Around the League: April 1-9 - philliesfan136's Dynasty

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Around the League: April 1-9

Posted on July 2, 2011 at 02:44 PM.

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The first week or so of the season saw the Phillies boost the back of their bullpen, which some fans think is partly because of the meltdown by Ryan Madson in the first game of the three-game series against the Braves in which they took the final two. Madson gave up three runs on three hits with in the bottom of the 9th and took the loss as the Braves came back and won on a walk-off homerun by Jason Heyward. It might be too early in the season to expect that to happen again, but it's never too early to make your team better.

Here's a look at what's happened around the league over the first week or so of the season:

The Phillies acquired P Andrew Bailey from the A's for three prospects. Bailey will immediately be the closer, and Ryan Madson will go back to setting up. It's a bit of a homecoming for Bailey, who is a native of Voorhees Township, New Jersey and first played baseball at Paul VI High School in Haddonfield, also in New Jersey.
The 26-year old has a 2.08 ERA with 5 K through 4 1/3 IP this season. He has a career ERA (including this season) of 1.71 and has collected 138 career strikeouts, 91 coming in his rookie year of 2009.
"The fact that we were able to get Andrew (Bailey) will greatly improve our bullpen," Phils' GM Nick Puleo said during an afternoon press confrence on the Phillies off day. "We knew he had good stuff, and we trust he'll be able to handle the 9th inning situation consistently," "We needed a guy who we are confident will be able to shut down teams 1-2-3 in the 9th inning, and Andrew was one of the guys we were looking at," he continued.

The Phillies traded P Brad Lidge to the Indians for P Vinnie Pestano.
It's rumored Lidge was dealt because of being injury-prone and the fact that he isn't always consistent.
Pestano is a young reliever probably made for middle relief who spent some time with the Indians late last year.He had a 3.60 ERA, struck out 8, walked 5,and allowed 2 runs through 5 games with Cleveland this season. The 26-year-old righty was sent to AAA Lehigh Valley.
GM Nick Puleo offered some words on the trade during the press confrence: "We like what we've seen from him (Pestano)over the past year or so." "We offered Brad (Lidge) a chance to close somewhere else now that we have Andrew (Bailey) here. Cleveland called us and I think we got a good young pitcher in return."
When asked where he expects Pestano to pitch this season: "I think Vin could be up here with the big league club soon. We'll see how he does with Lehigh Valley." When asked what role Pestano will likely serve if called up: "I think if he comes up, we're going to put him in low-pressure situations first, like in the middle innnings. If he can handle those, you might see him in the late innings getting save chances."
When asked if this is a step towards getting younger: "I'd say so. From the bullpen standpoint, you've got Antonio (Bastardo) and (Mike) Stutes, and then Vinnie, those are some guys who could have a future at the back end of our bullpen."

From these words, we can gain that the Phils' management thinks fairly high of the California native. He could see some innings as a middle reliever due to the Phils' abundance of veterans on the bubble in the bullpen, but we'll have to see how he does at AAA first.

The team also picked up soon-to-be 35-year-old righty Kelvim Escobar to make up for the loss of a few lower-level pitching prospects going to the A's in the Andrew Bailey deal. Escobar will report to AA Reading and could be a starter for the team. The 12-year veteran last pitched in '09 with the Angels, only playing 1 game. His last full season of work was in '07,also with the Angels, when he went 18-7 with a 3.40 ERA, 160 K, and threw 3 complete games in 30 starts.He has had shoulder problems over the past few years, so don't expect him to climb back to the majors.

In other news, Billy Wagner officialy filed his retirement papers and was released by the Braves. The 38-year-old closer finishes his illustrious career with a 47-40 record, 2.31 ERA, and 422 saves.

That's all for this edition of "Around the League", and our next edition will be for April 10th to the 16th.

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