The Phils dropping 2 of 3 to Kansas City over the weekend is no real shock to longtime Phils observers. Weekends like these are just a microcosm of the performance of our city’s maddeningly consistently inconsistent team. Only a gem of a shutout performance from Jon Lieber kept the Phils from being swept by the team with the worst record in Baseball. Not exactly a great follow-up to a sweep of the Mets. To find a similar performance, we need to go all the way back to….. 2 weeks ago, when the Phils came home from a weekend sweep in Atlanta, only to be swept by the D-Backs.
What now?
With this year’s "too good to have been true" off-season acquisition, Freddy Garcia, now on the DL for the foreseeable future, who becomes the 5th starter? The scary part is that even the Phillies don’t know. Give a quick scan to both the AA and AAA rosters, and try to find anyone who can even be a 1 or two start stopgap, let alone a 4-6 week replacement. This is one of the biggest problems with Phillies’ management. They always seem to put together a lineup and a pitching staff that looks good on paper in spring training, but leaves ABSOLUTELY no room for injuries.
Every team has injuries, but the Phillies, year after year always get caught short-handed at the first sign of trouble. The fact that Jose Mesa is again a Phillie, 4 years after being released and dismissed as washed up, and sporting an ERA that needs to be calculated by NASA, is bad enough until you realize that it really is an upgrade to our historically bad bullpen situation. Our last prior bullpen upgrade was Mike Zagurski, who started the season in A ball. How does this happen? How does a team spend $90-100 million on a roster and have so many holes? Pitching isn’t the only position with no depth. What happens if Jimmy Rollins get hurt, even for a couple of games? They don’t even have another shortstop on the current roster, let alone in AAA. The Braves and Mets have the kind of organizational depth that can get them through a wave of injuries. Both of these teams have had it much worse than us, but continue to keep us at a safe distance in the standings. Why? Because they don’t delude themselves into thinking that their entire roster is going to make it through the season healthy, and have players ready to fill in.
The Phils have not learned the lesson of Paul Abbott. In 2004, they were in this very position, needing 5th starter and not having a replacement. They claimed Paul Abbott off of waivers from the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. He was so bad, that the worst team in baseball just tossed him aside. Yet he was good enough in the Ed Wade’s mind to make 10 starts for us. The Phillies won just 1 of those 10 starts, and the Phils finished 2 games out of the Wild Card.
Who is this year’s Paul Abbott? I’m afraid to ask.