I wanted to wait and write this once the regular season concluded, but the lack of passion the Phillies have showed during their final series of the year against the Marlins has started to give me a warped perception of the Phillies possible playoff success. So, to provide a more positive, honest post, I am writing as the Phillies are on the field playing their regular season finale with Matt Stairs, Eric Bruntlett and company.

If you didn’t already know before, or forgot to read title of this post, for the third year in a row, the Phillies will represent the NL East in the playoffs as the division champs. 

Wow, what a shocker.

First off, you got to give credit to everyone in the Philadelphia Phillies organization. Three division titles in a row is a pretty big accomplishment, and for that you have to give the Phillies players, coaches, and management a round of applause. This team, with a nucleus of players who are in or are just reaching the prime of their careers (Rollins, Utley, Howard, Hamels, Victorino, Werth), truly has a chance to become a dynasty with another historic run through October to the Fall Classic.

Secondly, you have to give credit to those who are not directly related to those with the PHILADELPHIA Phillies. Yes, it is minor league affiliateso of the Phillies that I am talking about. After being an employee for one of these teams (Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs) this summer, it is very clear that while these minor league teams don’t nearly get as much publicity as those in the bigs, they are just as responsible for their organizations’ success.

Just look at the Phillies current roster.

Raul Ibanez, Carlos Ruiz, Greg Dobbs, Pedro Martinez, Kyle Kendrick, Brett Myers, Brad Lidge, J.C Romero (out for the season due to injury), Clay Condrey, Scott Eyre, John Mayberry Jr., Paul Hoover,  Miguel Cairo, and Andy Tracy have all spent time in the Phillies minor league system for either rehabilitation purposes, or as an everyday player. The minor league teams set the foundation for an organization, and if the Phillies have any success in October, those involved the Williamsport Crosscutters, Clearwater Threshers, Lakewood Blue Claws, Reading Phillies, and the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs should give themselves a pat on the back.

Lastly, a moment of clarity.

As much as I have analyzed the Phillies flaws in almost every aspect, they have been the class of the NL East since they stepped onto the field as defending World Series champs in April. Despite a couple tenuous weeks when the Braves and Marlins would run off a sequence of games in a row and pull to within a handful of games of the Phillies, it really wasn’t even close. Without the Mets at full health for pretty much the entire season, the Phillies were by far the most talented team in the NL East, and for the most part, they proved it, capping off with their third straight divisional title.

Now, the show must go on.

(A Phillies-Rockies NLDS preview will be posted in the next day or two.)

One thing I know is that kid’s like it when you play tricks on them. For example, I was going to take my nephew to see a baseball game, but instead I drove to an old burned down warehouse.

“Oh No!” I exclaimed, “it looks like the ballpark burned down. I bet all of the players are dead.”

On the way home he cried and he cried, but deep down I’m pretty sure he thought it was a good joke.

Well folks … I appologize for ending updates so abruptly during the 2009 season, but unfortunately real life sometimes takes priority over frivilous things like running a minor league blog. This blog, and especially the Threshers Nation website require tons of time each week to keep up and unfortunately I have just not had the time lately to keep them running properly. I do however want to remain involved, so I am starting to think about how to keep things going next season without having to spend 2-3 hours per day doing it.

I’ve decided that the best way to do that isa to get other people involved. Primarily I am thinking that we need to get a fanclub going for our team in Clearwater. Dunedin and Tampa both have booster clubs, and they get far fewer fans per game than we do, so why not? I’ve had people ask me about this or suggest it to me over the years, and somehow I feel like now the time is right. Running a fanclub website won’t be nearly as time consuming as running a daily news site, and it will also hopefully help grow support for the team.

I’m going to be talking to people at the ballpark over the last few games this year, and hopefully over the off-season we can make this thing a reality. Send me an email if you have any interest in getting something like this going. I obviously can’t be a one man fan club, so let’s work together and get this going for our boys.

To start, this is one of the more comical things that I’ve had to write about since the beginning days of this blog.

Brett Myers, just hours before his first rehabilitation start with the Single-A Clearwater Threshers, put in a call to top members of the Phillies organization, including minor league trainer Brian Cammarota. In the phone call, Myers informed them that he has received a swollen eye due to a baseball catch gone bad with his four year-old son and that he would be unable to pitch.

The conversation ended, and that was that.

