Don't Go Changing, To Try And Please Me

Scene: Panic! in the City of Brotherly Love. Don't believe me? Phillies uber-blogger Mike Carminati says so in a post cryptically entitled "Remain calm. All is well. Do not panic!—Alright, Maybe We Should Panic." As Homer Jay Simpson might say, it's funny because it's true.

Things for the team to beat in the NL East are not going, how do you say, well. They avoided a sweep at the hands of the worst team in baseball Thursday by eking out a 4-2 win over Washington. The victory pushes the soaring Phils to 4-10, 6.5 games behind the dynamic, Marlins-destroying Mets. And, of course, the standings barely begin to tell the whole story.

Reigning MVP Ryan Howard, hitting all of .213 with one home run, is out hurt with a leg injury for a couple of games. Fellow traveler Chase Utley's bumping up against his portly teammate with a .222 average. Pat Burrell and Jimmy Rollins look just fine as long as they're not playing in Shea, but that'll only get you so far.

Then, there's manager Charlie Manuel, who appears to have sucked on the wrong end of a corn cob pipe for the last time. His much-mocked tirade during a postgame press conference, during which he challenged a local radio host to a fight, was followed by a bizarre media session the next day that culminated in him sending his No. 1 starter, Bashful Brett Myers, to the bullpen to pitch 8th innings. The gathered media was, needless to say, incredulous at this turn of events.

Now, Joe Sheehan at BP says the move makes enough sense to go through with [subscription required ... feel free to ignore]; his position is that if Pudge Lieber can't cut it there, none of the other non-Hamels starters are strikeout types, and Myers is by default the best fit. This is true to a certain extent, and as per Sheehan, it's certainly the fault of GM Pat Gillick that Manuel finds himself in a situation with six more-or-less intransigent starting pitchers and nothing efficient to do with them.

That said, the sheer lunacy of demoting your ace, wife-slagging though he may be, to the 'pen only two-plus weeks of the season is too rich to ignore. For the love of god, this problem was staring them in the face from the moment they acquired Freddy Garcia and Adam Eaton. The lojgam/trade opportunity was discussed on this blog and across the media landscape for literally a couple of months.

And this is how it shakes out. The Phils give Myers a whole Spring Training to work as a starter, run him out there on Opening Day, and before the ice on Queechy Lake melts, they toss him out of the rotation like Tanyon Sturtze.

It would be sad if it wasn't so hilarious.

But we laugh, and with good reason. The Mets' putative rivals look like a complete wreck, and there's little they can do to fix it. They've got nothing to work with in the minor leagues, and a GM who has shown he doesn't know his ass from his elbow when it comes to making trades. (Bobby Abreu says hi from the Bronx.) Let's say he wises up and tries to deal the reeling Lieber for something. What can Gillick reasonably expect to pick up, even with the inflated market value of starting pitching?

A real catcher instead of Rod Barajas and Carlos Ruiz? Well, a guy like Cleveland's Kelly Shoppach might be an upgrade, but that ain't going to happen. If there are a whole lot of other spare catchers out there, I don't see them. (Maybe taking one off the D-Backs, but they don't need starting pitching. The Rockies, maybe, but those guys aren't upgrades.)

A bullpen type? Nobody's trading anybody worth having at this juncture of the season. The time to do this was during the offseason -- swap Lieber for some prospects and sign Roberto Hernandez, or something like that.

Realistically, the only option is to hold tight for a bit and pray that the team doesn't far too far out of contention while the big guns are slumping and the pitching gets its collective head on straight. Oh, there's no question they'll pull themselves into something resembling a .500 team before long; they've got too much talent (without a Ryan Howard injury, of course) to remain sub-Nats.

The best-case scenario, I guess, is a full return to 2006 form for the star players, some decent contributions from the scrubs, steady performances from most of the rotation and a star turn from Hamels, and a fairy godmother to give Wes Helms some defensive acumen. Could happen, especially with Myers consigned to the sculllery.

Even then, do we think they're a contender? Not really, no. They're still not as good as the Mets under practically any scenario. I had them at 87 wins before the season, and I'd only push them down to about 85 at the moment.

And to be honest, I think that's just fine. I don't really want the Phils to finish in last place; I dislike them too much to want that. I prefer them just as they are -- laughably ambitious, good for a belly laugh in a "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight" type of way. I like them limping along at just hot enough to a clip to give them delusions of grandeur that are eventually crushed beneath the weight of their own mediocrity.

In other words, I love them just the way they are. They've never let me down before!