Hits and Misses
May comes to an end today with the Phillies above .500 but struggling to stay close to the surging Marlins, who have won five in a row after a weekend sweep of the Mets (who start a three-game set with the Phils in a few minutes' time). Considering the rash of injuries we've experienced (Billy Wagner, Placido Polanco and now Vicente Padilla are on the disabled list, with Jim Thome and Jimmy Rollins hobbled but still active) and the anemic offensive production over the last six games--run totals of 0, 7 (with six of those in one inning and most of them unearned), 1, 3, 3, and 4--the 3-3 split over that time isn't so terrible. The problem is that the Marlins are going crazy, having won something like 9 of 11. Mike Lowell and Miguel Cabrera are terrorizing the league, and the Florida rotation is actually looking better than it did last year. It'll get better still when A.J. Burnett returns from Tommy John surgery, I think sometime in June.

Some good has come out of the injuries. Second baseman Chase Utley might be the toughest out in the Phils' lineup right now, even though I'm not very hopeful that Bowa will do the sensible thing and platoon the lefty-hitting Utley with Polanco--who pounds lefthanded pitchers--once Polanco gets healthy. The young pitchers who have come up to fill in for Wagner, Roberto Hernandez (whose biggest contribution thus far has been those two weeks he was hurt) and others have acquitted themselves well, and there's precedent in Phils history for big contributions from unheralded kids: Keith Moreland, Lonnie Smith, Bob Walk and Marty Bystrom were all key guys for the 1980 World Champs, and who could forget Kevin Stocker's .330 average as a rookie shortstop in 1993? At the least, Bowa and Ed Wade deserve credit for not making a rash of "veteran" signings or panic trades; I doubt any of the guys available through those channels would have performed as well.

Eventually the Phils will get healthy and the Marlins will hit a rough stretch. But last year, the Phils fell so far behind the Braves so early that when our surge came, we still couldn't get closer than four games or so in early July. By the end of that month, all that was left to fight for was the wild card. Here's hoping history doesn't repeat itself.