The Cole Express
By Joe

Last week I was cleaning my room and getting ready for moving out of Birmingham when I started thinking about what I wanted to do during the upcoming Memorial Day weekend. I had talked to my roommate Katie about watching the Braves play before I left Alabama, so I checked the schedule to see whether Atlanta had a home game last weekend. Sure enough, they did versus the Phillies.

Then I stopped. My mind raced. The Phillies? Cole Hamels pitches for the Phillies. Could he be pitching on Sunday? Please God say it's true.

As fate would have it, my boy Cole had a scheduled start for Sunday. It took me 3.4 seconds to buy the tickets.

So Katie and I made the two-hour trek to Atlanta to watch Cole face the Braves. Needless to say, it was an all around outstanding day.

First, Turner Field is an absolutely amazing ballpark. Once you walk in the gates the whole layout is wide open. There are monuments of Hank Aaron, Warren Spahn and Ty Cobb. There are games for kids to play. There are endless concession stands. In contrast to PNC Park in Pittsburgh and Jacobs Field in Cleveland, Turner Field has plenty of room to walk around outside the stadium and engage with the numerous fan booths. And you can buy Sam Adams on tap. Overall, it's very cool.

We got to our seats on the right field line and settled in to witness Cole. But first we were treated to reigning N.L. MVP Ryan Howard. Howard is coming off of an oblique injury, but he looked just fine against Atlanta's Kyle Davies. Howard, with an effortless swing, belted a two-run homer down the right field line on the first pitch he saw from Davies. Now I realize Ryan Howard is a large man, but it still amazed me at how easy he powered the ball over the fence. Just a flick of the wrists and 375 feet later it's 2-0 Phillies.

Greg Dobbs followed Howard with a sky high fly ball that barely grazed past the right-center field fence for a two-run shot. Just like that, the Phillies were up 4-0.

Granting Cole Hamels a four-run lead is like giving a mere mortal pitcher 12 runs. As the Phillies warmed before the bottom of the first started, I turned to Katie and informed her that the game was over. There are certain things you don't do in life if you want to succeed. Giving Cole Hamels a big lead is one of them.

Cole didn't disappoint me, cruising through the first inning by allowing just one hit and striking out a batter. Not surprisingly Cole threw a ton of change-ups, each clocked between 79 and 81 mph. He made Jeff Franceour look silly by setting him up with two change-ups before blowing a 94 mph fastball past him for the easy strikeout.

In the second inning Cole strutted to the plate and took a nice hack at a Davies fastball, roping it down the first base line. Unfortunately, Scott Thorman made a diving stop to halt Cole from a two-base hit. Still, I was impressed with how well Cole swung the bat. He's collected five hits already this season, including two doubles.

As the sun became hotter and the afternoon grew older, Cole pitched on cruise control. From the second through fourth innings, he yielded just a one hit, a solo home run to backup catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia, while striking out five. The Braves offered no threats to score.

In the fifth, the Phillies exploded for seven runs, including Howard's second home run of the day, a mammoth shot to center field. By the time Cole threw his warm up pitches in the bottom of the inning, he was staked an 11-1 to advantage. At this point Cole could have thrown right-handed and gotten a win.

To my disappointment Cole continued pitching with his left hand, finishing the game by going six innings, allowing three runs, walking two and striking out eight. It was a solid, if not spectacular performance that notched the 23-year-old his seventh win of the season. For the most part I was impressed with the way Cole mixed up his change-ups with fastballs to keep the Braves guessing. When you can have a 15 mph difference between your fastball and your off-speed pitch, it's going to give hitters a difficult time.

My only concern about Cole is that he relies too much on the change. He did allow two home runs Sunday and has been bitten by the gopher ball 10 times in 11 starts. Thankfully there was nobody on base when Saltalamacchia and Andruw Jones went yard. Still, Cole's tendency to fall in love with his change-up is going to hurt him at some point this year when a hitter just sits on that off-speed pitch. Obviously Cole puts a ton of movement on his change which makes it extremely difficult to hit. But he must continue to keep hitters honest by throwing more fastballs and an occasional curveball. He did this for most of the game Sunday, but every once in awhile he fell back into throwing too many consecutive change-ups and it hurt him.

Cole is now 7-2 on the season with a 3.74 ERA and 1.22 WHIP. He leads the Majors with 86 strikeouts and has delivered four quality starts in his last five outings. I don't think we've seen the best of Cole this season, but he's been awfully good. The difference between this year's Cole and last year's Cole is night and day. I'm excited to see how much better the kid will be by season's end.

Weekend for Lefties
By Eric

Heading into the Cubs-Phillies game Friday night Pat Burrell had one homerun in 97 at bats this season and was catching slack from his manager and the Philly media machine. He was even booed by the Philly crowd during introductions (surprise, surprise... ). Three at bats, two homeruns and five RBI later he was receiving a standing ovation, and the Phillies went on to grab a win. The story on Friday was supposed to be about the Hamels-Hill pitching matchup; it turned into the Pat Burrell show.

