Phillies Foul Balls

Well it’s been fun, but clearly the Phils are in trouble now. After all, they’re done playing the Mets, but they’ve still got 7 left with the Nationals.

Flash against David Wright with the game on the line. I so do not like this…

EDIT: Ok, so hitting him gets around him, but now it’s Flash versus Beltran with no room on the bases. I’m not sure this is an improvement.

EDIT 2: So much for my skepticism. Is it too much to ask for Burrell to play Mets-killer one more time?

I suppose if you have to use Jose Mesa, doing so with an 8-run lead in the top of the 9th is as good a place as any.

The Phillies are a good example of a team that could do far better in the postseason than their regular season record would indicate. Their record is strongly influenced by the fact that the tail end of their rotation is terrible. With the added off days in there this year, a team might be able to sneak by with a three man rotation, or at most only using a fourth starter occasionally. Likewise the frequent built in rest means fewer relievers are needed. Given the number of runs this team scores, I’d take my chances with the offense and Hamels, Lohse, and Kendrick starting most of the games. Lohse and Kendrick aren’t great pitchers, but they’ll keep you in the game most of the time and that might be enough.

Of course the problem is that to get to that point we’d need to get something out of a bunch of starts from Moyer, Durbin, and Eaton, including two of those three this weekend against the Mets. At this point a fluke run could happen that gets them in, but the odds are really against them.

Congratulations to the Florida State League Champions, the Clearwater Threshers. I’m tempted to suggest that they bring up Andrew Carpenter for September on the theory that he can’t possibly be any more damaging to the Phillies playoff chances than Adam Eaton is. Obviously I know that’s a really bad idea, but…

Since this is the Phillies, they’ve managed to at least somewhat claw their way back from the dead although they’re still not in real great shape. I fully expect this to be like 2005 where the blown game against the Astros wound up being the difference between the Phils making the playoffs and not.

Since I now live in Georgia I was able to get to the first two games in the series. The Monday game was incredibly frustrating, but it’s the sort of frustrating that doesn’t really carry over. They were just really flat, and you kept saying “They should be clobbering this guy” but they never got things going on offense. It was one of those things that just happens, and every team goes through games like that.

Tuesday’s game was actually somewhat worrying. They had tons and tons of opportunities but wasted a huge number of them. While they held on and won the game, I couldn’t help but think that they should have scored a lot more runs which might have changed the bullpen usage. At the time it wasn’t a big deal but Wednesday…

As a side note about the park, Turner Field made me really appreciate Citizen’s Bank Park. A lot of what went into CBP was not particularly original, but the execution was fantastic. Turner Field has some of the same features, such as an open concourse and a center field plaza area, but it’s not as well done as it is in Philadelphia. Now the dimensions and wind patterns are another issue, but in terms of fan experience, they did it right.

Back to the Atlanta games, then there was the Wednesday fiasco. For 7 and a half innings things were fine, but then came the bullpen follies. The craziness started with the choice of who to bring into the game. Tom Gordon had pitched two straight days and had been warming up in the bullpen on Sunday. For anyone that would be good reason to hesitate about using him again. But Gordon is trying to go as long as possible before his shoulder completely gives out, and so they should be extra careful about using him. Why Manuel didn’t take advantage of the 6 run lead to bring in Fabio Castro or John Ennis is a complete mystery.

Instead Gordon got into trouble quickly. At that point I’ll give Manuel some credit for going to Myers then. If he’s their best reliever (which is probably accurate) that was clearly a critical point in the game. However after how shaky he looked getting out of the 8th and given that he had thrown a lot of pitches the night before, I’m not sure sending him back out for the 9th was particularly smart. However I suppose that would have been too far away from the book for Manuel.

In addition to the bullpen follies, one of the other obvious consequences of that game is that Chris Roberson has sealed his fate as a member of the Phils. He misplayed several balls which should have been critical outs in those innings. He was already somewhat in the doghouse after last year, coming up only due to the injuries to Victorino and Bourn. His defense was viewed as his one solid skill and now he’s put that in doubt. He hasn’t played since then, and with Bourn now back, I doubt we’ll see him all that much. Look for him to be traded or possibly released this off-season.

Sheesh, that Burrell guy, what a complete bum. Completely useless. They should just cut him.

Sarcasm aside, they now need to hold on and then get one more. With Gordon in to pitch now, look out.

