cause for alarm?

the phillies are 7-13 in spring training. is this reason for concern? maybe, the phillies have said that they want to start the season strong. the last number of years the phillies have played like crap in april. this has been typically blamed for the phillies not making wildcard for at least the past two years. while spring training doesn't really count for much, i think it might give a little indication of what we have to expect in the early season. 7-13. doesn't look so pretty and i sincerly hope that the phils don't go 7-13 in their first 20 games of the season. to be fair, a lot of the starters didn't neccesarily play as much this spring as they will in april. but neither did the starters on the other teams. hopefully the phillies can start the season like they started the second half of last year, they had the best record in baseball for the second half of last season. they played so poorly in the first half, that even the best record for the second half couldn't get them in for the wildcard. our starting pitching is certainly improved. our catching situation i think is better. barajas should be better than lieberthal was last year, it's a shame though, that they didn't at least try to go with coste. our outfield is more or less the same. our infield however i think is going to be better this year than last year. now to the bullpen. right now how it looks, we have gordon, madson, geary, alfonseca, castro, brito, condrey, and smith. compare that to last year at this time and i think it is better. we have madson back in the pen full time without a shitty curveball. the phils aren't going to use flash as often so his arm won't fall off in late august. geary is the same, solid middle reliever/possibly setup man. alfonseca is a huge question mark, but the phils aren't paying him much so not a huge gamble. castro was way under the radar last year, he had an era under three. i understand that he wasn't put into any high pressure situations, but he still faced major league batters. brito may or may not make the cut, he might be replaced by bisenius or segovia either way, that spot isn't that bad. we know what to expect from condrey he was in the pen last year. and lastly we have matt smith. if his performance last year is any indication of what he can do, he is a much better lefty specialist than rheal. so i think that despite what bald prick says the phils bp is not that bad off. i did however just read and something saying that robinson tejeda is throwing in the upper 90s like 97. possible we wanted to hang onto him i think. but he did come out of the farm system i believe. all in all, i'm not sure if the 7-13 record is an issue or not. it is spring training, but i can't help but be concerned that a team that hasn't performed well in april for quite some time isn't going to again this year. which means catchup ball until the all-star break. again. well i'll never stop believing that this is the year.

beer o' meter = 0