Charlie Manuel sees you, Domonic Brown

We are only three games into the Phillies exhibition schedule, two games into their Grapefruit League schedule, but Domonic Brown has made an early statement in the competition for one of the two corner outfield spots that figure to be open at the start of the regular season. In a 5-5 tie with the Tigers in Lakeland on Sunday, Brown hit a solo home run off of Tigers set-up man Al Alburquerque. Including Friday's intrasquad game, Brown has four hits in three games, two of those hits for extra bases.

Darin Ruf went 0-for-3 today after an 0-for-3 showing and an error yesterday. On Friday he went 2-for-2 with a pair of doubles in the intrasquad game.

Again, it is way too early to start handicapping roster odds, but Charlie Manuel did say something interesting today when he was asked about the glut of outfielders currently in camp and his plan for rotating them in these early days of spring training.

"We've got 10 outfielders, and somewhere along the line, probably about two-thirds of the way through spring training, we're going to have to make decisions on at least four of them," Manuel said. "We're going to try to get them all some playing time where we can see them enough. If somebody jumps out and really gets going, like Brown right now, the last three days he's really swung good. He's played good in the outfield, things like that. We could settle on a guy or something."

Take from that what you will.