Or so the Phillies branch thought.

Five minutes later, Myers apparently called back and retracted his statement, saying that he “misinformed” them about the events that transpired.

First of all, the fact that he used the word “misinformed” should be a red flag right there. The last time I heard that word, it was at a press conference coming out of Roger Clemens’s mouth, blaming former teammate and friend Andy Pettitte for falsely claiming that Clemens told him that he took steroids.

Anyway, Myers stated that the story about the baseball catch was false, and the true story was too “embarrassing” to say the first time, which is really saying a lot considering Myers was arrested in downtown Boston in June 2006 for getting in a fist fight with his wife in public.

The real story, which also seems to have some flaws in it, truly explains indirectly why the Phillies have had concerns about Myers’s mental state throughout his contentious career in Philadelphia. 

Myers stated that after returning from dinner with his wife and friends in Clearwater, he injured himself while exiting the back seat of his Escalade after tripping over his kids toys that were lying on the floor in the back of the car.

An important sub-plot to mention, Brett also made it clear to say that he only consumed two beers at dinner, in which he mostly likely said to disprove the notion that he was piss drunk, fell on his face, and busted his eye (which sadly is the Brett Myers we have come to know and love).

Brett's injury "mixup" is making national headlines

First of all, both stories are absolutely ridiculous. It’s quite possible that none of those stories are true. However, I would have to go with the second story as the only one that could slightly resemble the truth.

The first story is too unrealistic. Seriously, a swollen eye due to a catch with your four-year old? The only way that could happen is if Myers was so drunk he was seeing double, or his son was throwing so hard that he second coming of Danny Almonte (the man-child who used a fake birth certificate to play in the Little League World Series when he was two years older than the competition). Either way, I am going to go with a resounding NO on both accounts.

The second story though has some potential. Here is the only way I can piece the story together.

What Myers Said: To sum it up, basically Myers, two beers deep, tripped on his kids toys, forcing a spill out of the back seat of his car.

What Really Happened: Myers, remembering nothing after his second beer, gets into the back of his car because he is too drunk to drive, and after an embarrassing sequence of events he gets some much-needed payback as his wife unleashes a Mike Tyson right-hook into his eye.

Of course that was all meant to be a joke, but the moral of my far-fetched account of the story is that with Myers, really anything could have happened. 

On a more serious note, for someone who is trying to recover from a potential season-ending injury to get back in time for the playoffs, falling out of a car couldn’t have helped that intended goal. For Myers, who was slated to contribute to the bullpen if he were to come back for the Phillies stretch run, he now has a bad eye (and a bruised ego) to worry about along with rehabbing from hip surgery.

For somebody that is a head-case to begin with, that can’t be a good sign.

Pedro Martinez made his first rehab start of the season on Sunday for Philadelphia’s A-level affiliate in Clearwater.  One of our bestest blog friends, the inimitable Jordi Scrubbings, was there to witness Petey’s rain-shortened outing:

Martinez, signed by the Phillies a few weeks ago, was clearly not the Pedro of old and I could tell he knew it. The 97 mph fastball was long gone, the aura and mystic was fading, and he was fighting to prove his ability to merely contribute. The former Cy Young ace was now a conjurer, a Merlin of the mound, hoping his knowledge, guile, and a little bit of smoke and mirrors was enough to make it back to the Show.

Last time Pedro returned from a long layoff, in 1997, Scott Hatteberg said much the same thing – he didn’t have the heat, didn’t have the breaking stuff, had a long way to go to return to respectability.  At the time, here’s what I wrote about that comeback, which saw him pick up his 3,000th career strikeout:

Pedro will never have his “old stuff” back. He’s 35 years old with a variety of injuries. He’s a back-end starter, a guy who goes out there once a week or so when the team needs a boost and manages to claw and scratch and fight for five or six innings before handing things over to the bullpen. He’s the guy who can sit on the bench and talk to the young pitchers about their approach – they’ll never have his ability, but they can have his brain.

