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There are few events in baseball more exciting than Opening Day. Or Opening Night. Er … let’s just go directly to some observations from the Cardinals’ 4-1 victory over the Marlins, ushering in Marlins Park in disappointing fashion for the home crowd onlookers.

• Kyle Lohse was brilliant, of course, taking a no-hitter into the seventh inning and reminding everyone of Bob Feller's Opening Day no-hitter. Lohse said after the game that the no-hitter "probably did cross my mind after the fifth inning." He doesn’t throw hard, keeping hitters off-balance with a little slider and a changeup that he kept at the knees at night. Lohse had the best season of his career in 2011, although there was some luck built into it: He allowed a .269 average on balls in play, well below his career mark of .302. There’s nothing in the numbers that suggests he was doing something different -- his ground-ball rate matched his career and his line-drive rate was actually 1.1 percent higher than his career mark. Everyone expects some regression in 2012, but his first start was more 2011. No walks on the night and through six he threw a first-pitch strike to 13 of the 18 batters he faced. Hitters should know Lohse will come right after them when the bases are empty. He walked only 10 hitters last season in 469 plate appearances with nobody on; with runners, he walked 32 in 306 plate appearances.
• Josh Johnson allowed 10 hits for only the second time in his career. While a few of the hits were bleeders and bloopers, he did leave some pitches over the middle of the plate. We can’t read too much into the start other than that he threw 91 pitches, avoided the blister issue that popped up in spring training and has his first start under his belt. Undoubtedly, he was pumped up pitching the first game in the club’s new park in his first start since last May. There's no reason not to expect better results moving forward.
• There was miscommunication in the early innings between Hanley Ramirez and Jose Reyes as both pulled up on Carlos Beltran’s little trickler, allowing the ball to roll into left field. In the sixth inning with two runners on and Lohse up in a bunt situation, Johnson made sure to step off the mound and talk with Ramirez. That stuff will sort itself out, but the Marlins’ defense is an issue to keep an eye on. The Cardinals legged out two doubles to Logan Morrison in left field on balls that weren’t really even in the gaps. As Orel Hershiser said during the broadcast, "A lot of scouts are writing notes down about the arm of Logan Morrison." It doesn’t help that Morrison is still battling a sore knee that kept him out most of spring training, but he was a liability out there in 2011 even when healthy. According to the defensive runs saved metric, Morrison was 26 runs worse than the average left fielder -- the worst mark in the majors (only Raul Ibanez was in the same vicinity) and a whopping 46 runs worse than Brett Gardner’s majors-leading 23 DRS. There is a lot of ground to cover in deep left-center and center in the new park. In Emilio Bonifacio, the Marlins have an inexperienced center fielder (only 29 games started there in his career entering the season). Chris Coghlan, their other center fielder, rated minus-13 runs in 2011, the worst figure in the majors.
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AP Photo/Lynne SladkyOpening night of the 2012 season found Kyle Lohse (26) looking a lot like his 2011 self.
• Giancarlo Stanton found out about those center-field dimensions, hitting two deep balls out there that were caught, a towering fly to the warning track in the fifth inning and a deep fly to right-center in the seventh that Jon Jay made a nice running catch on. It’s obviously too early to report on how the park will play, and it might play differently when the roof is open versus closed.
• Jason Motte threw some 99 mph smokebombs to finish it off. A bit of a step up from Ryan Franklin.
• For a while, Lohse had us thinking about the best Opening Day starts. Via Baseball-Reference.com, here are the best Game 1 starts since 1918:
  

  Walter Johnson, Senators, 1926: 111 (15 IP, 6 H, 0 R, 3 BB, 9 K)
  Lon Warneke, Cubs, 1934: 96 (9 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 13 K)
  Bob Veale, Pirates, 1965: 95 (10 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 10 K)
  Mel Harder, Indians, 1935: 95 (14 IP, 8 H, 1 R, 3 BB, 6 K)
  Johnny Vander Meer, Reds, 1943: 91 (11 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 5 BB, 3 K)

  
  Six pitchers scored a 90: Bob Feller twice (including his 1940 no-hitter in which he walked five and struck out eight), Tom Glavine, Bob Gibson, Clint Brown and Johnson again with a 13-inning effort in 1919. The best recent effort was Felix Hernandez striking out 12 in eight shutout innings in 2007. Camilo Pascual holds the Opening Day record with 15 strikeouts for the Twins in 1960. Randy Johnson twice fanned 14 for the Mariners.

Opening Night down. Opening Day up next. Good times have arrived.

Follow David Schoenfield on Twitter @dschoenfield.

Are first basemen doing more to put runs on the board today than they did 10 years ago? How about 25 years ago? How do you make broad comparisons like this?

With any question like this you can get hung up on the differences between eras. Run-scoring environments are going to bounce around as a matter of course, and that’s before you get into the bump of the so-called "Steroids Era." If you were a fan just getting started in the late ’90s, chances are you might wind up with an inflated sense of what player performance is supposed to look like.

Happily, you can compare player performance within the context of their own season. Clay Davenport, an old colleague from Baseball Prospectus, cranks this data for every season. We can get a snapshot of where performance has gone at each position by using his Equivalent Average, or EqA. Equivalent Average isn’t the only stat you can employ; Clay scales production to batting average, with .260 defined as average.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at performances from the eight major positions over the past 25 years. We’ll start with the premium offensive positions, the four corners, from 1987 to the present:



Keep in mind, .260 is average for every season, so the year-to-year variations are going to refer back to that baseline. We can already draw a few broad conclusions -- some of which are pretty much accepted wisdom, but some prove slightly surprising.

Runs come from first base. This might seem obvious, but that’s especially the case now. It hasn’t always been that way. As you can see from the chart, left and right fielders have sometimes approached the first basemen, but that usually coincides with bad years for first basemen. But these days, first base is the game’s premium offense position.

