The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: Phillies Pitching

This is the initial offering of a new series I'm going to feature, "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly." Seeing that it's baseball season, what a better way to start than by examining the Philadelphia Phillies' cache of arms.

The Good: The Phillies have the third best bullpen in baseball, and just added another veteran arm in Cincinnati castaway Rick White. Closer Tom Gordon is tied for fifth in the majors with 20 saves, and sporting a nifty 1.47 ERA. He also has 40 Ks in only 30.2 innings. Another offseason addition, Arthur Rhodes, is tied for second in the big leagues with 15 holds, an important stat for setup men.

The Bad: For as good as the relief pitching is, the starting pitching is equally bad if not worse. In fact, the starting rotation (if eight pitchers is still considered a rotation and not a platoon) is the worst in the league. In May, every eye in the city turned to Cole Hamels as the savior. Here we are in June and he's sporting a record of 1-3 (three straight losses). Not exactly the answer we were hoping for. The rotation has a combined record of 24-27, with a gaudy 6.05 ERA. That'd be fine if Philly had the lineup of the Yankees...but they don't.

The Ugly: As if being the "Ace" of a woeful pitching staff wasn't embarrassing enough, the Phillies Brett Myers proved this week that he is a despicable person. On Friday, Boston police arrested Myers, who stands 6-foot-4 and weighs 240 pounds, for beating his wife on a local street. Reports of the incident said that Myers pulled his wife by the hair and struck her in the face. The Phillies, who are a reflection of their manager Charlie Manuel, hopeless, need to take action and suspend Myers after today's start.

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