Paging Mr. Hamels

It's official. King Cole Hamels is getting called up -- he'll be taking Ryan Madson's place in the rotation, apparently, and starts this Friday against Cincinnati. (Which means if he takes that slot in the rotation, he'll get a start against the Nats while I'm in Philly! Woohoo!)

I neglected to mention that on my birthday, Hamels pitched his third AAA start, going 7 innings, giving up one run on five hits, striking out 10 and walking none. That puts his 3 starts at AAA with this line:

23 IP, 10 H, 1 R/ER, 0 HR, 1 BB, 36 K, 0.47 WHIP, 0.39 ERA -- and the craziest part is that his FIP is even lower, at 0.20.

In addition to all that, he's a pretty good candidate to oust Zach Duke from the 2006 All-Cute List as NL lefty starter, if he continues to dominate in MLB.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm also damn happy with the Phillies in general these last few weeks. The winning streak is at 9 and counting.

The guys are HITTING. Utley, J-Roll, and Rowand all have 1.000+ OPS for the last week, Ryan Howard was at .977, David Bell and Pat Burrell are holding their own, and even though Bobby Abreu only logged 2 hits in the last week, he still walked 7 times to keep his OBP at .333. The team is tied for 8th in the majors for home runs with 42 so far this year. (The Mariners, by contrast, are tied for 28th with 22.)

The guys are also PITCHING. Ryan Madson finally had a good start against San Francisco, Brett Myers went up against Pedro Martinez last night and won... in 14 appearances this year, Rheal Cormier has yet to give up a run, which is amazing. Tom Gordon has been phenomenal and is notching up saves left and right, and as Mike Berquist points out at A Citizen's Blog, Jon Lieber has been a lot better than the numbers would have you believe.

Yeah, it was embarrassing starting out the year 1-6, but this is pretty awesome. I'm really glad I decided to go for the Memorial Day Phillies pilgrimage this year rather than waiting for Labor Day.

Though I wish I could have been there for Baseball 101 or to see Billy Wagner get booed. Though I still kinda like Billy, so I wouldn't participate, of course.