Replacement for Halladay? It won't be Biddle

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SAN FRANCISCO -- Roy Halladay will have his sore right shoulder examined in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Phillies GM Ruben Amaro said Monday night.

So who will fill Halladay’s spot in the rotation Friday in Phoenix?

Tyler Cloyd and Adam Morgan are possibilities (see story), according to Amaro. Jesse Biddle is not.

"He's a very young kid and he's not ready for the big leagues -- period," Amaro said.

Biddle-mania raged when the 21-year-old lefty pitched 13 scoreless innings with 26 strikeouts in a pair of starts April 22 and April 28.

On Saturday, Biddle returned to Earth –- he didn’t make it out of the first inning while walking four.

"Growing pains," Amaro said.

Amaro said Biddle had some allergy problems in that game, but the bottom line is he’s still a developing pitcher and not ready for the majors. The team’s top pick in the 2010 draft has made just six starts at Double A. He is 2-2 with a 2.56 ERA in those starts.

Cloyd, who turns 26 next week, has some big-league experience. He made six starts with the club last season and went 2-2 with 4.91 ERA. He is 1-3 with a 5.40 ERA in six starts at Triple A this season, but his last start was strong as he pitched eight innings, allowed four hits, one run, no walks and struck out 10.

Morgan, 23, was the Phils’ third-round pick out of the University of Alabama in 2011. The left-hander is considered the Phils’ most advanced pitching prospect because of his command of a four-pitch arsenal, but is short on experience as just six of his 43 pro starts have come above the Double A level.

While Amaro acknowledged that Friday’s starter will come from within the system, he said he was looking outside the organization for more starting pitching depth.

"There are some guys out there with outs [in their contracts], some players we'll keep an eye out on," Amaro said. "But right now, at least for the short term, it's going to be somebody internal."

Amaro said he had no gut feeling on how Halladay’s examination would go Tuesday. The veteran right-hander has struggled with velocity and command issues since spring training. He admitted to feeling soreness in his shoulder after being tagged for nine runs in 2 1/3 innings Sunday.

"Hopefully it's something minor," Amaro said. "Hopefully it's nothing major. We'll wait to see what the testing says and go from there."

On Sunday, Halladay revealed that he first felt soreness the day after his April 24 start. Halladay made two starts after that and was hammered in both.

Manager Charlie Manuel was asked if he would have preferred Halladay speaking up earlier.

"I’ve been around the game a long time," Manuel said. "I never liked to tell anyone I couldn’t play. If you asked me if I could play, I would have never told you I couldn’t. I played with a broken arm. I played with a whole lot of things. I got hit in the face and my lip was over my eye and I missed one day. I would never tell you I couldn’t play. So, yeah, I could understand that. He felt he could go out there and still pitch. He wasn’t thinking about not pitching bad or something like that; he wanted to try.

"Roy is an upstanding guy, a straight guy. Hey, there should be more guys like that. You say, ‘Well, he’s hurt.’ But evidently he didn’t feel that way. He felt like he could play. Nowadays guys -- they get out of the game real easy. That means he has some integrity, that the game means something to him, that he wanted to see if he could help us. It wasn’t like he was trying to hurt us. Knowing him like I do, he thought he could pitch."

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