I went down to Philly for the game and was beyond psyched about the chance to see Rich Hill go up against the “Cole-Train” (a totally lame nickname that I must have heard about 17,000 times Friday night). Despite the Burrell fireworks and crooked number on the box score, the match-up was still worth the price of admission.

Hamels and Hill are interesting to watch because both are big lefties that rely predominately on off-speed pitches to work batters. Hill’s bread and butter is a killer curve, pretty rare for a lefty, and Hamels lives and dies by his change-up. It was not uncommon on Friday for Hamels to come after a batter with three or four change-ups in a row.

Hill has been a top prospect in the Cub’s farm system for a while now and it’s great to see him finally come into his own in the bigs. He’s been pulled up several times the last couple of years, but has been unable to put everything together until this season. He pitched 23.2 innings in 10 games in 2005 with an ERA of 9.13 and a WHIP of 1.77, and showed his potential last year pitching 99 innings with an ERA of 4.11 and a WHIP of 1.23. But this season he’s finally starting to live up to the Cub’s expectations. Even after Friday’s shaky outing he still has the third best WHIP in the NL (o.96) and 10th best ERA (2.51).

Much has been written about Hamels this season (by Joe), and for good reason (he's on Joe's fantasy team). At 23 years old, he’s definitely one of the most exciting young pitchers in Major League Baseball. He currently has a WHIP of 1.32 and an ERA of 3.46.

While Hamels definitely got the best of Friday’s match-up, his and Hill’s performances were not drastically different. Both pitchers struck out seven (Hill in five innings, Hamels in seven) and gave up two homers. Hill gave up four hits and three walks, Hamels seven hits and two walks. The differentiating factor was that Hill’s homers were of the two and three run variety while Hamels were both solo shots.

Now there are several ways to look at this. To some extent it comes down to random luck, but at the same time the ability to pitch out of jams with runners on base is a make or break skill for pitchers. Friday’s game had bits of both. One thing I noticed about Hill on Friday is that he looks significantly less comfortable pitching out of the stretch with runners on base.

Hill either goes to a slide step which seems to take quite a bit off his stuff or stays in his normal long wind-up leaving himself susceptible to the steal. Aaron Rowand, not exactly a steal machine, stole a base with relative ease against the lefty. That shouldn’t happen. On the plus side, this is a fairly minor mechanical problem that can probably be fixed with a little coaching. Once it is, Hill will be even more dangerous.

There are a couple of things about Hamels that I found on Wikipedia and thought were interesting. Despite being only 23 years old (exactly 11 months younger than me) Hamels is married. Not extremely interesting in and of itself, but the fact that he’s married to Heidi Strobel of Survivor and Playboy fame is. Also, he broke his pitching hand in a bar fight in 2005. Sounds like this guy likes to live the wild life, hopefully it doesn’t get in the way of his baseball career.

A couple other notes:

Citizen Bank Park is a great baseball stadium. I’d been there once before for a Jimmy Buffett concert, but never for a baseball game. I definitely walked away impressed. All of the seats have great sight lines and the place had a distinctly intimate feel with all of the tiers arranged vertically so noone is far from the field. I’m moving down to Philly in July and definitely looking forward to catching some more games there.

How about them Brewers? Sure they just dropped two to the Mets, but they still sit atop the NL with a 25-12 record. I tried to convince Joe in March that the Brewers could be the team to beat in the NL Central this year, and he pretty much laughed at me. Granted, this series against the Mets was their first against a team with a winning record since the first or second week of the season and they are sure to regress to the mean, but talk about a great story. It’ll be interesting to see how their young lineup does as the season drags on and whether their pitching can hold up and stay healthy.

Outstanding Ollie
By Joe

I am not a Mets fan but I imagine there are few situations in life scarier than watching Oliver Perez trot out to the mound in a National League Championship Series game.

But that's exactly what happened last year when the Mets, short on starting pitching thanks to injuries to Pedro Martinez and Orlando Hernandez, handed the ball over to a guy that had a 2-10 record with a plus-6.00 ERA.

When I first heard the news that Perez would be starting in the NLCS, I didn't believe it. Wasn't this the same Oliver Perez who, after his outstanding 2004 season where he went 12-10 with a 2.98 ERA, 1.15 WHIP and 239 strikeouts, fell completely off the wagon by posting ERAs around 6 in back-to-back seasons? The same Oliver Perez who combined to go 10-18 in 2005 and 2006? The same Oliver Perez whose strikeout-to-walk ratio was less than 1.5/1?

Amazingly, Perez responded with four solid innings allowing just one run and striking out four. The big left hander only walked one batter.

