Similar routine as yesterday – meeting at the mound with Sandberg, stretching exercises, and then base running.  Today, home to second, and second to home.  There was more effort from more players, but 3 or 4 still look like they are taking it easy.  One or two might be going easy due to injuries last year.

Afterwards, long toss then they split into two groups for pickoff plays.  Yesterday, I mentioned that it is difficult to guess where the prospects will be.  Well, this is the one time all day that I know where they will be going.  When the Phillies run these drills, the 25-man roster guys go to Schmidt Field.   The rest go to Ashburn field.  So, of course today, Cesar Hernandez was included with the big leaguers on Schmidt.  We had Burnett, Bastardo, and a lot of probable minor pitchers filling out our group.

They started with pickoffs at first base and had Franco splitting time with Ruf there.  Blanco, Brignac, and Cedeno played short.  The outfielders ran until tagged.  Franco performed competently.  All his rundowns ended with one throw and a tag by the shortstop unless the runner stopped and tried to return to first, then Franco applied the tag.  He ran the plays the way he was taught, like he hasn’t had time to forget yet.

Next came pickoffs at second and Franco taking every other play at third.  The other four rotated from second to short with all but Ruf taking a turn at third.  It sounds and looks confusing, but they rotated smoothly.   Nothing noteworthy here.

They ended with the pitchers throwing a pitch and the coach hitting a ball to one of the fielders or the pitcher.  The play was at home.  Brignac played second, Franco played third, Cedeno played short, Ruf played first, and Blanco rotated between short and third.  Burnett misplayed one ball but instead of heading to the end of the line, he insisted on taking another ground ball.  This is the kind of leadership I’ve seen from Halladay, Lee, and Hamels in previous springs.  Not a big deal, but I thought of those past situations when Burnett wanted another turn.

Then they broke for another team meeting at the mound.  They had another one later.  I don’t remember them having so many meetings out on the field.

I anticipated live BP, so I went over to Roberts Field where I had such a good vantage point yesterday.  I was wrong.  They just had regular BP off one of the coaches.  The group on this field included Ruiz, Revere, Rollins, and Abreu.  I overheard one of the coaches state, “We’re going to do something different.  6 hit and run, 6 move the runner, 3 infield in, 3 infield back”.  This made it easier to gauge the quality of their at bats.   Ruiz and Rollins stroked their first 5 pitches through the “hole” at second.  Revere and Abreu through the “hole” at short.  Each of the 6 of them pulled their sixth pitch  through the opposite “hole” simulating the other middle infielder covering second.

“Move the runner” looked like they were trying to move a runner from second or third with ground balls to the right side or fly balls to right field.  I assume “three-in” was a runner on third and less than 2 out., since they tried to get balls deep into the outfield or line drives that would clear the infielder.  And “three-back” must have been first and third one out and they were trying to defeat the double play with balls into the outfield.  After these first three at bats, the normal routine of trying to crush balls of a coach resumed.

The second group included Brignac, Cedeno, and Collier.  I stayed to watch Collier.  He was not as consistent hitting the hole as the guys in the first group.  One of his balls went where the first baseman would have been instead of in the hole.  However, he performed better on the other drills.

Afterwards, they ran outfield drills on the same field.  The first drill required the fielder to play the ball off the fence and throw to the cut-off.  Dugan displayed the best arm here.  The coach, Juan Samuel, hits the ball from about 40 feet from the fence.  About midway through, he started having problems with the distance and hit several balls over the fence.  The second drill required the fielder to field a ball that landed in front of him and to either side then hit the cut off man.  I left during this drill to check out the infield drills.

All the infielders took part in the pivot play they ran yesterday, where all infielders except the first baseman rotate between second and short.  Today the throw from the second baseman was longer than yesterday’s.  Cesar Hernandez was part of this drill.  Then they split the group between 2 fields and hit ground balls to the fielders.  At this point, Hernandez disappeared.  He wasn’t on either field and he hadn’t joined the outfielders.  I don’t think this is a big deal.  I’ve been trying to keep track of where they have him playing.  I lost track of Howard today too.

They broke for another meeting in the outfield before doing some running drills out there.

I didn’t see any of the pitchers throwing today.  They were doing their running while the position players had BP and their fielding drills.

I was able to ask Tommy Joseph how he felt when he walked through the public area between Carlton and Ashburn Fields.  He said he feels good.

I got to say hi to Ruben Amaro when he walked through the same public area.  He asked me what I thought of the weather.  We exchanged a couple other pleasantries before he got back inside the fence.  I wish I had been better prepared.  I did not know about the draft thing this morning.

I saw about a half dozen minor leaguers entering the Paul Owens Training Facility (the official name for the clubhouse).  I don’t know who they were although I think one might have been Andrew Knapp.

That is all.