What's Up With The Phillies?

After the Mets lost last night to Dontrelle Willis and transplanted ex-Met Mike Jacobs, and the series to the Florida Dolphins, it became time to turn our attention to the team that still resides in second place in the NL East - The Phillies. We can worry about Florida next season, and especially in 2008, but hopefully they'll have moved to Vegas by then and they can become the Cardinals problem.

So, what's up with the Phillies, who roll into Shea tonight?

First of all, of course there's Chase Utley, who has a 35 game hitting streak going, bringing him to within 21 games of Joe D. I have to admit that it would be pretty sweet for two sk'ankee marks to be surpassed in the same year (Barroid passed Ruth on the all time HR list this year), but unless Utley gets into the mid-40's it's still way too early to think about it. Also hot at the plate is notorious Met-killer Pat Burrell, batting .316 with three home runs and 16 RBIs in his past 17 games.

The Phils seemed to have thrown in the towel when they salary dumped Lidle and Abreau to the Junkees last month, but after sweeping the Cardinals the team is just 2.5 games back of the Reds for the Wild Card lead. Which provides the Mets an opportunity to do what they did to the Braves last weekend - hammer them into oblivion. El Duque leads the charge tonight for the Mets, facing off against Randy Wolf. Wolf is making just his second start this year after coming back from Tommy John surgery.

Tom Glavine faces off against Jon Lieber tomorrow afternoon on FOX, and John Maine faces rookie Scott Mathieson Sunday night on ESPN's game of the week. The Mets taunted me about being a transplant by e-mailing me this week. Since Sunday's start time changed to 8:00 pm, the team has decided that the first 1,000 "Flushing Flash" subscribers to Show Up at Shea Sunday night will be admitted into the picnic area for free. I've never had the pleasure of sitting out there... If you want to take advantage of these kinds of offers go to Mets.com and sign up for the newsletter.

Lets Go Mets!