After four spring starts in which he had a 9.20 ERA, Kyle Kendrick (BlueClaws 04-06) has been sent down to minor league camp, where he’ll finish out the spring before opening the season with AAA-Lehigh Valley. He said the right things when speaking to reporters afterwards.

“At first, I’m not going to lie, it was surprising,” he said. ”But at the same time, those guys have been pitching good and they had to make a move, so like I said, I’m going to go work on what I ened to work on, get better and I’ll be back.

“I didn’t show my offspeed stuff early enough and it was a little erratic at times. It just needs to get better and I know I need to get better.. .I’m going to go down there with a clear mind and get better, and I’ll be back.”

One problem for Kendrick…now that we are deeper into Spring Training, the starters are going deeper into games. There just aren’t enough innings to go around and have everyone still get a significant amount of work in.

Still in the mix for the Phillies fifth-starter’s job: JA Happ (05), Chan Ho Park, and Carlos Carrasco (06). It’s a minor upset that Kendrick goes down before Carrasco, but the organization’s top pitching prospect is expected to join Kendrick with the IronPigs.

Because of off days on April 6th, 9th and 14th, the Phillies do not need a fifth-starter until April 19th. So while Cole Hamels is unlikely to be ready on Opening Day, if he is ready by April 19th, the Phillies will only need one of Park, Happ or Carrasco.

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Another strong outing today for JA Happ, who allowed just one run over five innings of work.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 3:39 pm and is filed under Past BlueClaws, Phillies, Spring Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.