Joe Blanton is off to a poor start in 2011. His first outing against the Mets went sour after just four innings when he gave up a 7-run lead and couldn’t make it out of the 5th inning. Blanton’s second start of the season wasn’t much better. He again gave up seven runs, though this time around he lasted six innings.
The Phillies fifth starter traditionally hasn’t performed well in the beginning of the season. In 2010, Blanton had an ERA of 7.28 through his first eight starts of the season. After that, Blanton’s ERA dipped significantly to 4.82. In his final 21 starts of 2010, Blanton posted 14 quality starts (at least six innings pitched with less than three earned runs allowed). Amongst those 14 quality starts, Blanton pitched 7 innings or more eight times.
His slow start this season is more of a focus because of the four outstanding starters, who get the ball ahead of him.
Blanton also suffered from a poor start to the season in 2009. Once again, after Blanton’s first eight starts of the season he had been struggling with an ERA of 7.11. In Blanton’s final 23 starts of the season, he turned in 18 quality starts, and pitched seven innings or more in 12 of his quality starts. Blanton became one of the Phillies most consistent pitchers in the second half of 2009.
Blanton seems to need more time to settle in and find his groove each season. In each of the last two seasons, it has taken him until his 9th start of the season before he really starts to pitch well and find some consistency.
When Blanton goes through his early season struggles, there are two factors that contribute to his problems. He struggles heavily with his location. His pitches don’t have good movement on them, and he’ll hang pitches high or in the middle of the strike zone. When this happens, it’s only a matter of time before opposing offenses will be able to put together a big inning against Blanton. This happened in his first start against the Mets, and it happened in his second start against the Nationals.
Blanton’s other issue early in the season is that he wears down much faster. He got off to decent starts against the Mets and 
Nationals, but in the 4th inning of both games, Blanton lost what effectiveness he had. As the season goes on, he will probably find it easier to go deep into games.
The righthander hasn’t looked good in his first two starts, and he may not look good in his next several starts. But if the trend from Blanton’s first two full seasons with the Phillies is any indication, he’ll round into shape by the start of summer, and return to being a reliable pitcher who can give the Phillies six to seven innings in a start, and keep the opposing team’s offense from scoring more than three to five runs in a game.
It may be too late by mid-summer to wait on Blanton to get his groove going..
Paulman proposes a trade to the Red-Sox straight-up for Pitcher Dice K
Why are the phillies even using a 5th pitcher in the rotation? Plenty of other teams are just using 4?
Blanton gets no pass from me whatsoever. He needs to go. Location looked very poor, He’s making the same salary this year as Roy Holiday, Hasnt won a start since April. So basically every 5th game we play is a loss.
Cole goes on 5 days rest and i think Roy is used to that too. With the aces we have your gonna have to have a 5th starter to ease there workload. There guys go 6-7-8- innings. Takes a toll. Blanton is the only concern right now so thats good. Paul…Dice K got lit up by the rays in the last few games. No thanks.They’re not going to trade Joe Blanton this season unless…noone will take him and then we’ll have Worley or Kendrick and who knows what those guys will do. Blanton is a concern no doubt…but give it a few starts. We have Doc today…so shine.
***UPDATE***
***Sources tell Casper that Paulman has re-adjusted his already re-adjusted win total for the Phils down two games to 95 wins***
Dice K is worse than Blanton…
I propose we just deal the fat pig to the american league for a 6pack of Blue Ribbon