THIS IS NOT Jayson Werth's fault. It is entirely reasonable to expect that he will unfunk himself pretty soon and hit about .280 the rest of the way with reasonable power numbers from the right side. Even 24 hours ago, it made sense just to wait this thing out, this Great Phillies Malaise of 2010, and allow the law of averages to do its powerful work - on Werth, on all of them.
No longer, though - not since Jamie Moyer grabbed his elbow in the first inning on Tuesday night in St. Louis.
Calling Domonic Brown . . .
The Phillies' current predicament is not all Werth's fault - is not, underlined. He was uberhot at the beginning of the season, when the Phillies got off to a great start, and he deserves as much credit for that as he deserves blame for the backsliding of the last 2 months.
The truth is, just going by batting averages, Shane Victorino, Raul Ibanez, Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley - or at least a couple of them - are likely to have noticeably better Augusts and Septembers (unless the whole reversion-to-the-mean thing has been repealed for everybody wearing red pinstripes in 2010). They're likely to come up, Werth is likely to stabilize, and the overall pitching was good enough - or, rather, all-right enough - that it was possible to make the case that bench-and-bullpen tinkering was the right way to go as the trade deadline approaches.
No more, though. Because now the Phillies absolutely need to make a big pitching move and it is hard to see it being accomplished without somehow moving Werth.
Calling Domonic Brown . . .
Be not afraid . . .
The problem with evaluating the Phillies has been that it is hard to decide what is typical. It really has been such a screwy year, with the injuries just exacerbating the screwiness on offense. But the starting pitching is another matter entirely. Roy Halladay obviously skews the numbers violently to the good. Cole Hamels has been fine. But the other three - Moyer, Joe Blanton and Kyle Kendrick - have rocketed between extremes, rarely settling into normalcy.
As the season evolved, it became more and more clear that J.A. Happ was going to have to come back from his arm injury and be effective - that it wasn't possible to expect all three of those guys to find a consistent rhythm (or, in Moyer's case, to continue his overall good work for a full season).