If you look back further, that picture gets a lot more complicated. During the ’70s, first, right and left were equally important offensive positions, and in 1982 the four corners and center field were separated by just eight points. That changed in the late ’80s, as the standard for production at first base now winds up north of a .280 EqA year after year.

This higher standard has survived two expansions and the steroid era. This year Mark Teixeira was below average despite hitting 39 homers. Admittedly, it was a down year for him: he posted a .281 EqA compared to an MLB average of .283. In contrast, in 1991 Carlos Quintana defined adequacy at first -- if you’re from outside Boston and have forgotten him entirely, it’s probably just as well, but he was a nice OBP guy without much power.

What does that mean today? Well, this goes a little bit towards what Dave Schoenfield was writing about as far as Albert Pujols ranking as the top player in the game for so long. It also means that while teams like the Rangers have been leaving runs on the table by playing Mitch Moreland, you can understand why the Red Sox traded for Adrian Gonzalez while the Angels landed Pujols. Credit the Rays for keeping up with the other big-money contenders by bringing Carlos Pena back (.292 last year).

Right field is where outfield stars play. This might take us back to the days of Babe Ruth or Hank Aaron as opposed to Ted Williams or Barry Bonds. While the averages for the two positions have balanced out over time, right field is the much stronger position these days. Some of that has is because of a matter of preference: Lance Berkman played right for the Cardinals not because he’s a good right fielder, but because he’d help them score a ton of runs. Jose Bautista might be a fantasy league’s perfect third baseman, but the Blue Jays keep bumping him back to the outfield. Add in breakthrough seasons for Mike Stanton and Matt Joyce and even nice bounce-backs from Justin Upton and Jeff Francoeur, and you wind up with the game’s reigning premium outfield slot.

Left field is down. Way down. As you can see, the last 25 years have been pretty up and down for the left-side corners. The average for left fielders in the era of division play is .277, but they haven’t reached that mark since 2004.

The sad state of left-field offensive production has already been debated plenty among statheads. Is it an affordable risk on offense at a time when teams are more defense-conscious than ever before? Or is it a case of reaping what you sow when you make a point putting guys like Juan Pierre in your everyday lineup? It might reflect an industry-wide choice to employ better defenders at the position, sacrificing some offense. But in other ways it might also reflect how left field has become almost a garbage-time position for teams that stow their backup center fielder or a sputtering veteran holdover. Teams now lack the roster space to platoon or mix and match on offense the way that they could before the seven-man bullpen became fashionable.

Whatever your take, offensive production from left fielders is down at its lowest point in 25 years, matching 1997 for punchlessness with a .268 EqA. That isn’t a coincidence; much like the present, 1997 featured a lot of transition in left fields around the majors, with guys like Gregg Jefferies, Wil Cordero and B.J. Surhoff playing their first full seasons in the outfield. Moises Alou got hurt (again), Bernard Gilkey’s career started imploding, and Greg Vaughn and Ron Gant had the worst years of their careers.

Fast-forward to the present, and you find your share of setback seasons (Carl Crawford and Delmon Young). You also see a lot of flat-out awful from self-inflicted bad ideas, like Raul Ibanez in the last year of his contract while Vernon Wells, Carlos Lee and Alfonso Soriano marked time on huge deals that won’t go away soon enough.

Against that, you’ve got the guys we might call sops to the speed-and-defense crowd, or what I think of as the next-gen Dave Collins solutions: Brett Gardner, Jose Tabata, Michael Brantley, Sam Fuld, Pierre and more. They range from useful OBP sources to significantly less so, but not one of them is going to be Tim Raines, let alone Crawford. Last year Gerardo Parra had the best season among this group (.280 EqA); he also stands to lose playing time in 2012 to Jason Kubel, a guy who’s a much more conventional corner-outfield selection.

Third Base is hurting. If you’re a student of baseball history, you already know that back in the Deadball Era second base was more of a high-offense position than the hot corner. That changed in the 1920s with the introduction of the livelier ball, but every once in a while you get a year where you’ve got a great group of second baseman and a weak crew of third-base vets. That was very much the case in the late ’80 and early ’90s (thanks in part to guys like Roberto Alomar, Ryne Sandberg, Robby Thompson, Lou Whitaker and Julio Franco), but after the Marlins-Rockies expansion in ’93 second base fell back again. But now we’re at this same point again, where third base has slipped behind second base, if only barely (.262 EqA to .261).

With the declining standards reflected by Scott Rolen getting named to an All-Star team despite a lousy season, finding merely competent options for third base isn’t as easy as it sounds. Alex Rodriguez and Chipper Jones certainly aren’t getting any younger.

You can hope this will change for the better with the arrivals of touted prospects like Brett Lawrie, Mike Moustakas and Lonnie Chisenhall, but we’ve also seen a few major third-base prospect flops: Pedro Alvarez or Andy LaRoche, anyone? That’s why journeymen like Casey Blake, Ryan Roberts or Jack Hannahan get opportunities to stick around.

If anything, the state of third base these days speaks volumes about the Tigers' decision to move Miguel Cabrera across to the diamond after signing Prince Fielder. As Mark Simon notes, the defensive penalty might be steep, but reviewing this data suggests that there's a major competitive advantage to be gained relative to the competition, because they're making room for two superstar bats in the lineup: Cabrera with his career .315 EqA, and Fielder with his .313. The Cardinals just ran up a flag after risking their defense at the corners with Berkman in right, so you can't blame the Tigers for trying to do likewise.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at the up-the-middle positions. If you’re one of those people who think finding good help at shortstop or catcher is hard to find these days, you might have a surprise to look forward to.

Christina Kahrl covers baseball for ESPN.com. You can follow her on Twitter.

