Minor Issues: You Win Some, You Lose… Many More

Say hello to edition #1 of Minor Issues, where TBOH takes a peak under the blanket at just what exactly the Phillies farm system is working with this week.  Why?  I don’t know, maybe because watching the Major League Phillies has almost depleted my entire supply of dinner plates.

I had only had five to begin with.

Lehigh Valley Ironpigs

Triple-A is where it’s at these days!  Which is to say, Triple-A is where Drew Carpenter is not at, and Kyle Kendrick is. Thanks to a culmination of his latest Ken-tastrophes, Kendrick was jettisoned from the Phils roster in favor of the 7-6 Carpenter, who will undoubtedly be given two games of leeway before the dam of undeserved pressure breaks and he is slathered in pissed off boos, blog entries, and probably like a hammer or a table saw somebody throws onto the field (Because it goes with “Carpenter.”  Yeah, you get it.)

Kendrick will be looking to repair himself so as to come back and do some long relief work, I guess?  I can’t see his minor league stint fleshing out some sort of deep, sexy talent lying within that gets him back in the rotation–which, remember, he wasn’t even supposed to be in in the first place.

But its not all rehab starts down there, evidenced by Dom Brown (<3<3<3), John Mayberry Jr., and Brian Bocock taking an 8-1 deficit in their collective hands and shattering it into thousands of pieces against the Indianapolis Indians. Bocock (of “BoCOCK and GLOAD”) spit in the face of the Indianapolis bullpen with a furious base-emptying triple in the seventh to electroshock a late game rally that saw Mayberry end the game with four hits.

Mike Zagurski and Antonio Bastardo each pitched a zero run inning.  Which is good. If you’ve been watching the ML Phillies, you may be confused as to how a “bullpen” is supposed to work (They’re very unstable!  Let’s continue).

Reading Phillies

The R-Phils almost exploded New Jersey during their four game series with the Trenton Thunder this past week, and not just because New Jersey is a paper-thin land mass sitting on 300,000 feet of toxic waste and Guido puke.

The 30,000 fans drawn to watch the rivals beat up on each other was enough to make the Eastern League stand up and pay attention, and then lay down and go back to sleep.

Meanwhile, in the actual game that was played, Phils first baseman Michael Rizzoti started the abuse of the Thunder’s All-Star pitcher D.J. Mitchell with a three run home run in the first.  A timely win, considering the violent losses the Thunder had been heaping up on Reading until this point in the four game series.

Yesterday, up in Erie, the Phils pulled off another win 6-1, behind pitcher Yohan Flande.  But don’t be fooled.  According to the Reading Eagle, the Phillies have only scored more than five runs twice in the last nine games.

Whoa my.

Lakewood BlueClaws

The BlueClaws are going golfing, reports am APP.com website two days into the future (check the date at the top).  And the Coors Lite Girls will be there, so overweight middle aged men with embarrassing golf scores  can feel free to say massively inappropriate things to young girls in small tops, then laugh as if it had been a joke.  Ha, ha!  Ha.  You guys are still young at heart, that’s great.  Still keep in touch with those guys from the frat?  They’re mostly dead or divorced?  Jesus.

Anyway, the BlueClaws were one-runned by the Kannapolis Intimidators (Wow, that is a… totally bad-ass name for a baseball team) in the first game of a double header, and then no-runned in the second.  Not even CF Jiwan James and his 24-game hit streak could pull the Claws out of the fire, and he went 0-for-3, causing parents across the tri-county area to remove “Jiwan” from the list of names for their baby.  For shame.

Clearwater Threshers

The Minor League report on “Amazin’ Avenue” referred to the Threshers starting pitcher Phillippe Aumont “…supposed top prospect Phillippe Aumont.”  Well, I am going to get really upset and offended by this because Phillippe is just misunderstood.  Yes, he gets mad sometimes.  Sure, he’ll punch a locker if he’s feeling blue.  He’ll change when the baby comes.

And fine, he’s not a very good baseball pitcher.  But I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit here and take shit from a Mets blog, especially since in the latest game Aumont tornadoed into awfulness, the St. Lucie Mets starter did just as poorly.  Stupid Mets.  I hate you.  Get ‘um, Phillippe.

Anwyays, the Threshers dropped both games of a double-header to the Mets affiliate.  Booooooo.