BY PAUL HAGEN
PHOENIX - After the Giants game against the Mets ended at AT&T Park Sunday night, manager Bruce Bochy picked up the phone and called Katy Feeney, who handles scheduling and club relations for Major League Baseball. His choice to start the All-Star Game, he told her, was Roy Halladay, of the Phillies.
Feeney in turn called Halladay, who had just checked into his hotel room.
Halladay turned right around and called Phillies pitching coach Rich Dubee.
A lot of considerations must be taken into account for what seems like a relatively straightforward decision. Halladay leads the National League in innings pitched at the break. Dubee, in talking to reporters last week, had made it clear he probably would prefer that Halladay not start, at least. The reasoning was that All-Star starters generally pitch two innings and that he'd prefer to save as much wear and tear on the defending NL Cy Young Award winner as possible.
And if Cliff Lee, who is second in the league in innings, also gets into the game, it has a chance to scramble the team's rotation for the series against the Mets at Citi Field that opens the second half.
"They can use one of them for one out," manager Charlie Manuel joked last week.
Halladay and the Phillies must be careful here. To be named the starting pitcher in an All-Star Game is clearly an honor. It just as clearly takes something away from the just-as-important business of trying to win as many games as possible when the schedule resumes.
"I'm hoping to keep it economical and that it will kind of be a nonissue," Halladay said.
Bochy, for his part, said the Phillies had not politicked him to stay away from Halladay, to only use him one inning if he did start, to bypass Lee if Halladay pitched.
"We'll monitor his pitches, but [I'd expect him to go] at least a couple innings," the National League manager said.
Told that Dubee had been quoted as being lukewarm at best about Halladay starting, Bochy shrugged.
Halladay downplayed the issue, although he conceded he was now unlikely to pitch again until next Monday or Tuesday in Chicago.
"That [pitching two innings as a starter] is something we had talked about, keeping things as minimal as possible, and that feeling fresh in the second half was what was most important," he said. "I talked to [Dubee], and we talked about it, and obviously that's still the goal, to be as fresh as I can. But if I were to go a little longer than we really wanted pitch-countwise, then we'd take care of that on the back end after the break."