I don’t think that’s changed.  I think Pedro has accepted his shortcomings and wants to be the sort of pitcher who can contribute in any way possible.  The question now is whether or not he can will his body to be capable of even that much.  Jordi saw him in action, and while it was only 1 1/3 innings, he was not optimistic:

As it was the major league Mets who put him out to pasture after last season, the minor league Mets put the final nail in his legendary career. Although I didn’t expect Pedro to dominate, it was clear he was struggling. Most of his pitches were up in the zone, the Mets were getting good wood on the ball, and he only produced one swinging miss, albeit on a classic Pedro change-up. The box score will say Pedro didn’t do that badly, giving up one hit, hitting a batter, and striking one. But great change-up aside, I’d say his tank is empty.

Please, God, let Jordi be wrong, just this once.  Let this be the Pedro of old breaking himself in the way he knew best, by working on whatever it was he wanted and not caring about the results.  Let there be one more thunderclap in that golden right arm, one more ten strikeout performance on a hazy summer day, one more outing that makes me call my son into the room and say, “Son, THIS is what greatness looks like.”

Well, so far the month of July has not been kind to the Clearwater Threshers. The team has a 4-7 record on the month, and has been outscored by a margin of 78-38. The team went scoreless in four consecutive games from July 6th to the 9th, although one of the games was called due to rain after 3.5 innings of play. (Over that four game streak the team was outscored 29-0.)

The team had ended the month of June on a hot streak winning the final six of the month, and then won the first two of July to extend their winning streak to eight games. Unfortunately since that time the team has fallen on hard times losing seven of the last nine games by an average margin of nearly eight runs.

Some good news can come from the fact that Freddy Galvis has returned to action playing with the Gulf Coast League team, and has hit .400 in four games. It is expected that Galvis will return to the Threshers roster when the team returns to action at home after the MLB All-Star break this coming Wednesday night.

Needless to say it has been the pitching staff that has suffered the most for the Threshers lately, although the offense has been mediocre at best.

WHO’S HOT:

Steve Susdorf has been one of the few bright spots for the team. He has continued to rake for the offense hitting .403 since his promotion from Lakewood. He has a team high .442 OBP and a .542 SLG.

Tim Kennelly is the only other Threshers hitting above the .300 mark, currently at .301. He recently saw his first action behind the plate since the first month of the season, but unfortunately it was in a losing effort as the team lost 11-0, but he did throw out the only attempted steal by the Manatees in the game.

Michael Durant has had a hot streak going hitting .308 in July and has shown a glimpse of plate discipline with a .438 OBP. Durant has been near the top of the FSL all year in Ks, but looks like (at least momentarily) he may be getting things under control with six walks v. eight strikeouts on the month.

Fidel Hernandez the third-year FSL player earned an All-Star appearance this season, and is hitting .303 for the month, but not much more has happened for the Threshers offense in July.

Micheal Cisco has been the lone pitching standout for the team on the month. He has won three consecutive starts accounting for 75% of the team’s wins in July. He has given up just four runs in sixteen innings pitched in his three starts for a 1.13 July ERA with an overall ERA of 2.48 in his twelve games this year.

WHO’S NOT:

Pretty much the rest of the Threshers squad.

Drew Naylor began July strong picking up a complete game shut out to start the month, but lasted just two innings in his latest start for his second consecutive loss. He seemed completely out of sorts in his latest trip to the hill giving up five runs on five hits with five walks and no strikeouts.

Julian Sampson has only garnered one win this season in thirteen starts and owns an ugly 7.91 ERA on the year. Sampson has only made it to the fifth inning or further in two of his last five starts, and has the boo birds out at his home stadium just about every time he takes the mound.

Click here to listen to your Clearwater Threshers face the Daytona Cubs at 5:35 on Sunday evening.

The Threshers won the first game of their series on Saturday night 5-3 and are looking for a win to remain tied for first place in the FSL North Division.

All Four Games Go Extra Innings!

Thre Clearwater Threshers wrapped up their four-game series with the Jupiter Hammerheads by taking the fourth game to extra innings. Once again the Threshers would come out on top in the game sweeping the series four games to none.



The bad news in the game was that starter Mike Cicso lasted just one batter in the game and will appearantly be headed to the DL for the third time this season. Cisco has had a good season, but has been plagued with injuries. We can only hope whatever ails him is minor, and we can get him back into the rotation quickly. The team would use four more pitchers in the game including Darren Byrd, Dan Brauer, Carlos Monasterios, and Santo Hernandez. Hernadez went the final three innings holding the Hammerheads hitless and earning the win.

