Trade Deadline

It would figure that 3 contenders in the NL East all made moves. One team got Mark Texeira (a BIG time player), one team got Luis Castillo (a nice consistent secondbasemen) and one team got Kyle Lohse.

Yep, while the Braves and Mets, well, especially the Braves, made huge upgrades to their team, the Phillies got Kyle Lohse.

To their credit, they did get Iguchi, who may turn out to be a better option than Luis Castillo.

And some baseball people said they should get some credit for being the only team to get starting pitching. To me, that's like saying to a someone at the buffet table, looks like we all got omelets, hashbrowns and pancakes...but hey...good job for getting a piece of toast.

Of course I don't think their playoff chances are, the, um, aforementioned..."toast" ....yet.

Also, they gave up still another minor leaguer to get Mateo from the Mariners (another Gillick special). There's a reason we don't have a very good farm system.

I saw Ryan Franklin's having a pretty good year for the Cardinals...as a reliever. I guess he finally came around to that idea.

Oh well, should be for another interesting end of summer for the Phillies. Like Joe has said, the baseball season usually winds down (in his case, the Cubs) in time for football season (Notre Dame). With the past few years being the exception, we've followed the same patterns...Phillies falling out of contention in August, Eagles starting pre-season games, and by September, Eagles-Redskins on Fox beats out Phillies-Nationals on CW in terms of must-see Sunday afternoon sports.

Maybe this year will be different .... history says otherwise....