This weeks results:

Tue: 3-2 W @ Det

Wed: 4-0 W @ Det

Fri: 9-2 L vs. Atl

Sat: 15-7 L vs. Atl

Sun: 9-4 W vs. Atl

Overall: 55-50 (3-2 this week).

Ugh. This week almost feels like a tie. Sure we finish with a winning record but we lost the series that truly mattered. I mean the Tigers literally have the worst record in baseball so beating them twice is not an accomplishment.

As I sit here writing this I’m trying to go back in time to April 2nd of this year. At this point the Phillies were 4-0 on the season, with all four wins coming against the Braves and the Nationals. This was a time where it appeared that the offseason signings that we were all so excited about seemed to have propelled the Phillies to the top of the division where they rightfully belonged. A true force to be reckoned with in the National League.

Back to today, July 28th. Even after today’s win, the Phillies are just 4-11 against the Braves and Nationals in the months of June and July.

FOUR. AND. ELEVEN.

And what’s worse? Among those 15 games Aaron Nola has started four of them. The Phillies are 3-1 in those starts.

That means that they are a disgraceful 1-10 in their other 11 meetings with the teams currently ahead of them in the division since June.

To put things simply, the Phillies rotation is a one man show. It’s Nola then absolutely nobody. Not Jake Arrieta who they’re paying $25 million this year. Not Zach Eflin who has an ERA over 9 in his last 7 starts. Not the other rotating spots that could be filled by guys like Vince Velasquez or Nick Pivetta (both of whom seem to be better out of the bullpen). It’s just Aaron Nola.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t name any teams with only one trustworthy starting pitcher that go on to make deep postseason runs.

Although I am upset with how the staff minus Nola has looked, let’s keep the glass half full and look at some positives.

The Phils won today with Harper, Hoskins and Realmuto all going deep. Adam Haseley is also showing flashes of being a solid young player and should really be an everyday starter even when Jay Bruce comes back from the IL in the next couple days. I mean move Kingery to 3rd and sit Franco’s bum ass against righty’s.

Some guys in the bullpen are also showing well. Mike Morin should prove to be a valuable addition and for as bad as he’s looked at times as a starter, Pivetta shut the door against the Braves out of the pen today.

Shifting gears to the trade deadline on Wednesday, what should you expect from the Phillies?

Unfortunately the answer is, pretty much nothing. This makes me sad but it’s the truth. Phillies General Manager Matt Klentak and President Andy MacPhail have both said that because the Phillies are multiple pieces away from winning a World Series, they will likely not part with any prospects of value.

It’s a fun feeling when your favorite team pulls out all the stops and makes a huge win-now move to bring in a big name at the deadline. It energizes the fans and I can only imagine what it does for moral in the clubhouse. Players like to think that management believes in their chances to win right?

But sadly it just doesn’t make sense for the Phillies to be active at the trade deadline this year. Klentak and MacPhail are right this team is multiple pieces, or should I say multiple pitchers, away from winning anything significant.

As discussed earlier, the biggest team need is starting pitching. They’re are plenty of options on the market, but non that seem to be a good fit for the Phillies. They would not be in the market for a rental player like Madison Bumgarner (if the Giants even want to part with him), because they would almost definitely lose him in free agency after the season and as we discussed they need more than one piece for this years puzzle. It WOULD make more sense to go after a pitcher that is controllable for another year or two such as a Matthew Boyd or Mike Minor, however these players would require a much bigger haul of prospects that Phillies either don’t have or aren’t willing to part with.

From an offensive standpoint, I have seen some people connect Tigers outfielder Nicholas Castellanos to the Phillies. This to me just doesn’t make any sense. While a good hitter, Castellanos would only be a rental player and if the Phillies do bring in a rental player it better be an arm not a bat. This team has much bigger holes than outfield, especially with Haseley playing well and Bruce coming back soon as mentioned earlier.

Although the I expect the front office to be quiet, I expect big things in terms of on field performance this week as the Phillies will host the Giants and White Sox for three game sets.

Until next time, go Phils.

P.s. I know Segura exited today’s game after his collision with Acuna Jr. but I haven’t heard any news of an injury that would keep him off the field. Hopefully I don’t need any such news anytime soon.

P.p.s. What are the Mets doing. This whole week there were rubblings of them selling Syndergaard and now they turn around and buy Stroman for two of their top six prospects? So many questions. Like does management really think this team can still contend? And if so do they think their biggest need is starting pitching?? And did they base all of this off a three game sweep of the Pirates??? Lol what a wild organization.

Drew Smyly is the answer to the Phillies pitching problems.

Hahahaha no just kidding. He’s definitely not. HOWEVA (Stephen A. Smith voice), all joking aside his start today against the Pirates was promising. 6 innings of one run ball with 8 punchies? From a lefty starter? I’ve been craving that for a while now.

Heading into today’s game a southpaw had only started 4 of the teams 99 games. And one of those was a two inning start by Jose Alvarez in what was essentially a bullpen day. The other three were made by Cole Irvin back in May.

Smyly has not exactly had a stellar season so far. He started off with the Rangers but was released at the end of June after going 1-5 with a 8.42. He then signed a minor league contract with the Brewers but opted out after just three triple-A starts because the Brewers didn’t add him to the 25 man roster.

So ya, not a season to write home about thus far for Smyly. But as the optimist I try to be with this team, maybe he just needed the right fit to get back on track. I mean this is a guy that’s had success in the past.

For Smyly to work out in Philadelphia, he doesn’t need to mow down hitters like he did 5-6 years ago. All this team needs is a lefty starter that can go out every 5th day, give them 5-6 innings and a chance to win.

