Lesser lights shine brightly as Phillies beat Mets

NEW YORK - There are stars and they earned their rank. No matter what the promotional spots would lead us to believe, though, they are human and imperfect. The best hitters can be shut down. The best pitchers can be knocked around.

That's where the other guys come in. The guys who fill out the roster and find themselves in a curious position. Since they aren't headliners, the paying customers expect little from them. Paradoxically, when they have bad games, the same fans exhibit far less patience. The immediate call is for them to be released. Or traded. Or sent to the minors.

The Phillies beat the Mets, 8-5, yesterday at Citi Field. Kyle Kendrick pitched seven strong innings. Michael Martinez homered and had four RBI. Which is just how everybody expected the afternoon to go.

Well, everybody except those who couldn't figure out for the life of them why Kendrick was starting instead of Roy Halladay or Cliff Lee, two aces who were each 5 days removed from their truncated All-Star Game appearances.

Except those who openly wondered why the Phillies even kept Martinez, a Rule 5 draft pick, on the roster.

Kendrick's earned run average is now 3.34. That's not as good as Halladay or Lee or Cole Hamels, who was hit hard by the same Mets team just a day earlier. But it ain't bad compared to the entire baseball landscape.

He doesn't have a booming fastball. He didn't strike out a single batter yesterday and has just 27 in 67 innings this season. He tends to put a lot of runners on base; he had just a pair of 1-2-3 innings. In the end, though, he's been a godsend stepping into the fifth spot in the rotation left vacant by Joe Blanton's sore elbow.

"That's a good ERA. That ranks him right up there. What can I say? That's pitching pretty good," said manager Charlie Manuel. "I think that he probably doesn't get the credit he deserves. But he's always going to pitch to contact. That's his bread and butter. He's got three pitches. But at the same time he's got one big pitch, and that's his sinker."

Kendrick smiled when asked if he thinks he's better than the general perception.

"That's not for me to say. It really doesn't matter if you're pitching good and keeping your team in it and you're winning games. But if I can pitch like that every time, I'll take it," he said.

There have been times this season when roster moves were required and the easy move would have been to put Martinez on waivers. This is a team trying to win the World Series, after all, and if it meant not being able to hold onto a guy who rarely played, big whoop. Right?

The Phillies resisted. They liked his energy. They liked his flexibility, the fact he can play all over the field. They liked his arm. They liked his upside, even though he's 28 and had never played an inning in the big leagues before this season.

Know what, though? Pressed into service because of the absence of Placido Polanco, he's been more than competent. In his last eight games he's hitting a respectable .276. His homer yesterday was the first of his career. The career-high four runs driven in gave him nine in that span.

"It was just a matter of getting an opportunity and I'm getting that now. So it doesn't matter how old I am. I knew I had to continue to play hard and hope somebody would give me a shot," he said, with third-base coach Juan Samuel handling the translation.

Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley and Ryan Howard and Raul Ibanez can't carry the load every day. Halladay or Lee or Hamels can't pitch every game. It's a moldy cliché but, in order to win, teams really do need contributions from up and down the roster.

"If you look up on the board, if you're a stat guy, and you go down and you see our batting averages, you see .240, .240, .240, .230, .220, things like that," Manuel observed. "So we better have somebody stepping up because that's what it's going to take. When you're hitting low like that, it's definitely not consistent."

The manager paused for effect, then added slyly, "If we've got anybody who wants to hit .300, they can. I'm definitely not stopping them. Believe me, I'm pulling for every one of them."

You just never know. The Phillies came out of the break to win two of three against the Mets. The winning pitchers were Vance Worley and Kendrick. The lone loss came in the game started by Hamels, who had been their hottest starter.

The bullpen has been a strength. Yesterday, it was dreadful. With the Phillies leading 8-1 going into the bottom of the eighth, lefthander Juan Perez came in to pitch. He walked three straight batters and was gone. Ryan Madson was next. He got a doubleplay grounder and then the next four hitters reached base. Antonio Bastardo finally had to be summoned to get the last four outs. He did but not before giving up a double and a triple in the ninth, ending his streak of scoreless appearances at 18.

Next, the team with the best record in baseball moves on to Wrigley Field to play the Cubs, the team with the second-worst record. Halladay and Lee will start the first two games. Which means . . .

Not much. As we all should have learned by now.