It has been an up and down, mostly disappointing season for Raul Ibanez, but one thing has been consistent: He likes being home.

Historically streaky throughout his 15-year career, the hot streaks have not outdone the cold ones thus far in 2011 -- evidenced by his .239 average and sub-.700 OPS. At Citizens Bank Park, however, Ibanez is hitting .285 with an .819 OPS, including eight of his 11 home runs. Number eight could not have come at a better time -- a solo shot off of Scott Proctor in the 10th inning to lift the Phillies over the Braves in Friday night's contest.

The walk-off blast was his sixth hit and second homer in his past 15 at-bats, and the Phillies are hoping this is the beginning of one of his patented hot streaks. The preseason favorites in the National League East now have more wins (56) than anyone in the major leagues, but that has happened in spite of their sputtering offense. And suddenly, the second-place Braves are their most serious threat to the division crown -- if you hadn't noticed, Atlanta is second only to Philadelphia in wins (53, tied with Boston).

The Braves struggled out of the gate, heading into May with a 13-15 record. They have gradually improved since then -- the tortoise to the Phillies' hare -- yet, like the Phils, the Braves have struggled offensively. In fact, a quick look at the stats reveals that these two teams are similar in many ways. For example, the two teams are neck and neck atop the NL in ERA, have almost identical OPS marks, and are separated by only nine runs. As good as the Phillies' starting foursome has performed, Braves starters are just a tick below them; they're nearly equal in earned runs allowed and have held opposing batters to a lower batting average. Combine that with Atlanta's otherworldly bullpen, and the Braves' sudden offensive outburst (10 homers, 39 runs, and a .825 OPS so far in July), and one can understand why the Phillies need to be concerned.

Still, the Phillies remain on top, and can widen the gap slightly with another win or two this weekend. A five-game lead heading into the All-Star break would be comfortable but hardly secure considering the Braves' recent surge. Rookie Brandon Beachy stepped up on Friday night, matching Roy Halladay pitch for pitch through six innings in what might have been construed as a "big-game pitcher present" versus "big-game pitcher future." True to his billing, Halladay was one inning better, which in the end may have been the difference as the Phillies’ bullpen needed one less frame to cover. But it was a wake-up call of sorts, showing that while the Phils have the well-known names in their rotation, Atlanta's comparative "no-names" have the ability to hang in there with the elite.

With the Braves pitching nearly as well and starting to hit, the Phillies will need to step up their game to stay on top. It's hard to imagine the Phillies pitching much better so one would think that the bats are key to sustained success. Despite the return of Chase Utley in late May, the Phillies hit only .229 in June, averaging 3.7 runs per game. The various replacements for Jayson Werth have not produced, and table-setters Jimmy Rollins and Placido Polanco are not setting the table as frequently as in the past. If not for Shane Victorino's big first half, the Phillies might be looking up at the Braves right now. The lack of production in right field could be offset by Ryan Howard continuing his power production, Utley's return to form, and an Ibanez hot streak.

After the first month of the season, it appeared as though the Phillies would fulfill the preseason prophecies and run away with the NL East, while the Braves seemed underachievers. Heading into the final games before the All-Star break, however, these two teams are looking quite similar, and it appears as though they will be fighting the good fight throughout the second half. This weekend serves as a display of those similarities, and a preview of what's to come in the final two and half months of the season.

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Joe Janish is the founder of Mets Today, a SweetSpot network affiliate, and has thrown BP to Don Mattingly, caught Jim Bouton's knuckleball, and eaten a meal prepared by Rusty Staub. You can follow him on Twitter here.

One popular notion in some sabermetric circles these days is that defense in the outfield corners is getting better, proof positive that teams are taking defense much more seriously. It’s an interesting theory, and fits with the preconceived notion that certain defensive metrics have descriptive value. Accept the data and you can accept the result.

That’s all easy enough to believe, especially if you want to discover a new trend, but what if the data isn’t reliably reflected across the various defensive metrics? And what if it flies in the face of what we see in terms of who it is that teams are actually playing in left field?

Consider who was playing in left field last season in the National League. To belabor the obvious, the NL doesn’t have the DH, so there’s an automatic incentive to take a defensive hit and get a bopper’s bat in the lineup from the position that winds up seeing fewer chances than infielders or center fielders do. Looking at everyone who played 500 or more innings in left last season, do these sound like the “better fielders” that have been advertised?

• Six plain-old outfielders who were and are outfielders: Jason Bay, Mets; Matt Holliday, Cardinals; Lastings Milledge, Pirates; Gerardo Parra, D’backs; Seth Smith, Rockies; Jose Tabata, Pirates
• Four ex-infielders (non-first base position): Ryan Braun, Brewers (3B); Chris Coghlan, Marlins (2B); Carlos Lee, Astros (3B); Alfonso Soriano, Cubs (2B)
• Two ex-DHs: Pat Burrell, Giants; Jonny Gomes, Reds
• Two ex-catchers: Raul Ibanez, Phillies; Josh Willingham, Nationals
• One ex-first baseman: Logan Morrison, Marlins

Not that there’s a direct-causal relationship, but it’s more than a little amusing to note that three of the league’s playoff teams last year were starting Burrell, Ibanez, and Gomes -- players not usually associated with their defensive contributions, and three guys who have had to spend good chunks of time as designated hitters after moving away from their initial positions as prospects.

Admittedly, the outfielders who stayed as outfielders make for an interesting crew. Milledge, Parra, Smith, Tabata and Bay all got chances as center fielders early on in their careers, either in the minors or even briefly in the majors. But none of them were ever expected to stick in center and were corner-bound early on. They’re also not all good outfielders, mind you; Bay hasn’t graded out as any better than mediocre in any of several venues via several metrics. But Parra, Holliday and Tabata all offer positive value afield, and Parra and Tabata are recent enough arrivals to represent some form of validation for a “recent defensive improvement” theory.