The Phillies made another addition to the pitching staff this week when they acquired Mike Morin from the Twins for cash considerations. Minnesota parted ways with the righty reliever after designating him for assignment on Tuesday.

This moved seemed very weird to me from the Twins perspective because Morin has been, dare I say, effective. This season for the Twins he appeared in 23 games posting a 3.18 ERA (8 ER in 22.2 IP). However half of those earned runs were surrendered in one appearance, his last as a Twin on July 4th. If you take away that one bad night then Morin had a 1.66 ERA in 21.2 innings as a Twin this year while allowing only 2 walks and holding opponents to a .207 BA against.

Now a team that’s looking to make a playoff run basically just gave away an effective relief pitcher for nothing? Strange. They must know something I don’t. My mind immediately goes to injury, but watching Morin in his Phillies debut on Saturday I didn’t see anything that would cause for concern.

Anyway, I’m happy to have Morin aboard and believe that he can help out the sinking ship that has been the Phillies bullpen.

Ok on to the weekly results.

Since my last post the Phillies went 5-5, making them 52-48 on the season.

The break down of their 5-5 is as follows:

1-2 vs. Nationals

2-2 vs. Dodgers

2-1 vs. Pirates

Ok so a lot of good and a lot of bad this week. If I wanted to I could focus on the 16-2 embarrassment that was Monday nights loss against the Dodgers, or on the fact that it seems like the Phils can’t beat the nationals.

But I’m a glass half full kinda guy. So instead I wanna focus on the walk-offs by Franco and Harper and the fact that this team split with the best team in baseball. That’s right I said the Dodgers are the best team right now I challenge you to prove me wrong. Then after wrestling some great competition, they go on the road without a day off and take two out of three from our cross state rival. This is not a team that has faired well on the road at all this year (22-27), so any road series win makes me feel some type of way. Especially when I see Rhys hitting clutch extra innings go ahead bombs.

Look ahead:

This week our Phightins will travel to Detroit for a two game set with the Tigers, before returning home to face the division leading Braves over the weekend.

Hopefully they can take care of business on the road against a cupcake opponent to get some momentum heading into an important weekend series. They may have to do so without closer Hector Neris who has a 3 game suspension looming.

Until next time, Go Phils.

Hello ladies and gents,

I’m excited to bring to you my first post for the Ring the Bell blog where I will discuss all things Philadelphia Phillies. My name is Bill Greenfield and I am currently a baseball player overseas in Europe. Baseball has basically been my life since I was just a young buck growing up in the suburbs of the great city of Philadelphia.

2019 is a wild time my friends. Thanks to technology and social media, information seems to travel as fast as the speed of light. It’s a world where any idiot can have a podcast or a blog and shove their opinion down everybody else’s throat. Well guess what. Now I’m one of those idiots.

I’m not really sure if anyone will actually end up reading this blog. To be honest I’m not sure that I care. If anyone does read this and enjoy it then it would be cool to know there are others out there that share my passion, and if not that’s cool too at least I’ll plug up some free time. Either way I’m doing this because I just can’t get enough Phillies baseball.

With that said let’s get into the first half recap.

This is how the standings are sitting at the all star break. As you can see the phightin phils are sitting in 3rd place in the NL east and are barely holding onto the second wildcard spot.

The Phillies first half can basically be split in two parts. Up until May 30 the Phils were sittin pretty atop the NL east with a 33-22 record. Since then…it’s been a different story. The phightens have limped towards the all star break going 14-21 since then (conversely the braves are 24-11 since May 30th).

Some might say that the recent struggle was because of Andrew McCutchen’s injury, however due to how awesome Jay Bruce has been, the Phillies offensive output has actually increased since Cutch’s injury (4.85 runs per game before June 3rd, 5.03 runs since).

Nope instead we can attitude the less than stellar output to the pitching staff. During the 33-22 start the Phils staff allowed only 4.05 runs per game. Since they have surrendered 6.57 rpg. Yikes. By comparison the Orioles allow the most runs per game in the majors this year at 6.07.

To be fair to the Phillies arms and coaching staff, they have had to deal with a plethora or injuries. They currently have 6 pitchers on the now named “injury list” and may be sending a 7th that way depending on what happens with Arrieta’s elbow. Honestly Arrieta should probably spend some time on the IL considering he has a 6.63 era over his last 7 starts.

GM Matt Klentak and fellow execs made it a point go beef up the lineup this offseason adding Cutch, Segura, Realmuto and of course Harper. They only addition they made to the pitching staff was David Robertson, who only pitched in 7 games before landing on the IL on April 15th with some elbow soreness.

You take an already thin pitching staff and give it 6 injuries and the result will usually not be pretty. That’s what’s happening to this team right now.

Want some good news though? There’s still 20 days until the trade deadline. If the Phillies are serious about making a run this year they need to add another pitcher, preferably a bullpen arm (crossing my fingers for Will Smith or Shane Greene). There are options out there so make it happen Matty.

Some more good news? Despite the resent struggles if the season ended today the Phils would be in the playoffs. And if you look at who’s behind them the only team that really scares me is the Brewers. Soooo even though things haven’t been all peachy lately there’s still a solid chance at a playoff berth. Just gotta avoid split ups like losing 5 of our last 6 to the Marlins (reallyyyyy wish I was joking about that).

Phils kick off the 2nd half with home series against the Nationals and Dodgers. Gonna be a tough first week but hopefully the squad can start off hot at home.

Until next time, go Phils.