YONG KIM / Staff photographer
Phillies' Brett Myers reacts after giving up two-run home run to Marlins' Cody Ross in sixth inning.
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Rich Hofmann: Myers' injury worries Phillies
THE LAST TIME a Phillies starting pitcher went on the disabled list, it was Cole Hamels. It was in August. Of 2007.
It's funny, the things you find yourself looking up when the manager and the trainer visit the mound in the middle of a sixth-inning at-bat.
The health of the Phillies' starting staff was an incredibly underdiscussed element of the team's run to the 2008 World Series. Now, there were other adventures to be sure, such as the Adam Eaton follies and Brett Myers' midseason detour through just about every minor league outpost in the franchise's system. But the health of the starting staff was somewhere between unusual and unprecedented.
It's funny, the things that go through your mind as the starter - in this case, Myers - limps to the dugout in obvious discomfort after the manager finally comes out for the ball.
The press box announcement used the term "right hip inflammation." An MRI exam is coming, probably today. The words out of Myers' mouth after the game were hopeful, but the look on his face was not. There is real concern here.
"I hate needles," Myers said, serious but laughing, explaining that he thinks the MRI will involve injecting some dye into the area first. But it is more than that. Myers said this hip has bothered him for years, on and off, on and off, for maybe a pitch per inning now and again.
This was different, he said, worse, much more sustained. He talked about "a sharp pain" at one point. Later, he said, "It kind of runs from my hip down to my knee sometimes. It might be a nerve."
With that, we wait for the big, expensive medical test. And we wonder what the Phillies will do now, thrown a curve that they have not seen for quite a while.
"We would definitely have a plan," Phils manager Charlie Manuel said after Myers lasted only 5 2/3 innings, allowing five runs and taking the loss to the Florida Marlins. And you wonder whether the initial mapping of that plan was taking place last night after the game.
While Myers was talking, across the hallway, general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. was sitting in the common area outside of Manuel's office along with the rest of the coaches. At a certain point, as Myers was talking to reporters and recounting his pain experiences in painstaking detail, the big, wooden door to the manager's side of the clubhouse was closed.
Chan Ho Park, recently bounced from the starting rotation, is available and handy. Kyle Kendrick pitched in Buffalo last night for the Triple A Lehigh Valley IronPigs, allowing three runs in six innings and getting the win. He would be lined up to fall into Myers' spot if Myers had to go on the disabled list.
There are options. It is the biggest difference between this Phillies team and many of its predecessors. At the same time, though, you don't want to be playing every card you have before the kids are let out of school for vacation. It is a long summer, after all. And even if there is the belief that starting pitching could become available via trade - Jake Peavy, come on down - it bears repeating: You don't want to be playing all of your cards this early.
That the Phillies did not have to do this last year was astounding, when you think about it. The Mets and Braves each had 11 pitchers start games for them in 2008. The Phillies had only seven: Hamels (33 starts), Jamie Moyer (33), Myers (30), Kendrick (30), Eaton (19), Joe Blanton (13) and J.A. Happ (four). That's it.
Stability such as that cannot be purchased in major league baseball. You cannot buy it with all of the money that 45,000 fans a night can spend at Citizens Bank Park. It can only be gifted upon a team, gifted by good fortune.
And the thing is, among all of the laws of baseball, there is none more cruel than the law of averages. It will catch up with you at some point, because, well, because it always does. That is when a general manager earns his money. This is when an organization, top to bottom, exhibits its true worth.
Sometime today, with the help of a big, expensive machine, the Phillies will find out whether the law of averages has been repealed - or whether they all will have to start refiguring and reconfiguring things in a way that they never had to deal with during their dream season. *
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