IS TAKING DOC TO SEE THE DOC
Charlie Manuel sure does love Jim Thome.
I know that's not breaking news, but sometimes Manuel's affection for the power-hitting first baseman is so over the top that it becomes comical.
Such a case arose Sunday afternoon when someone asked the Phillies manager how he planned to divvy up the starts at first base while Ryan Howard recovers from foot surgery.
Manuel's answer: "First of all, we’re going to make sure Thome is ready to play. He hasn’t played in the field for quite a while, but I think he’s going to be able to play once or twice a week. I would like to see him when the season starts get enough at-bats. He’ll get 100 at-bats with pinch-hitting and maybe even more. We play eight games in interleague play on the road. More than likely, he’ll definitely get in on those games. If we can get him about 200 at-bats, I think he'll help us and I think he'll make a change in a manager’s decision at the end of a game. The intangible part of him is he brings a very positive part to our team. He’s going to be positive the way he talks about hitting. He’s going to add life to our thinking. The last two years, you look at his stats, he hit 40 home runs in the last two years. He hit 15 last year and 25 the year before that ... so if you look at his at-bat ratio to his home runs, it shows that he can still hit. If he can help us off the bench, that’s going to be huge for us, but he also is going to add some life to our team."
We never did find out how Manuel plans to divvy up those starts at first base, but he was on a roll and nobody wanted to stop him.
Bob Brookover and Matt Gelb team up for their third straight season covering the Phillies for the Inquirer and philly.com.
This is Brookover’s second stint writing about the Phillies, having joined the coverage team after seven years as an Eagles beat writer. Brookover was hired by The Inquirer in 2000 as the Phillies beat writer after spending 13 years writing about the team for two suburban newspapers. While on the Eagles beat, Brookover, who had covered just two winning Phillies teams in 15 seasons, saw the Phillies move into a cash-cow new ballpark and begin playing a brand of the game he found unrecognizable. Follow him on Twitter here.
Gelb is in his third season covering the Phillies. He was hired by The Inquirer in August 2009 after graduating from Syracuse University. He has also covered baseball at The Star-Ledger and Cape Cod Times. Born and raised in Bucks County, he attended Central Bucks High School West. Follow him on Twitter here.
To submit a question for Matt Gelb's Phillies mailbag, click here.
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