The Phillies completed a 3-4 week, and remain hopelessly behind in the NL East, in last. By contrast, the last place AL East Boston Red Sox, the reigning world champions, traded Jake Peavy today. The Phillies just stood still.
Cole Hamels is "barely available," Cliff Lee isn't really back yet enough to fetch a big return, and contract troubles are hamstringing trading away Marlon Byrd, A.J. Burnett, and Jonathan Papelbon. We all know Ryan Howard isn't going anywhere because no one wants to trade for him, and ownership is pretty much forcing the Phillies to hold onto Chase and Jimmy. So basically, Antonio Bastardo, who took a loss this weekend, is available and probably goes. Why does it increasingly feel like we're going to watch this life-less line-up play out 2014 and head for 95 losses with no future hope?
On the field, things aren't much better. Ryan Howard's .227/.309/.385/.694 slash line is amongst baseball's worst at his position, and despite a slight uptick from Dom Brown of late, he's still delivering you a .231/.280/.339/.620 line. If someone had told you they'd combine for 23 homers at the end of July before the season, you would have predicted the team to sit in last, obviously. Throw Ben Revere (.667) and Cody Asche (.697) on there, and you have half a line-up with sub-.700 OPS numbers. Asche might get better in the future, at least. The other three are not showing signs of much improvement or a future. The other four guys in the line-up are all past 30 (Utley, Rollins, Byrd, and Ruiz), and even if you want to put Sizemore into the line-up, we're going to need more than 47 AB's to declare him back as an elite player, or even part of our 2015 plans.
The one bright spot on the field was Cole Hamels this week. He was awesome, again, on Thursday. Kendrick and Hernandez both threw good games this weekend too, which is encouraging, if for no other reason than maybe someone will call about them. Papelbon had a rough week early, but recovered well and finished strong. De Fratus was good overall, but had his rough moments too.
There are four days to go this month, and four days until the deadline. The Phillies season is going nowhere. Whether or not the last two months are worth watching for future considerations depends on what happens next.
