How Should the Phillies Manage Kyle Kendrick’s Persecution Complex?

Phillies pitcher Kyle Kendrick seems to think he hasn’t been given a fair shake as a starter.

Kendrick, after getting shelled for six earned runs in 3.1 innings against the Atlanta Braves earlier this week, was asked by Phillies’ beat reporters about the prospect of being demoted to the bullpen after his latest disappointing start.

“I guess that’s how it is with me,'” Kendrick said after the Phillies were pounded 12-6 by the Braves, as reported by David Murphy of the Philadelphia Daily News. “It’s, ‘What have you done for me lately?'”

Kendrick was obviously frustrated, but this is a stunningly irrational comment for a pitcher who is now 2-8 with a 5.01 ERA in 15 starts, and has given up 12 homers and a .293 batting average against in those games.

What’s alarming is that this wasn’t the first time Kendrick gave an inflated self-assessment of a dismal performance. “I felt like I pitched a lot better than my numbers show,” Kendrick said after giving up five earned runs in 6.1 innings in a 6-2 loss to Toronto in June, as reported by The Inquirer’s Matt Gelb.

Sorry Kyle, but you are delusional. Your maddening tendency to nibble, and your fear of throwing strikes makes watching your starts as enjoyable as getting a root canal. You needed 50 pitches to get through the second inning against the Braves and gave up a two-run double to Braves pitcher Tim Hudson, and you’re grumbling about being under-appreciated?

Even Phillies manager Charlie Manuel is getting tired of Kendrick’s act. “Yeah, he’s had that kind of game before,” Manuel said after the game, as reported by John Finger of CSNPhilly.com.

With Kendrick slated to make $4 million in 2013, the odds of the Phillies cutting him loose are remote. The good news is that Kendrick’s numbers out of the bullpen are far better, so perhaps the Phillies will be able to extract some value from him next year.

Still, Kendrick’s comments sound ungrateful and raise the ugly specter of a bad attitude. And that’s exactly what the Phillies don’t need as they play out the string this season and hopefully set themselves up for a better performance in 2013.

Kendrick’s future looked much brighter back in 2008 when Phillies team members pulled one of the most memorable pranks in team history on the then-promising young pitcher, duping him into believing he’d been traded to the Japanese league.

The Phillies have shown great patience with Kendrick over the years, in spite of his inconsistent performance. But the boos with which Philadelphia fans serenaded Kendrick as he walked off the mound in his last start are only going to get louder if he is permitted to stay in the rotation. They will get even more intense if he continues with the snarky comments.

Will Kendrick be able to handle the heat? That remains to be seen, but if his thin-skinned demeanor continues, the Phillies might end up trading him to Japan for real this time.

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Chase Utley Is Going to Get Booed by Phillies Fans, but That’s OK

Not since Pete Rose was diving headlong into third and spiking third outs into the Veteran’s Stadium astroturf has Philadelphia loved a baseball player more than Chase Utley. For a guy from southern California, Utley espouses the gritty East Coast sports fan ethos exceptionally well.

That said, it is very likely that Utley is going to hear some boos from the crowd at Citizens Bank Park if he doesn’t start hitting. These won’t be the throaty, malicious boos of the sort reserved in Philadelphia for the likes of Kobe Bryant and Michael Irvin, but they will be audible.

In fact, Utley was booed last month during his rehab assignment, in a game between the single-A Clearwater Phillies and Tampa Yankees after going 0-5 with three strikeouts, according to a report from Bob Brookover of Philly.com.

At the start of play Friday, Utley was hitting .222 with two home runs and 10 singles. His OBP is .283, a surprisingly paltry number even in this lineup of free swingers.

Utley is still working his way back to the speed of the majors, and most rational fans understand this. At the same time, he is making $15 million this year—and 30 more over the next two years of his contract—and at some point, the collective patience of the Phillies fanbase is going to wear thin.

It always does.

But it’s not just about what Utley is doing at the plate. Fans are peeved about the way Utley communicated the seriousness of his right knee injury to the Phillies’ front office.

Anecdotally, this sentiment is easily found on online fan forums and reader comments on Phillies news articles. The thinking is, if Utley had acknowledged that the knee was going to be a problem earlier, the Phillies could have found a more offensively capable replacement than rookie Freddy Galvis.

So, unless Utley rediscovers his hitting stroke, it seems likely that 30,000 or so amateur sports physicians are going to let Utley hear their discontent.

In this miserable Phillies season, in which many games have devolved into hacking contests with Phillies players competing to see who can swing at balls furthest out of the strike zone, Utley’s patient approach is something this Phillies team has missed badly.

The good news is that Utley is unflappable and isn’t going to let the boos get to him. Remember what he told the booing fans at the 2008 All Star game at Yankee Stadium? If anything, he will probably use any booing he hears from Philly to focus his comeback.

“I know there are some people who have given up on me,” Utley said last month just prior to his return, as reported by The Inquirer’s Matt Gelb. “There are some people who have given up on this team. I’ll be the first one to tell you that I definitely have not given up on myself and our guys have not given up on this year.”

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