Time will tell if Jamie rejoins the team, I would think he would want
to end his career here, and no matter what happens to him in 2009,
Phillies fans will always remember his stellar year in ’08 – but that
LA game still haunts me. Jamie do the right thing and sign your name,
real soon!

Rich Baxter – Fightin Phillies Blog

Phillies 2008 Season Review

Rich Baxter – FightinPhillies.com

The Phillies capped off the 2008 season with a great World
Series win, 4 games to 1 over the Tampa Rays this year. They got their by
beating the Milwaukee Brewers 3-1 in the division series and then trouncing the
LA Dodgers 4-1 in the NLCS. The Phillies goal this year was to improve upon
their poor showing in 2007′s division series when they got shut down 3-0 by the
Colorado Rockies. They really did a great job in improving; you can’t get much
better than a World Series win!

Here is a recap of the regular season in 2008 for the
Phillies. The team drew 3.4 million fans to the ballpark this year in 2008 and
it was more than in 2007 when the Phils drew 3.1 million fans to a ballgame at
Citizens Bank Park. It has been five seasons since the Citizens Bank Park
Phillies stadium has opened and already the Phillies have had 15.1 million fans
come through the turnstiles to see a baseball game.

The game of baseball is great for compiling stats, there are
so many games, and so many stats to keep track of, it becomes a joy for anyone
who likes to look at streaks, batting averages, and any other stat that you can
think of.  Here are some stats of the
2008 Phillies regular season:

1.      
Total team at bats: 5509 (10^th in NL)

2.      
Total team hits: 1407  (10^th in NL)

3.      
Total Runs Scored: 799  (2^nd in NL)

4.      
Average age for the 2008 Phillies: 30.1

5.      
Total Team Doubles: 291 (9^th in NL)

6.      
Total Team Triples: 36 (4^th in NL)

7.      
Total Team HR’s: 214 (1^st in NL) -
one more homerun this year than 2007

8.      
Total Team Walks: 586 (5^th in NL)

9.      
Team Batting Average:  .255 (10^th in NL)

10.  
 Team
Slugging Pct.: .438 (2^nd in NL)

11.  
 Team Hit
by Pitch:  67 (3^rd in NL )
down from 90 in 2007 (1^st in NL)

12.  
Team Stolen Bases: 136 (3^rd in NL)

  The Pitching team stats are very interesting,
the offense carried this team most of the regular season in combination with
good pitching. I wouldn’t call it a ‘great’ year for Phillies pitching in 2008
as told by these team pitching stats for the regular season:

1.      
Team ERA:  3.89 (4^th in NL)      in 2007
 4.73 (13^th in NL)

2.      
Team Wins: 
92 (2nd in NL)

3.      
Team Losses:  70 (15^th in NL)

4.      
Complete Games: 
4 (5^th in NL)

5.      
Team Hits Given Up:  1444 (9^th in NL)

6.      
Team Runs Given Up: 680 (3^rd in NL)

7.      
Team Home Runs Given Up:  160 (6^th in NL)        in 2007:   198 (12^th
in NL)

8.      
Average Pitchers Age:  30.6

9.      
 Srikeouts:  1081 
(11^th in NL)

10.  
Saves: 
47  (2^nd in NL)   in 
2007 42  (6^th NL)

The last stat in the team pitching I feel is the most
important, an increase in saves to 47 from last year’s total of 42. That’s an
increase of 5 games more that were successfully saved for a win for the
Phillies in 2008 over last year. It was by no means a dominating year for
Phillies pitchers. There was no 20 game winner. Jamie Moyer had the highest
amount of wins at 16 followed by Cole Hamels at 14. Hamels and Moyer pitched in
33 games each to lead the team in that category. Moyer actually had 3 fewer
losses than Hamels who had 10 losses for the Phillies in the regular
season.  Hamels and Moyer shadowed one
another for the top pitching billing for the team. Moyer pitched about 30 less
innings than Hamels and  Moyer gave up 8
fewer homeruns than Hamels did with Hamels total at 28 homeruns given up.
Hamels had more strikeouts at 196 to Moyer’s 123. Moyer hit 11 batters and
Hamels only hit one batter during the regular season. The stats for Moyer and
Hamels are really close for the regular season. Moyer is 45 years old and
Hamels only 24 in 2008, so Jamie really gave the Phillies all he had this year
and nearly was the best Phillies pitcher for the regular season.

