June 26 -- ON BASTARDO, MENTAL MISTAKES & MORE

BY SCOTT LAUBER

TAMPA, Fla. -- Greetings from Terminal E at Tampa International. It's 5 a.m., and I'm about 45 minutes from boarding a flight to Chicago, where I'll have a short layover before my flight to Toronto. So, yeah, I'm loading up with a mocha from Starbucks and hoping it'll help me stay awake through the end of tonight's game at Rogers Centre.

Anyway, wanted to touch on a few things that transpired last night at the Trop:

1. Already reeling after Brett Myers' likely season-ending hip surgery, the Phillies' rotation received another potential blow when Antonio Bastardo left in the fourth inning with "tightness" (his word, not mine) in his left shoulder. Bastardo will be re-evaluated today in Toronto by athletic trainer Scott Sheridan, but last night, he sounded very much like a pitcher who doesn't think he'll make his next start. "I felt it before, but not as much as I did tonight," Bastardo said through a translator Raul Ibanez. "Sometimes you feel something, but not like I did tonight. I felt it much more." Obviously, as soon as we know anything more about Bastardo's situation, we'll pass it along.

2. So, what will the Phillies do if Bastardo can't make his next start? Well, thanks to a day off Monday, they won't absolutely need a No. 5 starter until July 4 against the Mets at the Bank. Ruben Amaro Jr. already has been racking up his cell phone bill in the quest to obtain more pitching, and he'll undoubtedly keep dialing his fellow GMs. But, assuming Amaro can't come up with someone by the Fourth of July, the Phillies' internal options would seem to consist of four pitchers at triple-A with major-league experience (Kyle Kendrick, Drew Carpenter, Rodrigo Lopez, Gustavo Chacin) and, perhaps, Kyle Drabek at Reading. It's not the Phillies' style to rush a top prospect, especially one who hasn't yet been to triple-A, but you have to wonder whether, if Bastardo is out for a while, they may consider throwing Drabek into the mix.

3. All of a sudden, the rotation is only one of the Phillies' problems. They've lost 10 of 12 games, dropped four consecutive series, and had their NL East lead over the Mets shaved from four games on June 14 to only a half-game this morning. Through it all, they've played sloppy and made the sort of brain-cramping mental mistakes they've generally been immune to throughout the past few seasons. Last night, for instance, Pedro Feliz seemingly forgot there was only one out and got doubled off first base on Eric Bruntlett's routine fly ball. At the same time, Matt Stairs didn't exactly sprint to the plate after tagging up at third base and was unable to score before Feliz was thrown out. "It was an error," Feliz said last night. "Mental mistake."

4. It wouldn't shock me if Charlie Manuel calls a team meeting before tonight's game. Asked last night if he thought he needed to address some of the crippling mental breakdowns the Phillies have suffered lately, Manuel sounded like Mount Vesuvius on the verge of an eruption. "If I'm going to go in and address that, there's a lot of other crap I have to address," he said. "I don't know where I go from there. It's building up. The dam bursts and you get it all [out]. ... We play like that right there, there’s a good chance we're going to lose some more. I don't think anybody in there will tell you that was a very good play. We've made some mental mistakes, mistakes that you're not supposed to make."

5. Ben Zobrist is a pretty good hitter, and his wife, Julianna, can sing. She performed the national anthem before last night's game, and it was a stirring rendition. We're told Julianna (left, AP photo) is a Christian rock singer, and in January, she released her debut CD.

6. Within today's Phillies notebook, there's more on Jimmy Rollins' benching and what Manuel hopes to achieve by giving the slumping shortstop a few days off. Also, Scott Eyre has a rehab schedule, there has been a minor change to the order of the Phillies' starting rotation, and one-time prospect and all-around good guy Scott Mathieson tossed two scoreless innings yesterday in a Gulf Coast League game, his first game action since undergoing his second "Tommy John" elbow ligament replacement surgery in May of 2008.

OK, almost time to board. Talk to y'all from Toronto.

(Updated, 1:03 p.m.): So, I've arrived in Toronto, one of my favorite cities in North America (more on that later), but I just read a comment from this morning and wanted to add to our information about Bastardo. As the anonymous commenter mentioned, Bastardo did, in fact, have shoulder problems last season. He was on the disabled list at Reading for nearly two months with left shoulder inflammation, and the injury cropped up right around this time (June 15). Once again, I hope to have more on Bastardo in a few hours after the clubhouse opens at Rogers Centre.