There are not even remotely enough swear words to capture my reaction to the fiasco that just occurred in Atlanta. But even though they’re still going to be only three back in the wild card after this horrendous debacle, they’re dead for the year and still have the same major structural problems as before. Gah!

So as has become obvious even to the spammers, I’ve pretty much let this slide this season. There are a number of reasons for this. There’s the new job I’ve taken which has kept me busy, has me working some odd hours, and has taken me to the heart of Braves country. (Although there’s no way in hell I’m changing my allegiance.) There’s also the fact that there are a lot of people out there writing in the Phlogosphere, and there was enough good stuff out there that I haven’t necessarily felt the need to write a lot.

The biggest reason though is that I was feeling an overwhelming sense of “New year, same old story.” I feel there are serious structural flaws in the Phillies organization which are not being fixed, indeed aren’t even regarded as flaws by the folks running the team. Those flaws, while not as bad as the problems crippling the Pirates or the Royals, are enough that even though the Phils have a lot of talented players, are likely to keep them in the category of good but not great. Over the past several years we’ve seen what that leads to; teams close to a playoff berth but never actually getting there. It’s a recipe for massive heartache.

With all of that said… I can’t help myself. I know they’re likely to end up just short. I know the pitching is one step away from utter disaster every single game. And I still want to believe that this is the year.

Well what a time to finally move back somewhere where I can see the Phillies on tv on a regular basis. While frantically packing to move has been partially responsible for my silence of late, I have to admit that this team has not exactly been providing inspiration for analysis. Just plain ugly all around.

At least with the trading deadline coming up, there should be some fodder for discussion. And to state the obvious, the Phillies really need to be sellers, not buyers this time around. This year is lost, but with some shrewd moves they could help themselves for future years. This will be Gillick’s second big test (after the Thome situation last fall) and we’ll see what happens. The early signs are not promising with all the talk about dumping Abreu. If they can managed to get a good deal for him, then yes they should consider it, but viewing it as a salary dump would be begging to get ripped off. Personally I can think of a whole lot of players who would be better to trade than Abreu right now.

The Phillies are catching a break on the schedule right now. They’re about to go to Cincinnati but will miss Bronson Arroyo who’s pitching tonight. Then they go to Milwaukee where Ben Sheets is on the DL. That’s two very good pitchers missed right there. I suppose that in some ways makes up for catching Martinez and Glavine when the Mets came to town instead of having the joy of Lima Time.

The good feelings about the Phillies having tied the score in the 7th of today’s first game is more than a bit tempered by the sight of Rheal Cormier and Ryan Franklin warming up in the bullpen. I gotta bad feeling about this…

So as the free agent market slowly, very slowly, starts to heat up, some columnists (Peter Gammons is the one I saw) are starting to express a thought I’ve had for quite a while, namely there are going to be some very bad free agent contracts signed this year.

I’ve never much been one for the theory that players have career years when playing for a contract. Instead I think the perception comes from the fact that an awful lot of free agents are at the age where a decline is expected as a natural part of their career. A player who makes the majors to stay in his mid 20s is going to hit free agency around age 30 or 31, and you can find an awful lot of players, free agent signees and not, who start sliding in their early 30s. In addition, signing a pitcher to a long-term contract is begging for trouble.

That’s a roundabout way of getting to my main point, which is that I hope the reports out of New York are true, that the Mets are prepared to do anything it takes to outbid the Phillies for Billy Wagner. If a team winds up signing him to a 4 year $45 million contract (which is what it’s starting to sound like) the odds of at least one wasted year at the end are enormous, and I’d lay pretty good odds on at least two years. Yes Wagner has been a great pitcher in the past, but this next contract is for the future years, not the past and I don’t think he’s going to keep it up. I’d rather see the Mets get saddled with that situation and the Phillies get the Mets’ draft picks.

I’m in a bit of crunch time at work, so I haven’t commented on the various trade rumors and such floating around. What little time I have had for baseball writing has gone into a piece I wrote for the Baseball Prospectus website. This one is in the free section and is part of their “Prospectus Notebook” series. You can read the full details but the short version is that it’s a look at how a system that produced impact players like Pat Burrell, Jimmy Rollins, Brett Myers, Chase Utley, and Ryan Howard could find itself so empty now.

There’s actually one more factor besides the ones I mentioned in the article but it requires a lengthy explanation and doubling (or more) the length of the piece wouldn’t have been a good idea. I’ll go into it here at some point.