Among the ex-infielders, Braun, however athletic he was as a college shortstop once upon a time, proved to be a bad third baseman, had a rough first year in left in 2008, but seems to have become a better left fielder in the past season-plus, at least according to Total Zone, Plus/Minus and Fielding Runs.

It’s everyone else where you start running into problems. Ibanez, Lee and Soriano would probably be DHs in the AL if their contracts didn’t keep them planted in left field for their respective ballclubs. All three provide awful defense. Willingham grades reliably poorly, as does Gomes. Morrison is a big galoot and giving left field his best shot, but it would be hard to call him an obvious success. If you want to be generous, you can compare his move to left to Willingham’s, or perhaps to the Rockies’ success with their decision to move Brad Hawpe to right field to get his bat in the lineup earlier in the decade. That was a defensive hit the Rockies were willing to take for the offensive boost; it was an idea that helped get them a pennant, but that doesn’t sound much like a better brand of defense getting played in the outfield.

If you want to get really skeptical about the data, you might note that Burrell has done extremely well for the Giants according to several metrics, which probably seems strange after three bad years in left for the Phillies, which preceded the Rays’ signing him to DH. To my way of thinking, that just goes toward how much confidence we can invest in any interpretive defensive metric -- the information is suggestive, but not conclusive. What is incontrovertible is that one of the so-called “smart” teams, the Rays, as performance analysis-aided as anybody in the industry, took one look at Burrell and said “DH.” Does this mean the Rays were dumb? Of course it doesn’t, especially when the Rays get -- and deserve -- credit for doing so much to improve their defense between 2007 and 2008 to aid their massive turnaround as a franchise.

So, maybe things changed for the better in 2011, right? Coghlan moved to center, while Milledge moved to the International League. You can add Ryan Ludwick of the Padres to the latest list of regulars -- he fits into the outfielders-playing-outfield group, and does it well. The Braves moved Martin Prado out of the infield because of his bad glove; according to Total Zone and Fielding Runs he remains a liability as a left fielder, while UZR and Plus/Minus think he’s just fine out there. That doesn’t sound conclusive one way or another, but it’s early yet. Maybe he’ll be the next Braun, or the next Soriano.

In the absence of any compelling trend, what might be especially interesting is that for all the talk of improvement, one thing has been damnably consistent over the past decade. Per Baseball-Reference.com, in 1990, left fielders were catching 48 percent of all fly balls. In 2000, they were catching 47 percent of all fly balls, and in 2009 they were catching 47 percent of all fly balls. Last year, with all this improving going on, left fielders caught 46 percent of all fly balls hit in their direction. So far this year it’s at 49 percent. And all of this while there are fewer balls in play as the strikeout rates keep going higher. Maybe it’s just me, but maybe the teams like the Giants and Reds and Phillies and Marlins, and perhaps now the Braves, have gone for a bat in left field, maybe they’re the ones onto something elegant and classic: putting boppers in a bopper’s slot.

The Phillies' victory in the early hours of Thursday morning was initially remarkable for how it started, with Roy Halladay on the mound against a Reds team he'd no-hit in the National League Division Series last year. But people won't easily forget how it finished, 19 innings later.

When infielder Wilson Valdez stepped onto the mound for the Phillies in the top of the 19th inning, he wasn't just being asked to do something out of the ordinary. True, Valdez was coming into a tie ballgame, which was unusual enough for a position player. But he was also facing as formidable a group of sluggers as the Cincinnati Reds possess, a trio that any full-time reliever would be worried about: reigning National League MVP Joey Votto, frequent All-Star Scott Rolen and Jay Bruce, who had hit his 13th home run of the 2011 season in the 10th inning.

Even though Valdez hit Rolen with a pitch after getting Votto to fly out to center, he managed to retire the side because he got to face Reds pitcher Carlos Fisher with two outs and that one man aboard. As a result, when the Phillies scored in the bottom of the 19th on Raul Ibanez's bases-loaded sacrifice fly, Valdez had earned his first win as a pitcher.

Valdez was not the first position player called upon to pitch in a bind, nor will he be the last. In fact, there are a number of memorable pitching performances by position players, but many of them took place in the midst of blowouts, rather than long extra-innings affairs. Of all of these, Valdez was the only player to earn a W for his efforts:

• On April 13, 2009, Nick Swisher of the Yankees was called in to pitch during the eighth inning of a 15-5 loss to the Rays. After walking the leadoff man, B.J. Upton, and allowing a base hit to Willy Aybar, Swisher retired the next three batters in order. He even earned his first major league strikeout when he threw a 78 mph fastball past the swinging Gabe Kapler. Swisher claimed that he had previously pitched as a freshman at Parkersburg High School in West Virginia.
• On August 19, 1997, David Wells allowed 11 earned runs in three innings for the Yankees against the Angels. Manager Joe Torre wanted to preserve the Yankees' bullpen, and originally considered third baseman Charlie Hayes as a relief pitcher. After several Yankees players pointed out that Wade Boggs had a great knuckleball, Torre instead called upon the future Hall of Fame third baseman. Torre was initially afraid that Boggs would be uncomfortable with the request, but it turned out that Boggs -- who often practiced his knuckleball before games -- was thrilled with the opportunity. Boggs faced four Angels batters in the eighth inning, and he got all of them off to 0-2 counts, allowing one walk and no hits during the appearance.
• By the eighth inning on June 17, 1993, the Rangers had already scored 18 runs against the Angels. Angels manager Buck Rodgers turned to outfielder Chili Davis. Davis pitched both the eighth and ninth innings, and although he hit Jose Canseco with a pitch, his performance was otherwise perfect. Davis joked that he had about seven different pitches he was able to use at any time, but that the only one working that night was his fastball.
• One position player pitching performance that is notorious for all the wrong reasons was when Canseco pitched the eighth inning for the Rangers on May 29, 1993. Texas was being clobbered by the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, so Canseco convinced manager Kevin Kennedy to let him pitch for an inning. Canseco allowed two hits, three walks and three runs during the 15-1 loss and blew his arm out, requiring season-ending surgery. Canseco was scheduled to make $4.8 million to make his living as a hitter that season, so that became one of the single most costly relief innings ever thrown.

