Things noticed around the ballpark

There was a lot less media checking out the Phillies-Braves series finale on Monday night. In fact, only the big(ger) papers had columnists at the game and afterwards there was just one TV camera crew. Know what this means? The Phillies aren't very good and training camp has started at Lehigh.

Taking CSN out of the equation (because they always show up), we won't see any more TV cameras until the last weekend of the season.

Scouts, once again, were out in full force. Some of them were advance scouts, working ahead and picking up tendencies for an upcoming series against the Phillies, but others were not. Is there a deal brewing? Maybe. Or maybe not.

It's quiet around here. Almost too quiet.

David Bell is smoking hot. With a home run and a single in the loss to the Braves, the much-maligned third baseman boosted his average to .288 to continue his torrid July.

How hot is Bell? Try this out: in his last five games he's hitting .571 (12-for-21) with a triple and a homer, and is hitting .426 (29-for-68), a .452 on-base percentage, with nine extra-base hits this month.

If he isn't careful, Bell could put together a "career" year.

The always astute Dennis Deitch pointed out that Mike Lieberthal has just one walk this season. Yeah, just one. In fact, Lieberthal is four times more likely to be hit by a pitch than to draw a walk.

Upon further perusal, four of the Phillies' pitchers have more walks than Lieberthal this season.

The Phillies, at 44-52, lead the last-place Washington Nationals by just 2 1/2 games.