Forever Young

47-year-old Jamie Moyer finally had the outing we had been waiting for. Finally, he skipped the one bad inning that plagued him in his first two starts, and pitched as he did in the rest of the those starts. For six solid innings. If not for a pair of Chase Utley errors in the 5th, Jamie Moyer would have given up zero runs in those six innings. As it stands, it's hard to get on Utley's case for those errors after the stellar defense that backed Roy Halladay on Wednesday. Utley's double play that night was more than enough to buy him some breathing room for a few games. Still, it would have been nice to continue shutting out the Braves. The greatest moment in Moyer's outing had to be when he struck out Jason Heyward looking in the 6th after throwing three straight balls to him to start the at-bat. Never mind that Jamie Moyer made his major league debut more than three years before Heyward was born.

(Photo courtesy of John Bazemore/AP)

The offense decided to show up again, tallying up eight runs through good, small ball playing. All of the runs were scored on either RBI single or sac flies, but I can't really complain when they scored more than three runs for the first time since last Friday's outing against the Marlins. Greg Dobbs also went 2-for-3 filling in for a bruised Placido Polanco at third for the first half of the game, and Juan Castro continued his suddenly hot hitting, going 3-for-5 and raising his average to .353. Ross Gload also had the second pinch hit of anyone coming off the bench for the Phillies this year, driving in a run in the 7th.

The bullpen decided to return to form last night. Chad Durbin and David Herndon both managed to pitch themselves into and out of jams, but that "out of" part matters much more than the "into." Durbin had the bases loaded for Brian McCann in the 7th, but managed to escape with only one run scoring on a sac fly by McCann before he struck out Troy Glaus, who seems to be booed every time he comes to the plate in Atlanta. In between Durbin and Herndon, Danys Baez had a nice 1-2-3 inning, which was reassuring to see after his last outing a week before.

The Phillies continue their road trip in Arizona tonight, facing the Diamondbacks for the weekend. Cole Hamels will take the mound tonight, and hopefully show that his 8+ innings, 2 ER, 9 K performance last Sunday is going to be the norm from now on. If he does, the bats better not forget to show up this time.

 (Photo courtesy of Todd Zolecki/The Zo Zone)

In the final news for the day, J.A. Happ was put on the 15-day DL yesterday after starting to throwing an abbreviated bullpen session and talking it over with the trainer and pitching coach. This is probably for the best, as the Phillies have Nelson Figueroa to cover tomorrow and can get away with a four man rotation after that through the end of this road trip. Happ's DL stint is back-dated to April 16th, so he'll be eligible to come off on May 1st. At this point in the season, and with a potential lingering injury like the one that Happ has, it's a good idea to err on the side of caution here. Plus, Joe Blanton is getting closer to making his return, so the Phillies have a little leeway in giving Happ extra time off. Still, another injury is another injury. Hopefully this will be the last of them for a while.

2010 Jimmy Rollins, We Hardly Knew Ye

The Phillies had a glorious 5th inning today to come from behind an earlier 4-0 deficit to the Washington Nationals and ended up winning today's game, 7-4. Sadly, the 6-1 (best since 1993) start the Phillies have now pulled off was overshadowed by injury news. After being introduced in the line-up to raucous applause, Jimmy Rollins failed to take the field, and Juan Castro turned up like an unwanted relative. It was like your cool uncle failed to show up to a family reunion and sent your weird, estranged uncle in his place. At least this estranged uncle got himself an RBI double, though he also committed an error that led to runners on the corners and Chad Durbin having to come in and resolve the situation.

Rollins being out and heading for the MRI machine tomorrow would have bad enough in and of itself, but then Jayson Werth had to go give himself a sore left hip beating out a grounder in the 4th. Luckily, he seems to be alright, and is day to day. Rollins, on the other hand, reportedly has a type 2 calf strain which usually requires time on the DL. As others have pointed out, Shane Victorino had a similar injury in April 2008, stayed out the rest of the month, then came back in early May and did quite well for the rest of the season. Judging by how the Phillies have played so far, if that were the case, I think we could be in far worst shape. In the meantime, all eyes will be on the MRI results tomorrow. It'll also be interesting to see just what Shane Victorino can do in the leadoff spot in the coming games.

(Photo courtesy of Drew Hallowell/Getty Images)

The other main story of the day was the second start of Cole Hamels. Once again he worked hard, and he managed to get through .2 more innings this time but did so by giving up 2 more runs than last Wednesday. Still he struck out 6, putting his K rate at slightly above 9 per 9 innings. He just needs to start settling in and not let things unravel in an inning, as they did for him today in the 4th. He needs a few lessons from Roy Halladay in pitching efficiency and getting out of jams. Lucky for Hamels, he got the win with a stellar offensive rally and the work of what is starting to look like a rock solid bullpen.

(Photo courtesy of Drew Hallowell/Getty Images)

So there we stand for now, atop all of baseball after a week, according to our record and the ESPN Power Rankings. For now, I'll sure miss the J-Roll of 2010 who worked 7 walks and hit .391/.516/.739 in that first week. Until his injury today, he even had me starting to believe that those numbers weren't a fluke, and while he clearly wouldn't continue at that unbelievable pace, he was showing signs of being close to his 2007 MVP form. For now, because I don't have any reason to be otherwise, I'll be optimistic that Rollins will bounce back from this injury after the appropriate rest and continue to be the catalyst at the top of our line-up that he can be and had been for the first week of the season. I know I can speak for Phillies fans everywhere when I say: get well soon, Jimmy.

(Photo courtesy of Drew Hallowell/Getty Images)