After Valdez's success in the top half of the 19th, perhaps the Reds might have envied the Phillies for using a position player to pitch when their half of the inning rolled around. However, Dusty Baker had already emptied his bench of position players, although he had a pair of swingmen, Sam LeCure and Matt Maloney, still potentially available instead of sending out Fisher for a sixth inning of very long relief.

However, the last time Baker sent a position player to the mound for the Reds, nobody involved enjoyed any success: Shortstop Paul Janish came into a blowout against the Milwaukee Brewers on May 6, 2009, and allowed five additional runs to add an exclamation point to a 15-3 loss.

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Stephanie Liscio is an obsessive Cleveland Indians fan and blogs about them at It's Pronounced "Lajaway," part of the SweetSpot network. She is also the author of "Integrating Cleveland Baseball."

I wouldn’t go so far as to call it the mismatch of the century, but John Lannan trying to beat Roy Halladay in Philadephia was kind of like Mondale in ’84: Not a chance.

Halladay was brilliant with 10 strikeouts and no walks and Lannan was the opposite of brilliant with six runs allowed over two innings, dropping his career record against the Phillies to 0-10. To those of you who listened to Thursday’s Baseball Today podcast: I was just kidding with my prediction -- I didn’t really think the Nationals would win. Just a joke for Karabell's benefit.

So now the Phillies are 21-9, and they own the best run differential in the National League. As expected, the rotation has dominated as the club has allowed the fewest runs in the majors. In other news, Chase Utley may soon begin a minor-league rehab assignment, and the cheesesteaks are as tasty as ever. The only bad news is the Flyers are down 3-0 to the Bruins.

Actually … hold on, there is some bad news, of sorts. Of those 30 games, just five have come against teams that currently have a winning record, with three played against the Braves and two against the Marlins. The Phillies have also played 17 games at home. Which is why this weekend’s series against the Braves is so intriguing, because it kicks off this stretch of games for Philadelphia:

• 3 versus Atlanta
• 3 at Florida
• 3 at Atlanta
• 2 at St. Louis
• 2 versus Colorado
• 3 versus Texas
• 4 versus Cincinnati

That’s 20 consecutive games against winning ballclubs, which makes for a little sterner test than the Nationals and Mets have offered. As a comparison, the Marlins are 19-11, but have played 16 games against winning teams. Now, I admit, strength of schedule can be a little overanalyzed, especially in the NL, where there appears to be so much parity this season. But I still think these next three weeks will give us a better sense as to the strength of this Phillies team.

The Braves enter on a bit of a roll, with five straight wins and they have a plus-38 run differential (the Phillies are plus-41). Let’s take a little closer look at the series.

Friday: Derek Lowe versus Cliff Lee
You won’t believe this: Lee walked two batters in his last start. Clearly, something is wrong. Was he moonlighting as one of the Flyers’ goalies between starts?

Fun statistic: The Braves are gunning to become one of the worst basestealing teams in recent memory. They have five steals. Against 10 caught stealings. The last team to steal fewer than 30 bases was the 1994 Mets (in a strike season). But that team was epically bad on the bases: 25 steals, 26 caught stealings. Jose Vizcaino was 1-for-12.

Must-see matchup: If the Phillies let the Phanatic fill in for Charlie Manuel this weekend, could he outwit Fredi Gonzalez?

Saturday: Jair Jurrjens versus Roy Oswalt (probable)
You won’t believe this: Oswalt is expected to return to the rotation after missing a start while tending to his family in Mississippi after the tornadoes down there. Since the Cy Young Award was instituted in 1956, Oswalt is one of only 21 pitchers with 150 wins and an ERA under 3.25. The ones who never won a Cy Young Award: Nolan Ryan, Jim Bunning, Dave McNally, Wilbur Wood, Mel Stottlemyre, Steve Rogers and Oswalt. But Oswalt’s ERA+ (adjusted for park and era) is actually third-best of the 21 pitchers, behind only Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemens.

Fun statistic: Nate McLouth is hitting .462 (18-for-39) in the eight-hole. With 11 walks. So we know this: Opponents still fear McLouth more than Braves' pitchers.

Must-see matchup: Chipper Jones is 7-for-28 with no home runs in his career off Oswalt.

Sunday: Tommy Hanson versus Cole Hamels (ESPN, 8 p.m. ET)
You won’t believe this: I love this matchup. I mean, I’m sure ESPN is regretting not televising that J.A. Happ versus James McDonald duel, but we’ll settle for Hanson and Hamels.

Fun statistic: Hamels is 10-5 in his career against the Braves (his most wins against any franchise), but just 2-9 against the Mets.

Must-see matchup: Ryan Howard versus Hanson. Can Hanson get Howard to chase something? Howard’s walk rate is dropping yet again, to the point that it’s now about half of what it was in 2007.


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I have to think one of the most difficult decisions a manager has to make is when to tell a veteran star he is moving down in the lineup ... or is being relegated to part-time duty ... or is not playing at all.

Sometimes the player makes the decision himself. Mike Schmidt and Ken Griffey Jr. walked away in the middle of seasons. Sometimes the manager might be tied down by the status of the player, reminding me of an old Earl Weaver quote, “No promises. None. If you don’t make any promises, then you won’t break any. Don’t back yourself into a corner.”

How much longer before the managers of these struggling veterans will feel backed into a corner?

