You can call me Burrell

Its September. School is in session. Football season started. For MLB, this means the hunt for October is on. My Phillies are in the hunt, in fact a week ago they had a 1/2 game lead in the NL east. Unfortunately that lead is gone. In fact the Phillies normally red-hot offense has been a bit tepid of late.


This is the part where I rant:

Where has it gone? Well lets examine their line up

Role Players:

Greg Dobbs (PH) - Leading the league in BA as a pinch hitter
Shane Victorino (CF), Jason Werth (RF) - Having great seasons
Cris Coste (C), Carlos Ruiz (C)- Not spectacular BA, but good for catchers
Eric Bruntlet (3B, 2B, LF, SS) , Pedro Feliz (3B) - splitting time at 3B, certainly a weakness on the team, in terms of offense, but consistently hit around .250.

Stars:

Jimmy Rollins (SS) - normally MVP caliber. Started slow, but batting .270 now.
Chase Utley (2B) - MVP caliber first half, respectable 2nd BA .290 with power
Ryan Howard (1B) - Weak 1st half, but tons of power, leads the league with 43 HR. Batting .343 in september!

You will notice there is one position unaccounted for. Left field. Here we have Pat Burrell. He had a great start, and at some point he and Chase were both in the league top 5 in BA and HR. Now he stinks. For the last two months he has a BA of .180, which is absurd for someone who will be a free agent after this year. Over the last 7 days he is batting .153, worse than all our starting pitchers under 40 (sorry Jaime Moyer). He is such a reliable out these days that people pitch around Ryan Howard, who is as usual among the league leaders in strike outs. Oh one last thing, in addition to leading the Fightin Phils in sucking, he also leads them in salary, by 4 million dollars. Ugh.