Who’s Left – The Next 10 Games

With another huge loss to the Pig’s bullpen yesterday, Jason Grilli was granted his release to sign with the Pirates.

The once bold and strong bullpen now faces some obstacles as this season comes down to the wire. Who will the Phillies pull up or send down? Who does Reading have available if necessary? Will they raid the free agent market again?

Well the Phillies are always a mystery. Currently the Phillies have Carpenter, Herndon, Perez, Stutes and Worley. Looking at the 40-man roster, on Sept. 1st we stand to lose DeFratus, Mathieson, and Zagurski. (I’m thinking Schwimer will be in there somewhere as well)

On the DL for the Phillies pitching staff include Blanton, Contreras, Lidge and Oswalt. We’ll get someone back by then. Think Carpenter for Blanton, Herndon for Contreras and Stutes for Lidge. Keep in mind, it also depends on who/when/if these pitchers return and are effective. They could go right back on the DL.

As of today, the IronPig’s pitching staff:

Brian Bass – 4 and 8 with 4.24 ERA
Tyson Brummett – 1 and 3 with 5.52 ERA
Nate Bump – 2 and 6 with 6.34 ERA
Ryan Feierabend – 9 and 5 with 5.46 ERA
Scott Mathieson – 0 and 1 with 3.16 ERA

Justin DeFratus – 2 and o with 5.50 ERA *Reliever
Ryan Edell – 2 and 2 with 4.23 ERA * Reliever
Joe Savery – 1 and 0 with 4.91 ERA *Reliever
Michael Schwimer – 5 and 0 with 1.71 ERA *Reliever
Les Walrond – 0 and 0 with 0.87 ERA *Reliever
Mike Zagurski – 2 and 0 with 2.43 ERA * Reliever
Aumont – On the DL
For sure, the starters really need to make an impact in these next 2 weeks. Whether the team is hitting or not, the pitching cannot keep giving up 5+ runs each game and expect to win every night.

For Reading, we’ve pretty much yanked (Brian Gordon pun intended) everything we could have from their pitching staff. They still have guys like J.C. Ramirez and B.J. Rosenberg or Austin Hyatt and Michael Cisco… but do we want to destroy their season as well? The Pigs winning is important to us but maybe not to those in charge of player development.

With the departure of Tim Redding, I don’t believe there will be anymore free agent pickups at the minor league level, barring any season ending injuries to the pitching staff.

Speaking of season ending, it does look like Jeff Larish won’t be returning this season. Larish was hitting .240 with 13 HR and 37 RBI. Although he was sliding a little recently he had a great first half of the year and was certainly a loss for the Pig’s offense. While it could be argued that Frandsen, Bozied and Orr would have taken over the infield, I’m not going to argue that here.

So the next 10 games. The Pigs could seal the deal by winning or could put themselves out of it by losing. They could easily find themselves 4-5 games out of first place by the time this upcoming home stand closes out. Still a lot of games to be played but I’d rather see our team leading the pack and not depending on another team to lose to close out the season.

We will see.

OinK!