The next group of stats I’ll talk about is the individual
player’s stats for the Phillies regular season in 2008 in baseball it’s the
numbers that make you great, here’s some of them:

Batting Average: 
.293  Victorino   - 
Chase Utley just missed  .292

On Base Percentage: 
.380  -Utley

Slugging PCT: 
.543  -Howard

Games :  162  -Howard

At Bats:  610  -Howard

Runs:  113  -Utley

Hits:  177  -Utley

Homeruns:  48  -Howard

Double:  41  -Utley

Triples:  9  -Rollins

Singles:  115 -
Victorino

Walks:  102  - Burrell

Extra Base Hits: 
78  -Howard and Utley

Hit By Pitch:  27  -Utley

Sacrifice Hits: 
12  -Moyer

Intentional Walks: 
17  -Howard

Here are some individual Phillies regular season pitching stats
leaders to ponder:

ERA:  3.09  -Hamels

Wins:  16  -Moyer

Win/Loss Pct:  .696 -Moyer

Complete Games: 
2  -Hamels and Myers

Shut Outs:  2  - Hamels

Saves:  41 – Lidge

Strikeouts to Walks ratio: 
3.70  -Hamels

Strikeouts:  196  - Hamels

Final standings for
the Phillies regular season in the NL East 2008-

              92-70  .568      
Home  48-33   Road – 44-37    finished 3.0 games ahead of NY Mets

So, all in all a very successful year for the team, it’s the
second World Championship of the franchise which started in 1883. The first
coming 28 years ago in 1980, I am proud to have witnessed both of them! I am
looking forward to a great 2009 season.

                                            Richard Baxter   -  FightinPhillies.com

          Thanks to www.baseball-reference.com for the stats I quoted in this post!

                 BR is one of my favorite stops on the internet to read about baseball.

The Phillies also seem to have
appointed Assistant GM, Ruben Amaro, Jr., to the post of GM according
to the Philadelphia Daily News, Paul Hagen. This is being reported on Philly.com
as a fact. So here comes the change that is inevitable to a team. Mike
Arbuckle, who has been with the team for many years and made plenty of
great player acquisitions, was in a two man race for the GM job but
appearently lost out to Amaro who I remember played for the Phillies
but wasn’t a real stand out player. His father also played and coached
for the Phillies, so the ‘keep it in the family’ style of baseball
rolls right along.

Time will tell what a Amaro GM legacy
will bring to the ballclub. I can’t say anything but ‘Good luck, and
bring us another championship!’ and please a little sooner than the 28
year drought from 1980 to 2008.

The Phils will have to wield
a big check book this year, they’ve made millions and now they will
have to spend millions with Howard, Hamels, and do you give a little
extra to Jimmy for good measure here too? Look for that hotdog and soda
to go up again to help pay for all of this! I want to see what happens
with ticket prices, now that the Phillies have the whole area under
their spell. We may have to pony up with our checkbooks too!

The Baseball Hall of Fame
in Cooperstown, NY will have a nice display of the Phillies
Championship 2008 season ready by November 14, 2008 and remember any of
us that have a ticket to the induction day of 2008 for the Hall of Fame
gets free admission to the Hall just by bringing your ticket stub! Cole
Hamels Game 5 jersey will be there, and some other cool items. Read more about this here.

Join me at my Phillies Blog Website, you can listen to my podcast about the Phillies as well there

Rich Baxter – Fightin Phillies Blog