FanHouse J.C. Romero

While the Philadelphia Phillies are yet to clinch the NL East title, a seven-game lead over Atlanta with ten left to play should be good enough to get the defending champs back into the playoffs. Barring some kind of epic Brad Lidge explosion in which he figures out how to blow eight games at once, anyway.

Speaking of Lidge, his inability to close out games for the Phillies this season has manager Charlie Manuel mulling over his options in the bullpen for the postseason. Since the format of the playoffs allows teams to use a three or four-man starting rotation that means it's likely one of Philly's starters will be going to the bullpen, and it's looking like that person could be the young lefty J.A. Happ.

If hypocrisy makes you laugh, don't sip a Starbucks coffee while reading the comments about J.C. Romero's run-in with a Tampa Bay fan.

That $4 cup of joe will end up all over the front of your shirt.

Philadelphia fans have been weighing in on last week's incident, where the Phillies' reliever slapped down an autograph seeker who got a little too nasty. Again, please put down the cappuccino before proceeding.

"Way to go, J.C. You fired up the team. The guy should keep his mouth shut."

J.C. Romero can't seem to catch a break. He spends a Manny-esque 50 games banned from baseball for violating the substance abuse policy even though he was following the rules, and nobody really knew what was going on, so they just suspended him anyway. Then he gets accused of physically assaulting a man for making disparaging remarks about said suspension after a Phillies/Rays game on Thursday. The fan, "Robert Eaton," claims that he was tossed around after asking Romero to get him some juice. That's always happening to me, too. My Mom is so mean!

Romero never got the man the juice, and now he's probably going to pay for it by getting suspended again. That's called an assumption, folks, we here at The Internet™ are great at those. One thing we're not good at is accurate reporting, so I will stop here and inform you that the transcript from that night's events has been logged and reported here for posterity. Form your own opinions. Personally, I think J.C. Romero should've gotten the Alabama Jam.

Said transcript is after the jump.

2008 may have been the dream season to end all dream seasons for Brad Lidge, but 2009 is rapidly developing into a nightmare of epic proportions. Lidge blew two more saves, he's got six overall, in Los Angeles over the weekend, which brought his ERA to an unsightly 7.27 for the season.

It will stay put for a while because Lidge was placed on the 15-day disabled list with a sprained right knee on Tuesday.

FanHouse continues its 2009 MLB Preview with a look at the Philadelphia Phillies.

The City of Brotherly Love's long championship drought came to an end when Brad Lidge struck out Eric Hinske in Game 5 of the World Series last October. The city exploded in appreciation of a team that's a blueprint for success in the modern game, with homegrown stars studding the lineup and top of the rotation, and a handful of savvy acquisitions, like Lidge, sprinkled around to fill holes.

Baseball Prospectus reported Thursday that the labs for Erphogram, the pharmacy that produces 6-OXO, the supplement that J.C. Romero claims caused a false positive on the drug tests that got him suspended for 50 games earlier this month, have been raided by the DEA. The BP story is low on details other than noting that the owner of Erphogram is Patrick Arnold, who you likely remember from the BALCO scandal a few years back.

If you're following along at home, that means that Romero is claiming that he took a supplement made by a lab owned by one of the more notorious chemists in the country. That lab has just been raided by the feds, but that the supplement itself just caused a false positive. Not much of a sob story, if you ask me. Still, maybe MLB did yank his chain a bit by banning 6-OXO after he failed his test.

Major League Baseball kills me sometimes. They want to get tough on enhancing your performance through drug use, but then a player does his due diligence only to get clipped because the league changes the list of banned substances without giving players enough notice or grace period. Take the case of J.C. Romero, who has found himself stuck with a 50-game ban ... not for cheating, but for "negligence".

Three months after Romero was tested before a Phillies-Mets game on Aug. 26, the players' association sent a Nov. 21 letter to players that stated, "We have previously told you there is no reason to believe a supplement bought at a U.S. based retail store could cause you to test positive under our Drug Program. That is no longer true. We have recently learned of three substances which can be bought over the counter at stores in the United States that will cause you to test positive. These three supplements were purchased at a GNC and Vitamin Shoppe in the U.S."

