Completely agree... I had to narrow the other ones down to figure out which one was him. And the Cliff Lee one looks like Cliff Lee, but am I the only one who looks at that and thinks Chuck Finley?

I don't think I know who Chuck Finley is. I can think of Steve Finley, who played in the outfield for some NL West teams (I remember he was on the Dodger team a few years ago that got into the playoffs on the final day of the season, I think thanks to his grand slam) but I can't remember that well what he actually looked like to know to agree with you or not.

Well when you can go a 15 game stretch with never scoring any more than 4 runs in any single one of them, and still come out of it with an 11-4 record... I guess your starting staff is living up to the hype

Best record in MLB baby!! Thank god we're winning the majority here of these early games that we should be, we need to take advantage of this weak-ish starting schedule, because it's gonna get harder soon enough, more +.500 teams and other playoff contenders.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=6437252


Oswalt's taking a leave of absence from the team for "personal reasons", no known date for his return.

Haha second place suck on that! April 27th Champions ftw!!

Joe Blanton is the latest player calling the 15 day DL home, something with his elbow. Vance Worley's been called up.

I realize we were extremely lucky in 2008 with how few major injuries we dealt with, but seriously I think we've made up for it by now.

18 wins in April, new all time franchise record baby! Not bad considering all the times over the last half decade or so where we came out of April at best around .500.

USA USA USA USA USA USA USA

Sooo... you think such a poignant and patriotic thing like that happening in Philly may finally get some people to stop bitching about the decades old snow balls & Santa?

naaaah... what am I, crazy?

Ryan Howard, is it customary for you to look at a perfect pitch literally right down the middle of the plate when you've already got 2 strike count on you?

They just put the stats up on the screen, last 9 games we've scored 15 goddamn runs. A .174 team batting average, something like 5-36 with RISP. This is just flat out unacceptable at this point. I'm hoping at the very least there's going to be a closed door players only meeting soon.

And yea, true, Chase Utley looks to be back in the lineup tomorrow, but that ain't waving a magic wand.

Relax, you're in 1st place and that's probably not changing anytime soon. Imagine 9 games 15 runs and you're still the best in the division, what does that say about the rest of us????

God AWFUL baseball this year. Somebody call Lance and bring back the drugs.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=6601373


It only took him til just before the start of June to realize, ooops, maybe he made a mistake?

CHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCH

The Miami Heat of the MLB

this might be the worst analogy ever

Not only is Vance Worley coming back up for a spot start on Saturday, but to make the roster move they've.... dun dun dunnn.... designated JC Romero for assignment!! yippeeeee!!!

God I've been hoping for awhile that Amaro would have the balls to do this. Obviously a key factor probably against the idea is how much of a veteran Romero is. But this ain't 2008 or 09 anymore. yea when we snagged him from Boston he was just insane right away. But I recently saw his total stats as a Phillie, in 3 full seasons, he had approx 62 innings pitched, about 55 walks and 42 strikeouts. For a lefty specialist reliever, for how many times you're brought in to just face one or two guys, and you average almost 1 walk per inning.
I mean they already tried to ditch him in the offseason, I think it was that there was a club option and they declined it. But he didn't find a job, and they didn't find another lefty specialist, so they just went and resigned him clean again.

Maybe we missed Cliff Lee's "The Decision."

This Oswalt situation is not looking good. I saw Tim Kurkjian saying today that we probably shouldn't look to expect him to be the same old Roy Oswalt (that he was at the start of the season) for the whole rest of the year. And this could very well heavily inform on the rest of his career, not that that'll be that long anyway. I'm thinking now more than ever that having "the big 4" really will only be one season long, that when come next year we won't be able to pick up Oswalt's option (for like $14M or something) and give Hamels the juicy new contract that he'll be expecting, and that surely other teams will be willing to give him. I think in this 3 year deal he's been making $8M per, and for another probably 3 year deal he'd get at the very least $12M, and that's a very conservative guess. Possibly more like 15.

And I knew that Lidge and Blanton were still out long term, not to be seen until August or so, but apparently Contreras is on that list as well. Actually KRod was quoted today as saying if he was traded to a contender, he'd be willing to just be a set up man and not the closer. I wonder if we'd go there...

RIP Roy Oswalt