One night after going twelve innings with the Hammerheads overcoming a 4-0 Threshers lead it would be more of the same on Friday night with the Hammerheads waiting until their final regulation at bat to grab their first three runs of the game and force overtime.

The Threshers have added two new pitchers, Santo Hernandez and Jon Velasquez and a new outfielder Steve Susdorf, while Manny Ayala was released to begin the second half of the season. Additionally Yohan Flande and ex-Thresher Kyle Drabek have both been honored by being invited to the All-Star Futures game this year.

After starting the season by leading the division for the first month of the year, the Threshers finished with a disappointing 32-34 record in the first half. The second season begins on Thursday however with all team’s record starting over at 0-0.

Let’s GO THRESHERS! The second half is yours!

The second half begins Thursday, June 25th with all team’s records starting over at 0-0. The winner of the second half will face the Brevard County Manatees (winners of the first half) in the playoffs this year. Rumor has it that we will see several new faces on the team within the next few days, and perhaps as soon as Monday the 22nd. OF Steve Susdorf, starting pitcher Jon Velasquez and starting pitcher Santo Hernandez have been officially announced as promotions from Lakewood, and word is that Tyler Cloyd will join them in Clearwater after the SAL All-Star Game on Tuesday the 23rd.

That should mean some players from Clearwater may be moved up, or players could be released which is fairly typical for this time of year just after the draft. So far Reading has not announced any players being promoted, so that likely means we will see some Threshers players released today. Stay tuned here for news as it happens this afternoon.

Yohan Flande, Fidel Hernandez, and Tim Kennelly will represent the Threshers in this weekend’s game in Ft. Myers, Florida. Kyle Drabek and Dominic Brown were also elected. Drabek has since been promoted to Double-A Reading, and Brown is on the DL with a broken hand.

In addition to the All-Star Game, the Threshers manager Ernie Whitt is being inducted to the Canadian Baseball Hall-of-Fame this weekend.

I’ll be headed out to Ft. Myers on Saturday for the game, and hope to have a report up sometime on Sunday when I return to Clearwater.

Last week the Threshers Report was very abbreviated, so I’ll cover the last two weeks worth of action in this report. Since the last full report the team finds themselves in third place with a record of 30-31. They were 6-8 over the last 14 games, but showed some promising signs particularly with the starting pitching. Yohan Flande has led the way on the mound and was 1-0 in his last three starts including a complete game shut out. In his other two starts he gave up just three combined runs, but got little offenseive support.

As a team the Threshers are hitting .250 (7th), but lead the league in HR with 52, and have the second best SLG% at .383. The pitching staff has a team ERA of 3.90 which is 10th of the twelve teams in the league.

The last 14 games began with a highly contested four-game series with the Ft. Myers Miracle where every game was decided by just one run, but the Threshers came out with just one win in the four games. They then split four-game series with both the Jupiter Hammerheads and Palm Beach Cardinals before ending up this report in the middle of a two-game series with the Sarasota Reds having lost the opener, but won on Tuesday night big, thanks to an offensive explosion and a pitching gem from Drew Naylor who went 7.0 innings giving up no runs on four hits with nine Ks and no walks.

Hot Starters:

Yohan Flande: As mentioned Flande has had three terrific outings earning just one win, but it was a gem. He threw nine scoreless innings this past Sunday as the team closed out their series against the Jupiter Hammerheads with a 2-0 win. He currently owns a 6-1 record, and is second among active F.S.L. pitchers with 64 Ks, just one behind the leader. Flande will be among three players representing the Threshers in the F.S.L. All-Star Game next Saturday night in Fort Myers.

Drew Naylor: Drew has really come alive in his last several starts for the Threshers after getting out of the gates fairly slowly this season. He was 2-0 in his three starts covered by this report, and went 8.0 scoreless in his only non-decision with the Threshers losing losing the game 1-0. As mentioned he finished the week for the team with 7.0 great innings at Sarasota leaving the game in the hands of the bullpen with a 9-0 lead and the team won 9-1.

Michael Cisco: Mike had two good outings after coming off of the DL for the second time this year. He was 1-0 giving up no runs on five hits with 8 strikeouts and two walks on eleven innings pitched over those two games.

The Injury Front:

Dominic Brown: The absence of Dominic from the line up has really been felt by the team. He lead the team in nearly every offensive category, and the broken hand he suffered on June 8th is expected to keep him out of the lineup well into July, and will force him to miss his appearance in the All-Star Game this weekend.

