Opening Day and Phillies lineup without Chase Utley

   Opening day is fast approaching, as the teams buses have left their spring training facilities and are heading to their home parks to get ready for the season opener. As a player, you have high hopes for what you can achieve both as a team and as an individual. This is the time of year where players sit back and try to imagine where there careers are headed, and what they can do to establish themselves as one of the games best. No matter your age or standing in the league, your main focus right now is to either stay healthy or if you're already injured, get healthy.

The Red Sox and Philadelphia Phillies debate as to whom is the best team in baseball took a turn in the Red Sox favor as this week we have learned that Chase Utley's knee is not looking very promising. At this point the report is that he and the team are doing everything they can in order to avoid surgery. If his injury does not start to look better and the discomfort does not go away, the Phils may be without their All-Star second basemen for quite a while. This would put trmendous pressure on Ryan Howard to carry the load that will be left by some combination of Wilson Valdez and newly acquired Luis Castillo. Neither guy can really offer much from an offensive standpoint, especially Castillo who was let go by the Mets while they still owe him $9MM for the 2011 season. I am very interested in seeing what lineup they will go with, but I will provide my own opinion on what I would do:
1. SS Rollins - S
2. LF Ibanez - L
3. 3B Polanco - R
4. 1B Howard - L
5. CF Victorino - S
6. RF Francisco - R
7. C Ruiz -R
8. 2B (Valdez/Castillo) - S
9. Pitcher

This lineup gives the top 3 guys with the higher OBP a chance to get on base in front of Howard. It also avoids the late-inning matchup problems that they had with lefties Utley, Howard, Ibanez all bunched up. At this point Jimmy Rollins hasn't shown power for a couple of years, so use what speed he has left in his legs and hope for a bounce back season. If you think it should look different, comment and let me know what you think, and why!

What could have been...

I saw an article online that Buster Olney of ESPN had provided about a once bright shining star in the Toronto Blue Jays system named Dustin McGowan. Most of you probably aren't familiar with the name, but if you were a Toronto fan about 5 years ago, I can guarantee that you would recognize it.

The story can be found here: http://www.torontosun.com/sports/baseball/2011/03/13/17599806.html

As far as pitching prospects go, McGowan was it. He is tall, athletic and very competitive. Oh and I almost forgot, he had some of the best stuff I have seen in a long long while. His fastball was in the mid to upper 90's with good movement and improving location. He had a changeup that fell off the table and had a significant gap of MPH between his fastball. But his best pitch was his curve, which ranks in the 75 range on the 20-80 scale and that may be generous. It played better than most because of the velocity and arm angle. I suggest you go and look up some video of him pitching to get an idea of just how talented this kid was. I can remember the day that McGowan, AJ Burnett and Roy Halladay were on the same staff and a lot of teams must have been wondering how they had a chance to win when they were facing the 3 guys with arguably the best arms in the AL East.

It's guys like McGowan that you see come more often than the Pedro Martinez's of the world that deft all logic. Even McGowan had a big frame and the body type that you would project as staying relatively healthy. Some people are just not meant to be, and it's a shame because I would have loved to see him healthy and flashing his plus stuff every 5 days.