2011 Topps Heritage Minor League #89 Jarred Cosart

Astros 8, Phillies 3
Spring Training Game 1 - Saturday Afternoon, February 23rd in Clearwater
Record - 0-1

One Sentence Summary:  Sweet glory hallelujah, baseball is back!

What It Means:  See the One Sentence Summary above.  Also, it was the first game for the new American League Houston Astros.

What Went Wrong:  The gloves (four errors) and the bullpen looked a little rusty.  On a positive note, Cole Hamels pitched two scoreless innings, Chase Utley played his first Spring Training game since 2010 and collected an RBI-single and Ben Revere looked good on the base paths.  Pete Orr hit the team's first home run of the spring with a solo shot in the eighth.

Featured Card:  Former Phillies prospects Jarred Cosart and Josh Zeid (traded away in the Hunter Pence deal) and Jonathan Villar (part of the Roy Oswalt deal) appeared in the game for the Astros.  Cosart pitched two perfect innings and there's a good chance he'll head to Houston to start the season.  He received a handful of Phillies cards in various 2010 and 2011 Topps and Bowman minor league sets.

Camp Head Count:  61 minus 3 = 58.

A few weeks ago, I put together a post listing the 20 non-roster invitees scheduled to be in camp this spring with the Phillies.  Two of those 20 players are already gone.

Right-handed reliever Juan Cruz was the first to go, and he never even made it to camp.  Following the signing of Chad Durbin, Cruz had second thoughts about his chances to make the team's 25-man roster and he opted out of his contract.  (Some reports indicated that he had never finalized his contract.)

2013 Chachi
Transactions #17

Yesterday, infielder Andres Blanco was released.  Seems odd to invite a guy to spring training in December and then release him before the first game of the spring, but such was Blanco's fate.

This afternoon, the team parted ways with reliever Michael Schwimer.  Schwimer was traded to the Blue Jays for first base prospect Art Charles.  The righty reliever twice earned the ire of Phillies brass last season.  The first time came when he tweeted a few transactions early in the season that had yet to be made public.  The second time came when he refused to report to Triple-A Lehigh Valley following a demotion, insisting he was injured.  Schwimer had Phillies cards in both team-issued releases last year as well as a card in Topps Series 2.

Charles' first card came within last season's Bowman Chrome release.  He was a 2010 draft pick by the Blue Jays and he has yet to play about Low A.

(And in case you're wondering, I went with option #2 from my last post in order to create Schwimer's Chachi Transactions card.)