The Phillies are showing signs of coming out of the painful slump they've been in the last month or so. They are 9-4 in their last 13 games and have scored over 5 runs in 9 of those games (8-1) and over 7 in 7 of them (6-1). 2010: 40-33 2009: 39-34 2008: 42-31 2007: 38-35 Instead of Good News / Bad News (I feel it gets a little mundane when you do it in back-to-back series), I'm going to help Charlie Manuel out picking the NL All-Star team. Let's start with the likely starters based … [Read more...]

Adding to the mountain of proof that the Phillies' players and brass are frequent visitors to ReclinerGM, the mere mention of missing the playoffs in last series' post inspired them to get going to sweep the Indians. That or Jimmy Rollins' return and the fact that the Indians kind of suck. 2010: 38-32 2009: 37-33 2008: 41-29 2007: 36-34 The Good News Jimmy's back! And in style (of course). Ryan Howard has had an excellent June, hitting .325 with a 1.018 OPS. Still waiting for the … [Read more...]

After making the post-season the last 3 years, and coming in to this season with what, on paper, looked like a better team than any of those 3 - it seemed to be a given that the Phillies would make the post-season one way or another. It doesn't seem that way anymore. The Phillies sit 5.5 games behind the Braves for 1st in the NL East and 3 behind the Mets for the Wild Card. It's very early, and we know that the Phillies are capable of long runs, but we aren't exactly sitting pretty with … [Read more...]

This is going to be short post for the weekend series. The Phillies entered a 16-game stretch on June 4th that, with the way they were playing, I thought could really bury them in the standings. I hoped for an 8-8 result at least and right now they sit at 6-6 (with a rain-out) after finally coming around in Yankee Stadium (with the help of really fantastic starts by Moyer and Kendrick). Their final test is the Minnesota Twins, who sit at 38-28 behind perennial MVP candidates Joe Mauer … [Read more...]