Here’s an open discussion thread so the minor league posts don’t get cluttered with Phillies’ talk and other topics.

Jonathan Papelbon made 2 appearances and finished 2 games this week, converting 2 save opportunities.  After 46 games, Papelbon has 18 appearances, 17 games finished, and 11 saves in 11 save opportunities.

Some other random stuff to light the fire –

• More Papelbon – He has as many or more saves than 14 MLB teams; including contenders such as the Chicago Cubs (11 saves/19 opportunities; Rondon 9/12), Pittsburgh Pirates (11/16; Melancon 10/11), Boston Red Sox (10/16; Uehara 10/11), and Los Angeles Dodgers (10/16; looks like closer by committee).
• Other contenders with more blown saves than Papelbon (11/11) and the Phillies (12/14) include Houston Astros (18/22; Gregerson 12/13), Washington Nationals (16/22; Storen 14/15), Atlanta Braves (15/20; Grilli 13/14), Detroit Tigers (14/18; Soria 13/14), KC Royals (14/20), Los Angeles Angels (14/21; Street 14/16), Seattle Mariners (13/18; Rodney 12/13).
• Realistically, it looks like the only teams who would see Papelbon as an upgrade are the Cubs and Dodgers.
• One last Papelbon fact – in his last 3 innings he has struck out 7 of the 9 batters he retired.
• Maikel Franco has 2 home runs and 7 RBI in his first 10 games since being called up.
• Chase Utley has improved to .173/.248/.295/.543.  He’s closing in on Rupp (.196) to shed the ignomity of being the lowest AVG among position players.
• Chad Billingsley still has more HR (1) than Blanco, Hernandez, Revere, Ruiz, Rupp, and Sizemore.
• Phillies tied for MLB low 26 HR, but are no longer the NL worst in any of the slash categories with their .241/.295/.351/.650.
• MLB worst 146 runs scored.
• Their team ERA continues to drop and has broken through the 4 RPG barrier (3.99).
• Still allowing the most free passes in the NL (151).
• Their .413 winning percentage leaves them solidly in the bottom 7 in MLB.
• Ryan Howard has come to life.  He has the second highest batting average on the team and is starting to pop up on NL leader boards for HR (8th) and RBI (20th).  His slash even looks respectable when compared among all first basemen in the majors, especially his SLG and OPS.  All he needs to do is disguise his hideous BB/K (8/43) ratio.  But there are also a lot of AL DH that he is out-performing.

Here’s an open discussion thread so the minor league posts don’t get cluttered with Phillies’ talk and other topics.

Jonathan Papelbon made 4 appearances and finished 4 games this week, converting 3 save opportunities.  After 39 games, Papelbon has made 16 appearances, 15 games finished (9 saves, 6 non-saves).

Some other random stuff to light the fire –

• Maikel Franco was called up and hit his first major league home run and triple on Sunday.
• The Phillies held off on calling Franco up to the majors until he was ready.  It’s just a coincidence that they brought him up on the exact day that guaranteed them another year of control.  But that was not a consideration.  Nudge.  Nudge.  Wink.  Wink.  Say no more.  Say no more.  Actually, that is within the rules of the CBA, so I don’t have a problem with it.  That’s just a smart baseball decision.
• Chase Utley .138/.214/.241/.455 (has shown some improvement, lowest in all 4 slash components of any Phillies position player, 3 SP have higher BA – Hamels .231/.231/.231/.462; Buchanan .167/.167/.333/.500; Billingsley .200/.200/.800/1.000
• Billingsley has more HR (1) than Blanco, Hernandez, Revere, Ruiz, Rupp, and Sizemore.
• Phillies have MLB low 22 HR, and are competing with Milwaukee for NL worst  .227/.282/.332/.614.
• NL low 120 runs scored.
• Their team ERA of 4.10 is back up to middle-of-the-pack.
• had been middle-of-the-road, but has now dropped to the bottom 4 in the NL.  They still have allowed the most walks (135).
• Their 5 game winning streak has boosted their winning percentage to .410, and has brought more teams into play for the top draft picks.  There are still 4 teams with sub .400 winning percentages.  But, there are enough teams playing poorly that continued good baseball could make the race for a protected pick more interesting than earlier anticipated.  (I’m laughing as I type that.)