Featured Image by Cheryl Pursell. Her watermark cropped out only to fit the space.
About Last Night
Story Time: Years ago I was coaching a youth baseball team and one of the other coaches had a strategy idea for us for one particular game. He pointed out, that in order to throw a player out on the base path, the opposing team had to catch the ball, throw the ball, catch it again, and apply a tag. If we’re running, all we have to do is run and slide. “This team (that we were playing against) can’t do all that. I say we run.” And so we did. To much success.
It seemed like that was Durham’s strategy last night. They were running early and often. Perhaps it was because they didn’t believe in Stubbs behind the plate. Or, perhaps it was Jean Cabrera’s poor command of the strike zone. They had some success early, but then a couple guys got tagged out at the plate and Cabrera was out of the game and it all calmed down. Yesterday’s column had C/1B/DH Caleb Ricketts on the ‘Hot’ list, which was prescient. Two solo homers including the walk-off and a 4 for 4 night, he was the big piece in the 8-7 victory. Props to the relievers as well. As the team was constantly trying to dig out of a deficit, Harper and Torres kept the damage to a minimum and Trivino and Hernandez shut things down late making the walk-off possible. CF Steward Berroa had the other multi-hit game. His line is now up to .359/.405/.641/.1.046 in nine games since he joined the IronPigs. That is indeed a nice pick up and difficult thing to do when jumping on a moving train, joining a team with the season in progress. He keeps this up, he could be drawing a larger check about an hour south of here very soon. In the mean time, the Alcantara, Berroa, Kemp, De La Cruz is a nice top 4 in the lineup–even in the absence of Reyes.
Yesterday’s series preview can be found HERE.
Roster Update
We’ve come to know it as “Transaction Tuesday” around these parts. Extra moves from the weekend and the off-day Monday all culminate into a roster-move dump on Tuesdays, just prior to the games. Sometimes you see it coming, and other times it’s sort of surprising. And, it’s always a bit more dramatic when Reading and Lehigh Valley are overlapping at home, as they are this week.
Discussion: Suddenly we’ve got a crisis with starting pitching here at Triple-A. Rangel goes up to the Phillies, ostensibly to be bulk innings depth for the Taijuan Walker adventure coming Wednesday evening. Backhus will open for the Phillies followed by Walker. If things go sideways–and they’ve been doing nothing but that lately for the Fightins–then Rangel can come in and hold things down for a few innings so that they don’t have to burn all the arms before the matinee tomorrow. Then, Gillispie, who has been about our best starter along with Rangel, goes down with the elbow. It’s hard to say what this is going to look like, but we were running a six-man, six-day rotation, so if we tighten it up, we can go with Bryse Wilson tonight (Wednesday), Ryan Cusick on regular rest Thursday, Tucker Davidson on regular rest Friday, and then figure out the weekend when we get there.
It was good to see the Phillies do the right thing by Leon and re-sign him. There was some talk that they wouldn’t, but cutting and running from an injured player is a bad look and bad karma and golly this Phillies organization doesn’t need any of that right now.
Printable Roster 4/21
Other Notes
- The food post will hopefully get updated later this home stand when we get a chance to check on prices and do some additional taste testing. What we’ve had so far has been really good.
- Just thinking about aggressively desperate moves the Phillies could make: Call up Stubbs and DFA Marchan. If you lose Marchan that would be bad, but resting JT makes a more effective JT, and having Marchan in the lineup right now is not helping matters. The problem is with Pinto on the IL, we don’t really have any other MLB-ready catchers for depth. Perhaps lets get Ricketts back there some more if he’s going to hit like that!
- Sitting Crawford against lefties in Philadelphia should not be a thing. Check his splits from last season: He hits left-handed pitching just fine. And, his defense and speed help the lineup. He’s one of the few doing that right now and unless he needs a day to catch his breath or rest his body, then he should be in there.
- Reyes has done fine so far, and of course we want him to do well–but if he’s not playing as much as you would like, and the defense is a liability, Berroa up for Reyes could make sense.
- Jean Cabrera needs to get to the bullpen as soon as we have enough starters. It’s not working and his 40-man spot looms large. See what you have in that role before you have to make a move. See if the stuff plays up and if he’s more confident in attacking the zone with all pitches, unlike what we saw last night.
- I guess we need to keep Kieboom at third, along with Kemp some nights, because the Phillies might need a guy to play the hot corner soon. Still, I’d like to see Carter get some time at the other corner over the collection of catchers and second-basemen we have playing at first base currently. Also, wouldn’t be against scanning the minors rosters and the independent leagues for a bopper who’s limited to first, to fill out the triple-A lineup a bit better.
- We’ll be back on Friday with a “Weekend Update.” Weather should clear for the game tonight and then it should be warmer for the games on Thursday and Friday. We may have to dodge rain on Saturday but Sunday looks like it should be OK for the matinee.
See you at the park,
@Kram207