Phillies sign Ross Gload; Could have Eisenreich potential

The Phils are starting to look like they have a ‘type’.

Not that there’s much variety when it comes to bench players, but Ross Gload is about as close to a Greg Dobbs clone as you can find in baseball. Of course, before Dobbs, Wes Helms held it down as the Phillies’ average-hitting corner infielder/outfielder for one season.

This isn’t a bad move from Rube, even though Gload’s average has sunk each of the past four seasons. Then again, I don’t know how motivated I’d be playing for the Royals for two of those seasons either.

He’ll take Matt Stairs’ place on the bench — which right now looks like an upgrade — and is cut from that professional hitter mold of guys that put the ball in play (a la  Jim Eisenreich), doesn’t strike out much and seems to hit better with runners in scoring position which will always win points with fans on this team.

Controversy bound to hover over Moyer's pursuit of all-time home run record

Jamie Moyer lost another bid for his 250th career win in Monday’s 5-3 loss to the Marlins, but inched closer to becoming baseball’s all-time home run [given up] leader.

The fourth-inning jack by Wes Helms gave Moyer 477 for his career, 28 behind Phillies great Robin Roberts’ 505 for the all-time record, which could fall later this season.

“If Moyer gets to 506, baseball purists may put an asterisk by his name in the record books,” said ESPN’s Buster Olney. “There’s no doubt that his totals were inflated by steroid use, even if Moyer wasn’t the one actually taking them.”

Moyer has surrendered a slew of home runs to outed and suspected steroid users over the years including Manny Ramirez (10), Alex Rodriguez (6), Barry Bonds (5), Rafael Palmeiro (5), Brady Anderson (5), Juan Gonzalez (4) and Lenny Dykstra (1).

Meanwhile, Roberts was lit up by a far more respectable bunch, including Duke Snider (19), Hank Aaron (9),  Jackie Robinson (9) and the ever-dangerous Wally Moon (9).

“I can’t help that every record nowadays has steroids attached to it,” said Moyer. “Did a lot of my home runs come from the bats of known steroid users? Yes. Could I allow 500 home runs without them? Probably.”