Freddy Galvis: Freddy remains sidelined since breaking two fingers on May the 6th, and is expected to return around the same time as Brown in the second half of July.

The rest of the story:

Tim Kennelly: Tim will represent the Threshers in the All-Star Game this weekend. His .298 batting average is second on the team, just one point behind Dominic Brown’s .299. He leads the FSL in doubles with 18, and is second on the team in RBIs.

Fidel Hernandez: Fidel is the final Threshers player on the All-Star team. This is Fidel’s first career All-Star appearance. He is currently hitting .270 for the team (.301 on the road and .235 at home) so as the away team at the AS game hopefully he has a good showing.

If you have questions not covered here feel free to email me because I’m unlikely to have much time to follow up on the thread this week. I’m heading on vacation, and will be in Ft. Myers this weekend for the All-Star game. Hopefully I’ll have some good news to report from there on next week’s report.

UPDATE: WOW! I first broke this story on Thursday night, and it has really taken off. All of the local media outlets have picked up on it, and so has the Associated Press. I’ve seen the articled cloned on at least a dozen other websites, and seen it referenced on many others. Thanks for spreading the word people. BOO RAYS! The story even made THE FRONT PAGE of the St. Petersburg Times, and I had a note from the author this morning thanking me for the heads up!

IN OTHER NEWS: The Tampa Bay Rays have appearantly chosen to execute a rarely used agreement between Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball that allows any MLB club to prohibit a minor league franchise within 60 miles of their club to give away bobblehead dolls at any game (plus other prohibited promotional activities).

On Friday the Threshers are scheduled to give away a Pat Burrell bobblehead as part of a Friday night bobblehead series which has already included Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins on two previous Friday night games. The Threshers’ intention was to give away a bobblehead of every starting player in the Phillies 2008 World Series lineup.

The Rays have now executed their right in the MLB/MilB agreement to prevent the Threshers from giving away the Pat Burrell bobblehead and any future bobbleheads.

The Clearwater Threshers and any other team within 60 miles of the Rays television viewing audience will be no longer be allowed to give away bobbleheads as a promotion for ANY of their games. This will prohibit the F.S.L. affiliates the Clearwater Threshers, Dunedin Bluejays, Tampa Yankees, Sarasota Reds, and Lakeland Flying Tigers from EVER issuing a bobblehead.


It will however allow the Port Charlotte Stone Crabs of the F.S.L (a Rays franchise that is just outside of the 60 mile radius) to be allowed to give away bobbleheads.

CLICK HERE to send an email to the Rays to tell them what you think about their actions.

The Pooping Dog Gives: 4 SMELLY DUMPS!

As Eric M. has mentioned here several times this season, the Clearwater Threshers are celebrating the 2008 World Series win of its parent club, the Philadelphia Phillies, by staging bobblehead giveaway nights in honor of each regular member of the starting lineup.  Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins already had their days; Pat Burrell was scheduled to be handed out last night – until the mighty Tampa Bay Rays reached down and put the kibosh on the whole deal.

According to a statement released by team general manager John Timberlake,

The Threshers are in violation of the Major League Baseball Agency Agreement which, in this instance, prohibits the promotion of the Phillies brand within the home television territory of the Tampa Bay Rays.

It seems strange that the Rays are just calling the Threshers on this now when it was clearly a planned season-long promotion.  All I can figure is that it had something to do the fact that Burrell left Philadelphia for Tampa as a free agent after last season and the Rays don’t want an organization located twenty minutes away to give away bobbleheads of one of their players in another team’s uniform.

On a local note, this helps explain why the New Hampshire Fisher Cats give away mostly Red Sox-themed bobbleheads.  Because they are within the Red Sox “home television territory”, they probably aren’t able to do such giveaways related to the Blue Jays, or at the very least require special permission to do so.

Update: Okay, so it wasn’t directly related to the Burrell bobblehead.  Much a pity.

The Threshers had already given out one bobblehead and were advertising the second when the Rays first raised the issue a month ago. On Thursday night — the eve of Friday’s planned third giveaway, of former Phillie and current Ray Pat Burrell — the Threshers ended the promotion.

That article also notes the question of what to do with sponsorship money and the bobbleheads themselves.