6/16/23

Here’s the deal: I’m no Jeff Passan or Scott Lauber or major journalist. I’m just a guy who plays baseball and watches a ton of Phillies games so in my mind, I’m qualified to have an opinion. I’ll be posting after every series, and what series to start with! Three of four from the D-backs, and if Kody’s ball goes three feet left, it’s most likely a sweep but as you know, it’s the Phillies so no lead is ever safe (7-1 against the Mets). But I’ll take it. As of Friday morning, they are a game and a half back of good old Gabe Kapler’s Giants. I’m not going to worry about the division right now because Atlanta is just horrifying. Even though we beat them in the NLDS last year, it’s a new year and anything can happen. But if they play well in Oakland over the weekend, it could be a different conversation on Monday. Wheeler is back, going over 6 inning every start except one disastrous start in Washington. Since the Toronto start on May 10^th, he has allowed 16 earned runs. And if you take out the one bad start, 9 earned runs over 6 starts. We’ll talk about Nola later but looking at Taijuan Walker, he’s allowed three earned runs in June, all to the Mets where the offense gave him a whopping two runs of support. If you want him to go out and give 6 2/3 or 7 innings you’re dreaming. He’s our three starter for a reason. Just go out and give us 5 inning and let the bullpen do the job. He better shove tonight against the Triple A’s. Going to the offense, I want to focus on Bryson Stott. In the last week, he’s hitting .444 with five extra base hits. This kid is 25 and started in the World Series. I didn’t expect him to play like this. He had one strikeout during the Arizona series. So he’s putting the ball in play and at some point, the balls will find grass and they have. Another guy who I thought would be a disaster is Nick Castellanos. Boy was I wrong (hopefully). I thought all he would get is breaking balls away and he would feebly flail away and hit .180 or something like that. He’s hitting .413 in June and .316 overall. If we can keep the offense going and the pitching is just average, this team will be a nightmare.