Phillies Notes: Pedro Impresses, Moyer, and Cubs Fan

Pedro Martinez made his debut with the Phillies on Wednesday night against the Chicago Cubs, and it was impressive.

In his first Major League game since last September, Martinez allowed three runs on seven hits in five innings against the Cubs.

Pedro
also struck out five batters, and didn’t walk a single batter until his
final inning of work. The right-hander finished the game with 99
pitches.

This game had a lot of buzz around Philly prior to the
game, and it created lot of excitement around the team–almost as much
as Cliff Lee’s debut with the team against the Giants.

As
a fan of Pedro when he was with the Boston Red Sox, I was very excited
when the Phils signed him. I knew that he wasn’t close to the same
pitcher, but it’s still Pedro Martinez.

I read the recap on ESPN
tonight, and in their “Why Pedro Martinez Won” table, they had an
interesting statistic that I just absolutely love to see. Pedro threw
29 of 43 off-speed pitches for strikes, that’s an astonishing 67
percent. Also in the table, it showed that the Cubs chased 42 percent
of those.

The big question now is what will Martinez do in his
second start, and his third start. If he pitches like he did against
the Cubs, and can go six innings, the Phillies will get a pitcher who
can help this team more than Jamie Moyer–and, his league-worse 5.47 ERA.

Speaking
of Moyer, he said that he felt “misled” and “disheartened” about being
moved to the ‘pen. As much as I appreciate everything you have done for
the Phillies, Moyer, you don’t have anything left in the tank.

I
always thought you were a team player, but this shows that you’re not.
What makes you so good that you’re guaranteed a starting job no matter
how bad you are? No one is guaranteed anything, deal with it, you’re
done, you’re in the bullpen–for now, and be a good team player.

Haven’t
you made enough money as it is? Is it about the money? Is that the
reason you’re upset? Is it? You’re 46-years-old, you don’t need any
more money as it is. You want to pitch so take your role as it is.

I’m sorry, Jamie, but shut up and do your job or walk away if you don’t like it.

In the fifth inning of the Cubs game, a fan threw a beer at Shane Victorino
on a sac-fly that plated the third run of the game for Chicago. The fan
was ejected eventually, of course, the first fan that was thrown out
wasn’t the right one, but that was fixed.

But where is the
“classless” discussions about Chicago? If this happened in
Philadelphia, I’d have to hear about it for the next 20 years. This is
pathetic, and on ESPN nonetheless. Please, ESPN, spend more than a few
seconds on it, crucify the Cubs fans for having no class.

Is it only fair you do it to Philly, and not Chicago, or New York, or Los Angeles, or any other city?