Utley & Lidge Are All-Stars

July 6, 2008

Chase Utley and Brad Lidge will represent the Phillies in the 2008 All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium on July 15th, 2008.  Utley earned the top number of votes among all National League players and was just barely edged out at the last minute from being the top vote getter in all of baseball by the American League’s Alex Rodriguez.  Still a great honor though, Utley will start at second base and attend his third All-Star game in a row.  Lidge too is having quite a day.  Today, in addition to being named an All-Star, the Phillies locked him up for another 3 years with an extension worth 37.5 million dollars, a club option for 2012 and performance incentives.  Lidge is one of two major league full-time closers, along with Mariano Rivera of the Yankees, who has not blown a save yet this year.

We still have one more shot at getting another Phillie into the All-Star game! 
Pat Burrell can make it if we VOTE him in!  You have until this Thursday at 5pm to cast your VOTES as many times as you can and here is how to do it:  Either on-line by using THIS FORM or from your cell phone, text the word VOTE to 36197 and reply with “Pat Burrell” as your choice.  Your regular text messaging rates will apply.  Anyhow, VOTE FOR PAT!!!!  He should have been in there in the first place!

But, we all know how nepotism works…Clint Hurdle, manager of the Colorado Rockies, got to pick the pitchers and the reserve players (a few were by players votes too).  Now sure, every team needs a representative so I expected either a Rockies pitcher OR Matt Holliday, but certainly not BOTH for a FOURTH PLACE team.  But I guess he figured he could get away with it, and really, who’s to stop him.  So, he took Matt, which erased all possibility of Pat getting picked and then took his own Aaron Cook, which killed Cole Hamels’ chances.  However, if you compare the numbers on these guys, he really should have gone with either Cole or Pat for one of these spots:

	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	TB	BB	SO	SB	CS	OBP%	SLG%	AVG
Burrell	86	284	47	79	20	2	21	53	166	65	70	0	0	0.411	0.585	0.278
Holliday	71	281	49	96	21	2	13	49	160	37	52	10	1	0.424	0.569	0.342

	W	L	ERA	G	GS	CG	SHO	IP	H	R	ER	HR	HBP	BB	SO
Hamels	9	5	3.22	18	18	2	2	128.2	98	48	46	15	0	33	110
Cook	11	5	3.38	18	18	2	1	125.1	130	52	47	11	3	28	59

The only spot where Holliday shines above Burrell is average…he gets more hits; but Burrell hits for way more power and in more key situations.  As for Hamels and Cook, Hamels has twice as many strike outs, more innings and gives up fewer hits overall.  I think this one is a real shame.  Those couple of no decisions where the Phillies offense didn’t score for Cole really hurt him here, because Mr. Hurdle will use # of wins as a crutch to back his pick, but the rest of the numbers do not substantiate his obviously going with his own team, regardless of making the correct call.

In other news, the Phillies are still in a rain delay with the Mets leading 1-0 in the 8th inning.  You have to hope they can find a way to pull this one out after a terrible loss last night, where the usually dependable bullpen really let them down.  The offense is showing signs again of a slumber as they have been unable to score runs and move runners in key situations.  I hope they are using the rainy time to find a way to kick start their bats!    To be continued…  Go Phillies!

Written by Phillies Phollowers Posted in Dailies Tagged with Aaron Cook, All-Star, Brad Lidge, Chase Utley, Cole Hamels, Matt Holliday, Pat Burrell, Phillies