While we had a nice little storm up here in Ocean County last night into this morning, but there was baseball in Florida. The Phillies fifth-starter battle continued with the second appearances of the spring for JA Happ (BlueClaws 2005) and Carlos Carrasco (2006).

Happ started and allowed a two-run home run in the first inning to Aaron Lind of Toronto but put zeros up in the second and third, retiring seven of the last eight he faced.

Carrasco got a little unlucky, as Eric Bruntlett dropped a fly ball in the fifth, but he gave up five runs (three earned) over his three innings, including two home runs.

We still think Happ is the favorite.

Pitching coach Rich Dubee on competition:

“It hasn’t even gotten out of the gate,” he said. ”I really don’t look at first, maybe even second outings. Repeating a delivery takes time, and a lot of these guys are in brand new shoes, so they’ve got to break those in. But I like what I’ve seen. But they need more reps. They need to go through a lineup two or three times.”

• Jeremy Slayden (2006) went 2-5 with a sixth inning home run and is 6-12 on the spring.
• Ryan Howard (2002) also homered in the sixth as part of a Phillies comeback win.
• Jason Donald (2007) went 1-4. He’s played in every game and has five walks in the six games.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 2nd, 2009 at 6:52 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.