So what Major League Baseball is saying is this: "J.C., we told you the rules and you followed the rules. But because we just found these substances now we're going to ban you. Sorry, you should have read our minds even before these new substances were even in our minds." So who are the negligent ones here? The player for doing what he's told? Or the MLB machine for changing the rules in the middle of the game and then handing out retroactive punishment? It's the World Series rain delay all over again.

Arm bash: The 700 Level

In the Playoff Pulse series, our MLB editor takes on a hot October topic.

Things move fast in the Internet Age. That's the nature of a 24-hour news cycle or maybe just the short attention span of Americans. Either way, before you know it we're going to be talking about CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira (And Jake Peavy and Manny Ramirez and maybe even Prince Fielder).

So let's take the chance, while we still can, to pay tribute to the 2008 champions. With a cheesesteak in one hand and a Yuengling in the other, here's to you Philadelphia.

- Here's to the Phillies fans, first and foremost. You're not always the easiest folks to understand. You've booed just about everyone including many of your own players. Even among East Coast baseball fans you can seem like a cynical, sour bunch. But your passion and loyalty is undeniable.

In frigid temperatures and pouring rain on Monday night, Citizens Bank Park was packed to the hilt. In more than 100 years of existence, you've been rewarded for your devotion with a title only twice. It hardly seems like enough.

- Here's to Cole Hamels, who at just 24 has established himself as one of the best pitchers in baseball, and just maybe its greatest changeup artist.

Until his magical October run, Hamels wasn't widely recognized by casual fans for his dominance. He wasn't even an All-Star this year. Hope you enjoyed the relative anonymity while it lasted, Cole.

The sentiment from the Philly area today is that, yes, Manny Ramirez is a stud ... but there is much more to the Dodgers' offense than the dread-locked, polarizing, left-fielder who mashes opposing pitching like no other hitter on Earth when he's locked in. At least that's how the Phillies started off matters:

The Phillies made it clear before their Tuesday workout that Manny alone would not decide the NLCS. The return of shortstop Rafael Furcal, who missed all eight regular-season games between the teams, has added depth to the Dodgers' lineup. Their young hitters, including Russell Martin, Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp, could all cause problems during a seven-game series.

I'm a tad bit surprised they omitted James Loney, but we get the point.

Of course, the rest of the article was devoted to how the Phillies plan on dealing with Manny when he digs in. Let's hear it, catcher Chris Coste:

"I think if you picked out the guy we don't want to have beat us, yeah, he's clearly the guy."

Ok, so that means you want to pitch around him and walk him should there be an available base?

"There's a book on Manny Ramirez, just like there is for anybody else," catcher Chris Coste said. "It's just that he's more likely to hit a mistake than the next guy. If our pitchers can pitch to the game plan, I don't see any reason to walk him.

Every four years, Major League Baseball's postseason intersects with a presidential election. This is one of those years. In the spirit of the season, we here at MLB FanHouse have divided the playoff teams up for a series of debates. Here Pat Lackey and Mullet discuss the NLDS between the Brewers and Phillies.

Mullet: This series may turn out to be the least competitive of all the four first-round matchups out there. There are a lot of reasons the Phillies should take care of the Brewers in three or four games, so I'll start with this one: Brad Lidge is 41-for-41 in save opportunites this season. The Brewers bullpen, meanwhile, has Eric Gagne and Guillermo Mota. You've seen it as much as I have, bullpens win in the playoffs.

Pat Lackey: It makes me vaguely sick to my stomach to point this out, but since mid-July Eric Gagne has a 3.52 ERA and a 1.00 WHIP. He's not the Gagne of old, as his strikeouts are way down (17 in 23 innings over that span), but he's at least done a good job of keeping guys off of the bases for the home runs he inevitably gives up. The Brewers will likely turn to Salomon Torres in a pinch before either of the guys you named and until a couple hiccups down the stretch, he was very good this year.