GDT 9/10/21 Colorado Rockies (Márquez) @ Philadelphia Phillies (Coonrod)

My prediction: Phillies go 7-14 in the remaining 21 games.

And tonight’s exercise in phutility is mercifully over.

Maybe Bowden is available for the Phillies' bullpen. He could have held a 3 run lead in the 9th.

Heading back to .500.

Phillies now on 4 game losing streak and only a half game ahead of the Mets.

Catching the Braves is not impossible but surely looking unlikely. Staying ahead of the Mets is more likely but not going to happen with play like we have seen of late.

In the off-season both the Phils & Braves needed another starter. The Bravesput down $16 million on Charlie Morton. The Phils put $7 million down on Anderson & Moore. Which team made the wiser investment.

yeah but the issue here is the payroll at the start of the year. Phillies were already butting up toward the luxury tax. They have 3 players making above 20M (Wheeler, Harper and Realmuto). The Braves had one (Freeman @22M). Morton is their 2nd highest paid player. Acuna, Albies, Swanson and Riley make a combined $15 million... Compare that to Harper, Wheeler, Realmuto and Cutch making a combined 88M

The Braves make mistakes too. They signed Hamels for 20M in 2020 and he threw 3 innings. But they have homegrown talent that is cheap so they can more easily sign players who are better than scrap heap types like Anderson and Moore

Obviously the Phillies were hoping one of Anderson and Moore would be Charlie Morton in 2017. But the Braves also didn't even have a Wheeler.

Smyly is who the Braves spent $11 million where the Phillies had Moore, Anderson and VV combined, and they still managed to get 1 full win more out of him than the Phillies got out of the trio, relief included (0.2 to -0.8). Nothing wrong with the scrapheap signing (or in VV's case, the low-risk tender) but to get all three so very wrong...

Mostly there's still no excuse for the Phillies not exceeding the CBT, particularly in the off-season when you don't have to make trades. They will likely end up wasting five seasons of Harper and Realmuto. We're almost to Year 4.

Silver lining - we used all the bad bullpen pitchers today. Only good one was Coonrod. The rest of the bullpen is fresh for the weekend. Including Hammer among those bad pitchers. At times he has been 96-97. These days he is more 93-94 with little command. Good ERA through smoke and mirrors but he has be eminently hittable. He might be the one to go for Velasquez.

Middleton has to accept going over the CBT. He has to in order for us to be competitive. For whatever reason we have not developed the young players. Until we do, Middleton has to get used to exceeding The Cap. It is irrational to spend the big bucks on Harper, RJ and Wheeler & then surround them with mediocrity such that you waste their prime years. But that is what Middleton is doing.

When is Girardi going to call one of those "team meetings."

I gotta think Rosso goes for Velasquez. De Los Santos still seems as fungible as anyone too.

They got one bad game and one good game out of it but surely a Vince/Moore tandem can't be any worse. Could always use an opener in those games too if there's a reason too.

Still time to get back on track though it's gonna be hard without help from the Braves. Gotta win four out of the next five before three in Queens.