Magglio Ordonez, Tigers: After going 0-for-4 on Monday, Maggs is hitting .151 with one extra-base hit and one RBI in 73 at-bats. His one RBI came on a grounder to shortstop. This isn’t a slump; this is a career crisis. He is 37 and has battled injuries, but the career .310 hitter hasn’t hit less than .290 since his rookie season and hit .303 in 2010. Jim Leyland has kept Ordonez in the No. 3 spot all season. He’s also kept Austin Jackson in the leadoff spot all season. I don’t want to say Leyland is asleep at the helm, so I’ll just say he apparently has more confidence in these guys than I do. As one Tigers blog penned after Ordonez got the day off Sunday, “Don Kelly hits third, Jim Leyland declared genius.” Can you tell the Tigers are in a long losing streak? As for Ordonez, his line-drive percentage on balls in play is 20 percent, right at his career norm of 20.3, so it appears he’s hitting into a lot of bad luck, as indicated by a .172 average on balls in play. He’ll break out of it almost any day. I’m almost sure of it.

Aubrey Huff, Giants: Huff went 0-for-3 Monday, dropping his season line to .190/.257/.290 (BA/OBP/SLG), as the Giants were shut out by Tom Gorzelanny and Drew Storen. It was the third shutout in less than a week for the Giants, after 2-0 and 3-0 losses to James McDonald and Jason Marquis. Not exactly like getting blanked by Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee and Cole Hamels. Huff’s numbers are down across the board from his big 2010: walk rate down slightly, strikeout rate up slightly, line-drive percentage down, ground ball percentage up. All the trends are negative and, at 34 years old, cause for major concern. Brandon Belt has been playing the outfield in Triple-A, but he might want to keep his first-base glove close by.

Vernon Wells, Angels: The Angels’ left fielder hit a two-run homer in the eighth inning off Dan Wheeler in a 9-5 loss to the Red Sox, raising his season totals to .172/.218/.267 with two home runs. Wells isn’t too concerned with his slow start, tweeting, “I love how people panic after two weeks of the season. Never panic, always persevere! Too blessed to be stressed.” Of course, he tweeted that April 17. Wells has some major red flags brewing: His line-drive percentage before Monday’s game was 7.7 percent -- well below his career norm of 18.3 percent, indicating his sub-.200 average on balls in play isn’t all bad luck. It’s also worth noting that while Wells hit 31 home runs last season, he was one of many Blue Jays to benefit from the friendly air conditioning at Rogers Centre; he hit just .227/.301/.407 on the road. At 32, he’s the youngest guy on this list, but he looks like a much older athlete to me, with declining speed and a few extra pounds. Call-me-crazy prediction: Wells will not exercise his right to opt out of his contract after this season. (Only three more seasons, Angels fans.)

Raul Ibanez, Phillies: ESPN Insider looked at Ibanez the other day, and I tend to agree that a “big chunk of his struggles are attributable to making very poor contact when he does connect.” Like Ordonez, Ibanez doesn’t offer much in the field, and when Domonic Brown returns from his rehab stint in the minors, Ibanez might see much reduced playing time. I hope he rebounds but he’s turning 38 in a month. I won’t completely write him off -- hey, this is a guy who had just 112 career RBIs in his 20s but now is approaching 1,000 for his career -- but the end could sadly be near.

Vladimir Guerrero and Derrek Lee, Orioles: The two vets showed signs of life in Monday’s 6-2 loss to the White Sox, combining for five hits, including Lee’s second home run. Vlad the (former) Impaler has long been one of my favorite players, but it’s painful to see him hacking away these days. He’s hitting .274 -- which also happens to be his on-base percentage, as he’s yet to draw a walk. He’s connected for four home runs, but with three GIDP, Vlad might join that elusive more-double-plays-than-walks club, entered in recent seasons by the likes of Miguel Tejada, Ivan Rodriguez and A.J. Pierzynski. At 35, Lee is a year younger than Guerrero, and his home run lifted his line to .248/.325/.333. His BABIP is actually more than .300, so his main problem has been a high strikeout rate and lack of power when he does connect. Maybe he’ll warm up with the weather.

"Maybe." I’m sure countless managers have thought that through the years, waiting for the vets to heat up with the summer. Sometimes they do.

And sometimes the bat remains a millisecond too slow.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

Christopher Hanewinckel/US PresswireAs America celebrated its troops Monday, so too did the San Diego Padres.

From hotstove.com, a shocking (and almost unbelievable) report:

Heard this from a major league exec: The Phillies are evaluating the trade market for outfielder Jayson Werth. Was told he's the best bat that could be dealt by July 31st. Surprised me to hear it. Werth's right-handed bat seems crucial to the left-leaning Phils. But Werth has said he will explore free agency this offseason, and the Phillies could replace him now with prospect Domonic Brown, a left-handed hitter. Recent injuries to hitters Placido Polanco and Chase Utley would argue against the Phils dealing Werth, who certainly would attract interest.

I won't attach a great deal of credibility to this rumor, which does seem pretty far-fetched. But it does serve to remind us why you don't give Raul Ibanez a three-year, $31.5 million contract, doesn't it?

If the Phillies didn't have Ibanez -- who was really good last year, really not so good this year, and is owed $11.5 million next year -- I don't think they would even consider trading Werth, because there wouldn't be any reason to. Without Ibanez, they would have a slot available for Brown and they would have some extra cash in the till, which they could have used to 1) retain Cliff Lee this season, 2) lock up Werth for a few years, or 3) both.

Look, the Phillies did win last year and Ibanez was a big part of that. They might yet win this year, and he might yet be a big part of that. But there's always a cost, particularly with players in their late 30s. And I think plenty of teams still don't quite know how to weigh those costs before doling out the big contracts.

Today's links are better served late than never (I hope) ...