Ok, maybe Ryan Howard is going to be traded even faster than any of the other Phillies Rookie of the Year winners. An AP article about the GM meetings going on right now included the following statement “New Phillies GM Pat Gillick said Philadelphia is not thinking of trading oft-injured first baseman Jim Thome.”

Now there are several possible interpretations I can think of for this.

1) Gillick just meant that they aren’t thinking of trading Thome at the GM meetings or in the near future. That actually isn’t too surprising, since I doubt any team would offer anything even remotely useful in trade until Thome has proved he’s recovered from his injuries, which would make a late spring training trade much more likely.

2) Thome does have a complete no trade clause. He may have told the team he’s not going to waive it under any circumstances. Or maybe he’s said he’ll only waive it to go back to the Indians, and Cleveland isn’t interested.

3) This may be a negotiating ploy. “Trade Jim Thome? Why on earth would we want to trade such a valuable player? No, no, no, not happening.” could be a way of trying to convince other teams that the Phils still value Thome very highly and so shouldn’t try and pick him up for essentially nothing.

4) Or it could be that they’re convinced that last year was just a fluke and he’ll go right back to his 2003 form. That could happen, but counting on that is a very risky proposition. Just as a WAG I’d say that there’s about a one third chance he’ll go back to that form, a one third chance he’ll be healthy all year but not as productive as he was, and a one third chance he’ll be hurt again fairly quickly. This is the option that worries me.

What’s missing from all of this is the followup question. “If you’re not thinking of trading Jim Thome, are you thinking of trading Ryan Howard?”

Congratuations to Ryan Howard on his being selection National League Rookie of the Year. I will now eat a bit of crow since in the middle of the 2004 season I made some comment about not being at all convinced that he was going to be as good a major leaguer and it might have looked like at first glance because I felt his minor league stats were being inflated by being older than the competition. Well it’s hard to argue with what he did in the second half of this season though.

Meanwhile I do have a problem with the voters. Not with who they selected for the top spot, although I could see strong arguments for at least one other player, but with some lower spots in the voting. In particular that other player who I could see arguments for finished a ridiculous 5th in the voting, namely Zach Duke. Duke was one of the best starting pitchers in the National League over the second half of the season and was as good a pitcher as Howard was a hitter, for about as long. Yet 28 voters didn’t even include him on their ballot which is just absurd.

The list of Phillies ROY winners is an odd list. Jack Sanford was the oldest of the bunch, and was traded a year after he won the award. He was a decent but not spectacular pitcher for 10 years after his award. Dick Allen was not exactly treated very well by the fans and media in the years after he won the award which indirectly led to some history. Allen’s treatment was part of the reason that Curt Flood did not want to be traded to the Phillies and led to his famous lawsuit challenging the reserve clause. Then there’s Scott Rolen, who was chased out of town by Larry Bowa, Dallas Green, and Ed Wade.

The thought occurs to me that if the past two are any guide, we can expect to see Ryan Howard traded to the Cardinals before too long.

Ok, I’m a pretty big Bobby Abreu booster and I think a lot of the criticisms of him are off base. In particular I feel the charges of not hustling on defense are overstated. He has a very smooth, gliding motion which means he covers a heck of a lot of ground without you realizing it.

All that being said, I don’t think he’s one of the three best defensive outfielders in the National League and I wouldn’t even put him close to that level. Yet that’s where the coaches in the league put him since he was awarded one of the National League Gold Gloves for this year. My reaction really isn’t moving past “Huh? What?”

Well apparently Gillick is the choice. I can’t say I’m pleased. In fact I’m pretty pissed. This is very much a short term choice, maximizing the chance to win next year at the cost of future years. The Orioles hired Gillick in November of 1995, made the playoffs in 1996 and 1997 and have been pretty awful every since. The Mariners hired Gillick in the 1999-2000 offseason, made the playoffs in 2000 and 2001, were decent but missed the playoffs in 2002 and 2003 and have been horrendous the past two years.

With the core the Phillies have of Utley, Howard, and others, some good moves could put them over the top next year and into the playoffs. I would not be surprised to see that happen, so the move is not all bad. However the farm system is pretty empty and will require a conscious effort to rebuild it. Hiring a 68 year old GM with a history of a “win now” mentality does not bode well at all on that front. It is possible to play for the short term while also working on the farm system, but Gillick’s history seems to indicate that he thinks it’s one or the other. There’s no question which one he’s being brought in for here.

The 2006 Phillies better win, because this bodes very poorly for the 2010 Phillies.