Most people figured the Mets were lucky Perez didn't completely explode and give up 12 runs in that NLCS game in October. I was one of them. But looking back on that start, maybe New York's front office knew something we didn't.

Fast forward to Sunday in Milwaukee and you see a very different Oliver Perez. Sure, he has the same goofy looking windup. And he's still got that lanky build. But this Oliver Perez didn't have any of the control problems that haunted him the past two years. This Oliver Perez worked ahead in the count and stayed away from the dreaded big inning, another staple of his 2005 and 2006 seasons. This Oliver Perez worked into the ninth, yielding just one run, two hits, striking out six and walking just two. For 2007, his ERA is is now 3.00, his WHIP is under 1.20 and he's struck out 43 batters in 42 innings.

In the past two years Perez has had isolated strong outings like the one against Milwaukee Sunday, but he's never been able to string together a streak of dominance since 2004. But in 2007, it finally appears Perez has turned the corner. He's had only one terrible start and another where he was the victim of poor fielding. Other than those two outings, Perez has been excellent.

Perez may even be better this year than in 2004. That year, Perez's Achilles' heel was his high number of walks. He gave up 81 free passes in just 196 innings. But his WHIP was still a minuscule 1.15, which is quite low for a guy that walked so many batters. Despite all the walks, Perez only allowed 145 hits that year. When he got beat, it wasn't because the opposing team was teeing off on his pitches. It was usually because Perez couldn't find the plate.

Entering this season, Perez had to lower his walk count. Now that he's successfully done that, he's teetering on being a dominant pitcher again. Perez still has great stuff and now that he's stopped walking everyone, he's finding himself in far fewer jams than the past few years.

And that's the major reason he's been so tough in 2007.

Perez still has his hiccups. On April 11, he walked seven and lasted just 2 2/3 innings en route to picking up the loss. But for the most part, Perez has consistently stayed away from ball four. And that's allowed him to become a very good pitcher.

Will Perez keep up his impressive start? Time will tell. But if he does return to his 2004 form all season, the ramifications in the National League will be monumental. The Mets will have a no. 3 starter that is pitching like a no. 1 starter. And that addition, coupled with an already good rotation, strong bullpen and potent offense, might be enough to get the Mets into the World Series.

Quick Hits
By Joe

Heading to the Kentucky Derby later today and wanted to jot down a couple quick thoughts since I likely won't post again until early next week.

Couldn't watch the Phillies game against Atlanta Tuesday, but followed most of it via MLB.com's Game Day feature. Once again, Cole Hamels impressed.

Not because he had 15 strikeouts like he did against the Reds a couple weeks ago. Not because he threw a shutout. Not because he looked flawless. Actually, Hamels barely made it out of the first inning, yielding five hits and three runs. It could have been worse except that Philadelphia threw an Atlanta runner out at the plate to save a run.

Hamels impressed me because he would have been shelled last year in a game like this. Hamels wasn't as mentally tough and didn't know how to control his emotions if he had a bad inning. There was one game in 2006, against these same Braves, where Hamels had something like 11 strikeouts through five innings. But in the sixth, he gave up a couple dinky hits and fell completely apart allowing seven runs to score.

This year that didn't happen. Sure, Hamels fell behind too much in the early going. But he stayed composed, settled down and worked into the eighth to pick up the victory. If Hamels can surrender just four runs during a game where he obviously didn't have his best stuff, the N.L. better watch out. This kid is going to be special.

David Wright has homered twice this week, which allowed me to breath a huge sigh of relief. I felt like the father of an expectant baby. I knew Wright would homer soon, but each day that passed without a dinger made me more nervous. Thankfully Wright seems to be turning the corner after his slow start.

Too bad New York's Phil Hughes got injured. He's got some nasty stuff. The Yankees look like they finally have an outstanding young pitcher in their farm system. The question now is whether they will let Hughes pitch in the majors once he gets healthy. At the rate which New York is losing pitchers to injury, they might not have much choice.

The Indians are 17-8 and playing ridiculously great baseball. I love this team. I think one more solid relief pitcher and they are set. The rotation is very good from top to bottom and the offense is excellent. It's early still, but I like that the Indians have built a lead on the rest of the tough Central Division.

The Brewers are also playing exceptionally well, although I'm not sure they can keep it up with their pitching staff. Jeff Suppan is pitching out of his mind and Ben Sheets isn't striking out many, which leads me to believe that his back is still bothering him.

I do like the lineup, especially with shortstop J.J. Hardy hitting well. The interesting thing about Milwaukee is that they play in the worst division in baseball. This gives them a legitimate shot at the playoffs for two reasons. 1. They get to play a bunch of crappy teams a bunch of times. 2. They probably only need to win 85 games to take the division, much like the Cardinals did last year. It's a good time to be a Brewers fan.

That's all for now. I'll post next week after hopefully winning some money in Louisville.