• Lynn Henning is right, of course: the Tigers simply can't keep running Dontrelle Willis out there every five days. This was obvious even before the latest debacle, and would be true even if the Tigers weren't actually actually contending for a playoff spot.

• I showed up to read Fun Facts about Farnsworth that make Farnsworth look decidedly non-clutchy, but stuck around for yet another example of Trey Hillman's bizarre stategery. (For the record, though? Farnsworth, over his entire career, has been almost exactly as good in clutch situations as in non-clutch.)

• From 11 Points -- "Because Top 10 Lists are for Cowards" -- 11 Major League Baseball feats that have happened just once.

• Fantastic lede in Alan Schwarz's piece about Pat Venditte:

The Yankees, whose bullpen is among the worst in the American League, have two arms in Class A ball leading the minor leagues in saves. The left-handed one has kept hitters to a .121 batting average; the right-handed one has not walked anyone in 20 innings. This would all be rather straightforward, except that both arms belong to the same body.

What makes the story worth reading, though, is that it's just not about the strangeness of Pat Venditte; we already get that. More, it's a balanced look at why he's still stuck in Class A.

• Jeff Pearlman goes a long way toward explaining why I'm glad I do what I do.

• Was Watching presents some (admittedly prelimary) findings regarding the stamina of Joba Chamberlain.

• I know it's time to let this thing go and I will, soon. But in case you haven't been following the Raul Ibanez-and-BBWAA-orthodoxy-vs.-bloggers kerfuffle, here's a a real good roundup (including plenty of solid comments).

• If you used to spend most of your disposable income on "wax packs" -- as I did, for a few years -- you know exactly what Chris Jaffe's talking about.

It's funny, what gets turned into news. You've no doubt heard about Raul Ibanez's war with a previously obscure blogger who recently had the temerity to suggest that maybe, just maybe Ibanez's big numbers this season might have benefited from a bit of illicit drug use. From our story, Ibanez's public reaction:

"I'll come after people who defame or slander me," he said Tuesday night before the Phillies played the New York Mets, according to the report. "It's pathetic and disgusting. There should be some accountability for people who put that out there."

"You can have my urine, my hair, my blood, my stool -- anything you can test," Ibanez said, according to the report. "I'll give you back every dime I've ever made" if the test is positive, he added.

"I'll put that up against the jobs of anyone who writes this stuff," he said, according to the Inquirer. "Make them accountable. There should be more credibility than some 42-year-old blogger typing in his mother's basement. It demeans everything you've done with one stroke of the pen.

"Nobody is above the testing policy. We've seen that."

Ouch. I'm a blogger. I'm 42. And some years ago I spent a summer in my mother's basement. Also, Raul Ibanez is a wealthy man with a wonderful career and I think he should pick on people his own size. So, my first impulse is to give the blogger the benefit of the doubt. But what did Jerod Morris actually write, that elicited such disdain? The following comes near the end of a long, mostly statistical discussion of the things that might explain Ibanez's performance:

Maybe the 37-year old Ibanez trained differently this offseason with the pressure of joining the Phillies' great lineup and is in the best shape he's ever been in.

And maybe that training included ...

Well, you know where that one was going, but I'd prefer to leave it as unstated speculation. However, if Ibanez ends up hitting 45-50 homers this year, you can bet that I won't be the only one raising the question. And judging by my buddy's message board post this morning, and questions like this in public forums, people already are.

For the record, Ibanez has denied ever using steroids. Back in 2007 when former Mariners OF Shane Monahan said that the clubhouse culture in Seattle led him to use steroids, Ibanez and Jamie Moyer came out and publicly lambasted Monahan while denying that steroids had ever been a presence in the Mariners clubhouse. Of course, as well all know, explicit denials of steroid use don't really mean a whole hell of a lot these days.

It will be a wonderful day when we can see a great start by a veteran like Ibanez and not immediately jump to speculating about whether steroids or PEDs are involved. We certainly are not at that point yet, however.

That's not a particularly good piece of writing, because when you say you're going to leave the speculation unstated and then spend three paragraphs essentially stating the speculation, you've written yourself into an uncomfortable corner. Aside from that single clause, though, has Morris -- who's 27, by the way -- written anything here that's unreasonable? Players cheated. Players have lied about cheating. The players fought for years against any efforts to limit or eliminate the cheating.

I'm sorry, players, but you just don't deserve the benefit of the doubt. If we see something that suggests cheating, it's now fair to raise the subject. If only to knock it down. I wouldn't have raised the subject in this case, because I think Occam's Razor would suggest that Ibanez's numbers are the result of a good hitter in a good hitter's park in the weaker league having a couple of lucky months. For me, that's enough.

But I'm often reminded of that George Carlin bit, where everyone who drives slower than you is an idiot and everyone who drives faster than you is a maniac. Well, you (and Raul Ibanez) might think that Jerod Morris is a maniac. But it really just depends on how fast you're driving.

My personal opinion -- as someone who, granted, has been called a maniac many times over the years -- is that Morris has made just one serious mistake: He (sort of) apologized.

Today's links were discovered while thinking about the things I love about the game ...

• From our story about Bob Melvin's demise:

Melvin made an immediate impact in the desert. He led the 2005 Diamondbacks to a 77-85 record, a 26-win improvement.

Two years later, the Diamondbacks made a surprise run to the NL West title despite scoring 20 fewer runs than they allowed -- a fact that led many to praise Melvin's ability to squeeze the most out of his lineup.

As I'm sure I mentioned at the time, seriously outperforming your run differential is a really neat trick ... and really, really hard to do more than once.

• Baseball Daily Digest's Bill Baer with what might be the last word (for now) on the difference between Raul Ibanez's performance and what many of us expected.

