Phillies Notes: Amaro, Lively Starts for ‘Pigs, Neshek has Setback

The Phillies are fresh off of a four-game sweep of the San Francisco Giants and are set to face the New York Mets at home for the weekend.  The Mets, who recently traded once-ace Matt Harvey to the Cincinnati Reds, will be looking to recover from losing a series to said Reds.  The Mets were zapped for batting out of order during the series.

Coming to Philadelphia with the Mets for the first time is former Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro, Jr.  Amaro has been given a lot of credit in recent days for building a Phillies team that now stands at 22-15 and half a game out of first place.  Tyler Kepner of the New York Times writes about how Amaro has mostly built the current squad. 24 of the 32 on the active roster or disabled list were from the Amaro-era.

Amaro spent two years as the first base coach with the Boston Red Sox before joining the New York Mets coaching staff this offseason.  He will be coaching first base tonight at Citizens Bank Park.

Ben Lively returns to the mound tonight.  However, it will not be in Philadelphia.  The Phillies activated Lively from the disabled list and optioned him to Triple-A Lehigh Valley.  The success of Zach Eflin has kept him in town and in the starting rotation.  Lively hit the disabled list on April 27 with a lower back strain.

Reliever Pat Neshek suffered what was called a "setback" while pitching at Clearwater, wrote Matt Breen of the Philadelphia Inquirer on Wednesday.  Thursday, Todd Zolecki of MLB.com wrote that Neshek hoped to return to the Phillies within a month.  Neshek has yet to throw a pitch for the Phillies since signing a two-year, $16 million contract.