Now Pitching... Randy Lerch

Yay Phillies! “Meet the Mets! Beat the Mets!”, right? And they get another chance today to pound a future Hall of Famer!

Boy, the Mets have been in total sleepwalk mode this series, right? It is almost like they just don’t care: come out, fall behind early, Phillies’ pitcher gets a big hit, general-malaise from the fourth inning on, now let's go get a beer. I don’t know who told the Mets that Lastings Milledge is a major league ready corner outfielder- 'cause he looks like Bobby Abreu with a few belts in him out there in right. He’s horrid. And I did not like the way El Duque was left out there to be humiliated- there is taking one for the team and there is being embarrassed. 105 pitches over four frames and eleven earned runs (boy, the official scorer is not helping the Mets’ pitching in this series one bit) is the latter.

So the Phillies have run there mark to fourteen up, seven down since this surge began- and made my adamant declaration of “no way they can get to 86 wins” look downright coureagous. I was kicking around with my brother last night just what fueled this small renaissance- as I don’t put much stock in the “Bobby Abreu is a loser” theory. But I believe it is hard to get around two facts- that you don’t hurt any team by subtracting David Bell- and replacing Ryan Madson and Gavin Floyd in the rotation with anybody (say Randy Lerch and Tommy Underwood) is a net plus.

But that is emblematic of how much more there is to do here. 14-7 is a pretty darn solid mark- and it has only brought them back to 2.5 games. And a 14-7 mark would be required again to close a three-ish game gap on a Reds' team that goes a perectly reasonable 11-10 in the same span.

It is so very hard to make up ground- which is why the Phillies absolutely cannot spit the bit in these next two games against New York. They picked up a game and a half; they cannot just give that game, or two games, right back. They gotta get one. Got to. This team is going to really struggle to get more than a few games north of .500- and they can not fritter away a good start against these Mets by playing normal Phillies baseball the next two days.