• Worry not, Yuniesky Betancourt fans. Yes, after finally drawing a walk, he'll rarely be seen in this space. But we've still got Bengie Molina, who's now racked up 104 plate appearances this season without a walk ... and like Betancourt (before his walk), Molina's on-base percentage is lower than his batting average!

• From mental_floss's Scott Allen, a list of nine famous baseball stadium vendors. (It's a solid compendium, but where is Fenway Park's Rob, the champion thrower of peanuts?)

• Murray Chass is not a big fan of Selena Roberts' new book. Steven Goldman's not a fan of Roberts' work, generally. I've decided to read the book only if someone pays me or makes me. (So far, so good.)

• Also, MGL isn't Bud Black's biggest fan. (My personal feeling is that Black can do absolutely no wrong, mostly because of this game).

• Wow, talk about a potential time sink ... every issue of Baseball Digest, searchable!

• I'm willing to cut Frenchy some slack because he's young and he's got a fun nickname, but in this case the evidence is damning.

• Uh-oh ... This is the last Cardboard Gods post for a while. Don't worry, though; it's for a great cause, and Josh will return.

Baseball Tonight reviews the top defensive plays from Sunday.

Not much blogging yesterday (or today) because I foolishly left my wireless card at home, which left me stuck on a train to Seattle for four hours with no Internet access (back to "normal" tonight). On a happier note, I spent some of those four hours (finally) reading Sports Illustrated's baseball preview, which includes a "modest proposal" for every club (all of which were "compiled" by Joe Sheehan, one of our friends over at Baseball Prospectus). Running through a few of the more interesting proposals:

• Red Sox: Use Jed Lowrie as leadoff man rather than Jacoby Ellsbury.

I love the idea. Lowrie was pretty good last year despite a wrist injury that sapped his strength for much of the season. He played exceptionally well in spring training. And now his wrist is hurting again, so he's not going to be playing shortstop -- let alone leading off -- for quite some time, it seems. Julio Lugo's out, too. Nick Green played shortstop last night. And people wonder why it's hard to predict the standings.

• Twins: Send Delmon Young back to the minors, where he might learn to hit.

Most of the preseason stuff I read suggested that Michael Cuddyer should have been the odd man out in the Twins' outfield, with Young joining Carlos Gomez and Denard Span as regulars. The assumption, as I recall, was that Young needs to play regularly if he's going to improve. But even just looking at performance, Young actually out-hit Cuddyer last season. And of course he's seven years younger. So unless someone can demonstrate that Young would develop significantly quicker in the minors, I think you leave him in the majors and let him take his lumps for 450-500 plate appearances this season.

• Indians: Don't be shy about dumping Travis Hafner in favor of Matt LaPorta.

The Indians have to give Hafner one more shot, and by "shot" I mean at least a couple of months. If not a couple of years, since they still owe him $49 million and he was real good just two seasons ago. As usual, though, there's a lesson here: long-term commitments to sluggardly sluggers often bite you in the backside.

• Phillies: Break up lefties in the lineup with Jayson Werth.

This one deserves a bit of extra credit for the author's prescience ...

Having replaced lumbering Pat Burrell in leftfield with lumbering Raul Ibanez, the Phillies find themselves with the 3-4-5 part of their lineup batting exclusively from the left side. That will be a major tactical issue late in games, when opposing managers bring in relief specialists to face Chase Utley, Ryan Howard and Ibanez in high-leverage situations. All lefthanded hitters struggle against such lefties as the Braves' Mike Gonzalez and the Mets' Pedro Feliciano. Sliding Jayson Werth (career .374 on-base percentage, .545 slugging versus lefthanders) into the fifth spot ahead of Ibanez would force managers to choose between making pitching change or taking a bad matchup, a decision that will come up repeatedly in the 36 games games Philadelphia plays against its top two division rivals.

Sure enough, that's exactly what happened in the Phillies' very first game, as Mike Gonzalez was able to escape a big ninth-inning jam by retiring a couple of those lefty hitters. I'll bet a silver dollar that Charlie Manuel does eventually break those guys up when a southpaw is starting.

• Brewers: Trade Prince Fielder, play Mat Gamel instead.

This echoes a suggestion I made last year, I believe. My thought was that Ryan Braun should wind up at first base instead of Fielder, but Gamel -- who was 22 last season and tore up the Double-A Southern League -- would fit in nicely, too. Perhaps as soon as right now. Not that the Brewers should just give Fielder away; after all, he's a fine hitter and he's still cheap. But he doesn't figure to age particularly well, and low-revenue teams simply can't afford to let major league talent waste away in the minors. The Brewers need to either play Gamel or trade him (as they did with LaPorta last summer; you judge how well that worked out).

• Diamondbacks: Even if he's healthy, Eric Byrnes should be a fourth outfielder.

Well, yeah. I'm mentioning this one only because I love this line: "Energy is good, left turns at first base are better; Byrnes and his .325 career OBP don't provide enough of the latter."

• Giants: Trade Barry Zito.

As the argument goes, the Giants already have three young starters who are better than Zito (true), they've got Randy Johnson this season (also true), and they've got a couple of hot prospects in the minors who may well be ready in 2010. Well, OK. But what about 2009? And exactly what might the Giants expect in return for a pitcher -- for the sake of argument, we'll say Barry Zito -- who's a No. 5 starter for most clubs but is still owed a gazillion dollars? I say the Giants should keep Zito until the exact moment that they just can't stand to look at him for one more #@&%$ second. And then they release him.

• Padres: Trade Brian Giles.

Boy, this is a tough one. The Padres have two good hitters and Giles is one of them and the fans probably wouldn't be real thrilled if he got sent along to a contender. On the other hand, Giles is 38 (38!) and the Padres' farm system isn't exactly loaded with prospects. So, yeah: they should trade him for prospects if they can. In fact, anything else should be considered malpractice.