Pitching, On-Base-Percentage Crucial to Strong Start

The Phillies have played the April Fool for the last several years, only recovering enough to make the playoffs last year. This is particularly troubling to skipper Charlie Manuel, who has watched his team take a 7-12 start in Spring Training, echoing the 4-11 start to last year's regular season.

For the Phillies, a strong April start is crucial and they have showed it to be a priority. For example, the move to give Brett Myers the opening-day start is most significant because it allowed a likely April-18 match-up of Santana/Hamels for the first bout with the Mets. Manuel has given our squad every opportunity to win early, and it shows.

Moreover, Charlie Manuel met with Shane Victorino, who has had a slow start, to urge him to start hitting, now. Whatever Charlie said, it worked for Shane, who went 2-2 with 3 RBIs today in a 6-4 victory over the Tribe.

Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins have both started sluggishly, but they too redeemed themselves this afternoon, Utley going 2-2 with a triple and Rollins 2-3 with two doubles.

The bottom line is that our offense is too good and we have too much depth to not put up runs later this month, so the real factor will be our pitching, particularly relief. With the 5th starting spot and two relief spots still in contention, it is unclear who will be depended upon to keep the Runs Allowed column down. If Eaton can continue to pitch like he did Saturday against the Twins (three scoreless innings), he will be the 5th starter and bump Chad Durbin to one of the open relief spots. This will leave the last spot for Travis Blackley, Clay Condrey or Fabio Castro. None have pitched particularly well, but in the remaining games one will and must step up.

The pitching situation for the Phils is uncertain at best but encouraging at worst. The movement of Myers to the rotation and the acquisition of Lidge create a staff which is much better than that which we finished up with last year. We also have a fresh batch of young pitchers in the minors desperately trying to play in the majors, many of whom had encouraging performances this spring. Carlos Carrasco, who I have mentioned before as a hopeful mid-season relief, was ranked as the 28th best pitching prospect in the country and should only mature and better himself in the minors until called upon.

Aside from pitching, baserunners and similarly OBP will be crucial to a good start. Though posting his highest OBP since 2004 (.344), Jimmy Rollins still does not draw enough walks for a lead-off man and is sometimes impatient at the plate. If he and Victorino can combine for a reasonable number of baserunners for Utley/Howard, the Phils should have no problem establishing a early season NL-East lead.

As far as I can see, the Phillies staff has taken every step possible to start strong and I am very confident that at the start of May, the east will be and will stay ours.