After a wild opening month in which it looked like the Phillies’ would never get out of the gate, they have finally made it back to where they were at the end of last season, first place in the National League East.

The Fightins moved ahead of the Florida Marlins, who lost to the Cincinnati Reds 7-0, with a 10-7 victory over the NL Central leading St. Louis Cardinals.

Last season, the Phillies won the World Series largely because of their pitching, both starting and relief. This season, however, they are winning in spite of it.

The Phillies’ starting rotation is the worst in baseball, with a combined earned run average of 6.54. Brett Myers, Tuesday night’s winning pitcher, has allowed more homeruns than anyone in baseball (10). The Phillies’ starting rotation has allowed more homeruns (46), more than the Baltimore Orioles (45) and and 15 more than the next closest National League team, the lowly Washington Nationals.

The Phillies’ bullpen, the best in the National League last season, has been anything but this season, with just two relievers with an ERA under 3.00.

“I’m concerned, because we’re giving up too many runs,” manager Charlie Manuel said, repeating a sentiment he’s had to offer far more often than he would care to this early in the season. “We can’t keep giving up five, six, seven, eight, nine runs.”

Of the Phillies 14 wins, the majority of them are come from behind, and while the Phillies have led the majors in come-from-behind wins over the past couple years, they won’t be able to come from behind in all of them.

Even so, the Phillies have managed to overtake the Marlins, who started the season 11-1, for first place, having won eight of their last 10 games.

The hitting has, in large part, made up for the lack of quality pitching. The Phillies are fourth in the National League in batting average, third in RBIs, first in homeruns, and first in slugging percentage. The Phillies have four players (Chase Utley, Raul Ibanez, Ryan Howard, Shane Victorino) in the top 15 in RBIs, two in the top five (Ibanez, Utley) in homeruns, two in the top ten (Ibanez, Utley) in batting average, and two in the top five (Ibanez, Utley) in slugging percentage.

The Phillies have scored at least 10 runs in a game five times this season. They have four grandslams already, and have also walked 11 times with the bases loaded. Victorino is in the midst of a 14-game hitting streak, and Jason Werth has a two-game homerun streak going.

There is a faint glimmer of hope for the pitching, however, as Joe Blanton had his best game of the season on Monday, allowing just one run on four hits through six innings. Embattled ace Cole Hamels has looked good in his previous two starts, but they were both cut short by freak minor injuries.

Unfortunately, Myers continues to struggle, and Chan Ho Park, tonight’s scheduled starter against Johan Santana and the Mets, has been dreadful. Jamie Moyer has looked good at times, but gave up five runs in 5 2/3 innings against the Mets this past weekend.

“His fastball does not have the velocity and the movement,” Manuel said about Myers. “He definitely has to locate better. He used to be 92 to 95 [miles an hour], and, every once in a while, he was getting it up to 96. [Last night], he was topping out at 87 or 88 miles an hour, at least on the scoreboard.

“He’s giving up home runs because of the mistakes he’s making, and his stuff doesn’t play up the way it used to.”

While Park’s record is only 0-1, his ERA is not so deceiving at 8.57. Park has been the recepient of numerous offensive comebacks by the Phillies, despite pitching much worse then anyone could have possibly expected. He has given up a minimum of four runs in each of his four starts this season, going more than five innings just once.

Facing Santana tonight at Citi Field, the best pitcher in the National League so far, the Phillies will have to hope that Park doesn’t give up too many runs until they can finally get to the Mets’ bullpen. While the Phillies may not be able to score many runs off the dominant lefty, they can try to run up his pitch count, hoping to knock him out of the game by the seventh inning. Hopefully the damage done by that point won’t be insurmountable, even by Phillies standards.

First pitch is at 7:10PM.