Red-hot Phillies ace Roy Halladay is scheduled to pitch against the Red Sox on Sunday. (AP)

Interleague play kicks off in Major League Baseball this weekend with American League teams facing off with their geographic rivals in the National League, leading to matchups including Yankees-Mets, Cubs-White Sox, Angels-Dodgers and, for Boston fans, Red Sox-Phillies.

The Sox took two from the eventual NL champion Phillies in a three-game series at Citizens Bank Park last year and will hope to at least repeat that performance in Philly this season. This will be the first of two three-game series the clubs will play this season — the teams play again at Fenway from June 11-13. Because it’s been so long since Sox fans last saw the Fighting Phils, who currently lead the NL East with a 24-15 record, here’s a scouting report broken down by the team’s hitting, starting pitching and bullpen.

Hitting

Take one look at Philadelphia’s starting lineup, and three names should jump out at you immediately: first basemen Ryan Howard, second baseman Chase Utley and shortstop Jimmy Rollins. Howard and Rollins both have the title of NL MVP on their resumes, and Utley has played at an All-Star level since entering the league in 2004 and was even picked by President George W. Bush as the player he’d most want if he started a team. For their part, all three have not disappointed in the early going. Howard, who signed a five-year, $125 million contract extension in April, is hitting .309 with seven home runs and 30 RBI while Utley is keeping pace with a line of .304/9/22. Rollins missed 29 games with a right calf strain but just returned to the starting lineup this week, a scary proposition for Sox hitters. He is batting .343 on the season.

Those numbers, as good as they are, really aren’t too surprising. What is surprising though to those who haven’t followed the Phillies all that closely is exactly who is leading the team in RBI. You’d think it’d be Utley out of the 3 hole or Howard in the cleanup spot. Instead, it’s center fielder Shane Victorino with 32 RBI, good enough for a tie for third in the NL, out of the leadoff spot. His RBI total season is already more than half of what it was last season in a quarter of the games. Victorino latched onto the leadoff position after Rollins’s injury and has refused to let go ever since, leaving Rollins to bat third, fifth and even sixth since his return. His output at the top of the order also has some Philadelphians asking for forgiveness that they ever doubted him at that position in the lineup.

The Flyin’ Hawaiian isn’t the only Philly near the top of the NL offensive leaderboard. Outfielder Jayson Werth’s outstanding 1.044 OPS pits him only behind the Dodgers’ Andre Ethier in that category. His 31 RBI is only behind Victorino for the team lead. This may interest Sox fans because Werth has been mentioned as a possible free agent pickup next offseason.

In total, the Phillies have six everyday players currently over .300, including catcher Carlos Ruiz, who is batting .323. The only other two sub-.300 hitters in the regular lineup are Victorino (.268) and outfielder Raul Ibanez (.238), who has struggled mightily since he had surgery for a sports hernia in the offseason. Knowing those stats, it should come as no surprise that the Phillies rank first in the NL in average (.276) and runs scored (214), meaning it could be a long weekend for projected Sox projected starters John Lackey, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Tim Wakefield.

Starting Pitchers

Any time you talk about the Philadelphia starting staff nowadays, the conversation has to begin and end with ace Roy Halladay, a pitcher the Red Sox are all too familiar with from his days as a Blue Jay. Halladay’s game has transitioned seamlessly to the NL this season as he has posted a 6-2 record with a miniscule 1.64 ERA in the early going. He hasn’t allowed an earned run in three of his nine starts, and had it not been for his five earned run performance at San Francisco on April 26, he would not have given up more than two earned runs in any of his starts.

Long known as a threat to go deep into games whenever he takes the mound, Halladay has lived up to that this season. He has not thrown less than 6-1/3 innings in any of his starts — you can call him the anti-Matsuzaka — and has thrown four complete games already, leading some to wonder if the Phillies are overworking him.

The current players on the Red Sox roster have faced Halladay, who is scheduled to pitch the final game of the series on Sunday, a total of 418 times and have batted .262 against him. They’ll need every ounce of that experience come gametime on Sunday.

The other two pitchers expected to face the Sox are Cole Hamels on Friday and Kyle Kendrick on Saturday. Hamels has struggled to return to his 2008 form, when he posted a 14-10 record and 3.09 ERA the year the Phillies won the World Series. At the time, Phillies fans loved Hamels, including one guy who created a Cole Hamels Facts website in the mold of Chuck Norris jokes. Now, he is 4-2 with a 4.29 ERA, which is down from the 5.28 ERA he had on April 28, but he has shown flashes of brilliance, such as eight-inning, one-run performance against St. Louis on May 4. Hamels remains a strikeout threat with 52 Ks over 51-1/3 innings.

In a similar fashion to Hamels, Kendrick had some early season struggles. He gave up 20 earned runs over 23-2/3 innings in April, including a horrid six-run performance where he couldn’t escape the second inning against the Nationals in his second start. He has since settled down in May as he’s seen his ERA drop from 7.61 at April’s end to his current 5.24, thanks in part to a May 5 seven-inning shutout of the Cardinals.

Of course, any mention of the Phillies needs to include the 47-year-old wonder Jamie Moyer, even though he probably won’t make an appearance over the weekend. His 5-3 record and 4.30 ERA have many in the Philly area singing his praises.

Bullpen

As an entire pitching staff, the Phillies rank fourth in the NL with a 3.66 ERA. However, the bullpen has certainly had its fair share of struggles this season. Closer Brad Lidge has only pitched in four games this season after coming off offseason elbow surgery and has recently experienced stiffness in that same elbow that has caused him to sit the last few games. His replacement, Ryan Madson, did not fare too well in Lidge’s absence in April. In nine games, he posted a 7.00 ERA and had just four saves in six opportunities. He has since been placed on the 60-day DL with a broken right toe. With Lidge still not fully recovered, there is a growing call for the Phillies to start searching the trade markets for a closer.

Outside of the closer role, Jose Contreras, whom Sox fans know from his days as a starter with the Yankees and White Sox, and Chad Durbin have been bright spots with 0.68 and 2.79 ERAs respectively. Contreras has temporarily taken over the closer role as a result. On the flip side, David Herndon (5.11) and Danys Baez (5.29) have not been nearly as reliable. Even lefty J.C. Romero has seen his fair share of struggles. So far, the Phillies have been able to rely on their starters going deep into games, but should the Red Sox offense chase the starters early, the Phillies could be in trouble.

News and notes

• The Phillies made headlines recently after bullpen coach Mick Billmeyer was accused of stealing signs during a Phillies-Rockies game when he used to binoculars in the bullpen while the Rockies were in the field. This has sparked a debate over whether stealing signs is a part of the game or just plain cheating.

• Philly has played three games under three hours in the past week, something that it’s impossible for Red Sox fans to comprehend. One writer links the phenomenon to impatience at the plate on the part of Phillies hitters.

• The Phillies’ solid record might be a result of their weak strength of schedule. Their opposing teams have a combined winning percentage of just .498, ranking them at 17th in the majors in that category. The Red Sox rank first with an opponents’ winning percentage of .531, no doubt aided by their early contests against the Rays and Yankees.