Thoughts On The Off-Season

Well, now that we got that pesky World Series thing out of the way, its time to look at the Phillies issues and concerns going into the 2009 season.

Key Free Agents:

LF Pat Burrell - Will Pat resign with Philly? Does the team want him back? I think both questions can have a "Yes" answer but it will come down to what Pat's demands are. If Pat asks for 4 years, $10-15 million per year, then I don't see him back. If he asks for half that (i.e. 2 years, $10 million per, that could happen. Burrell loves playing in Philly. He's never played anywhere else and Citizen's Bank Park benefits Pat both defensively and offensively. Like Manny in Boston, Pat is uniquely suited to playing LF in Philadelphia. Besides which, the fans have finally come around on Pat and he is one of the most respected players on the team.

SP Jamie Moyer - Is this it for the old man? I made a prediction that Jamie would retire if and when the Phillies won the World Series. One of the few things lacking on Jamie's resume was a World Series ring and he took care of that in fine fashion this week. Moyer is 45 going on 46 and he just finished up one of the best seasons ever for a pitcher that age. For a non-knuckler, it could arguably be the best season outside of a Nolan Ryan/Satchel Paige effort. Jamie has made some waves about coming back next year but he is technically not under contract anymore. If he plays next year, it will almost certainly be in Philly. He'd probably cost somewhere in the $5 million range and that is eminently reasonable in a world where Adam Eaton and Carlos Silva both make that much or more. He led the team in wins and had a very respectable ERA at age 45. There is no reason to expect he can't do the same next season. Even if he can't perform on the field, his presence on the pitching staff is invaluable. I say push to bring him back.

Arbitration:

1B Ryan Howard - Howard is, of course, arbitration eligible again. Last season he asked for $10 million and we offered around $6 million. Ryan shattered the old record with his win in arbitration and then promptly went out and hit 48 HRs and drove in over 140 RBIs. Granted his batting average was a little low and he still struck out a ton, but there is no denying that he earned his salary this year. That said, he's likely gonna want another good raise. Consider that Detroit 1B Miguel Cabrera just signed a long-term deal that averaged $18 million per season. Howard and his agent will likely use that as the basis for any contract or arbitration discussion. So figure on Howard asking for $18 million and the Phillies offering $12-14 million. I predict another Phillies loss in that situation. Howard may very well have a 2nd MVP trophy on his mantle by any potential arbitration hearing too. That will definitely color and arbiter's decision. The Phillies will pull out his defense, strikeout totals, average against lefties, etc etc. Howard will simply point at his Rookie of the Year, 2 MVPs and World Series ring. Who do you think comes out on top?

SP Cole Hamels - So yeah, Hamels is gonna make a killing in arbitration and the next General Manager would be better off simply bending over now and taking it from Cole's agent. You have the best young lefty in the game coming off a season in which he led his team to their first World Series victory in 28 years. A World Series and playoffs in which he was an MVP twice over. Hamels went from a "Good Young Pitcher" to "Clutch Ace Pitcher" in three and a half weeks of October baseball. The Phillies should (and likely will) open the vault door for him. I predict a monster deal that averages $15-20 million over 5-6 years at a minimum. Cole is truly a special player and the type of player you lock up.

SP Joe Blanton - The Phillies seemed to pay a steep price tradewise for the surprisingly young (just 27) Joe Blanton. What most Phans ignored was that Joe was indeed a young player. I, for one, supported the Blanton trade from the start and I was not disappointed by his effort as a Phillie. He's still undefeated as a Starter in the NL and apparently he's not half bad with the lumber either. Expect the Bulldog to pocket something in the $5-8 million range this winter in arbitration. He's a very solid #4 starter and he's worth every penny. At his best he can shut down the opposing team (See Game 4), at his worst he eats innings and keeps his team in it usually. He even seems to like playing in Philly so you have that as well.

CF Shane Victorino - Vic is making close to the league minimum right now and he will easily become a millionaire at the arbitration table. I predict that Vic and the Front Office will come to terms before arbitration though. Vic really blossomed as a full-time player this season despite switching positions. He led the team in batting average and continued to swipe bases. Despite the ocasional bonehead play, Vic played hard for the entire season and provided the team with an important sparkplug. His 13 RBIs in the playoffs were a team record. I see the Phillies trying to lock Vic up through his arbitration years. He's a very good young player who compliments this lineup perfectly.

RF Jayson Werth - Jayson proved that he is more than a platoon player this season. He was healthy for the first time in his career and his power and on-base numbers soared as a result. He also showed great speed in the outfield and on the bases as well as a plus arm. Jayson will also get a good raise this winter.

RP Ryan Madson & Chad Durbin - Both provided key anchors to the best bullpen in baseball and both will be brought back. Madson transformed himself from a decent middle reliever to an elite setup man courtesy of a new workout regimen due to Jamie Moyer's influence. Durbin carried the bullpen in his middle relief role for the first 4.5 months. Both will be back and both will be more expensive.

UT Greg Dobbs, UT Eric Bruntlett, & RP Clay Condrey - Of the three I see Dobbs back in his 3B platoon/pitch-hit extraordinaire role but I wonder about Bruntlett and Condrey. Both are eminently replacable. SS Jason Donald will be pushing Bruntlett for a roster spot come spring and Condrey will have to fight for the final bullpen spot. Dobbs will get a decent but not huge raise but the other two will not get much of anything.

Spare Parts:

SP Adam Eaton - We're lucky in the fact that Adam will make around $8 million no matter what happens next year. He'll also get a World Series ring somehow. Either way, he likely won't be back next year. They may give him a Spring Training invite but the smart move would be to eat it on his contract and simply outright release him. Eaton was a mistake signing. The Front Office knows it, the team knows it, we the fans know it and even Adam knows it. His performance, outside of a brief stretch of respectability in June, was atrocious.

SP Kyle Kendrick - Kyle's numbers screamed correction for 2008 and we were not let down. He declined in all aspects of the game and showed himself to be a very borderline major leaguer. He only has one decent pitch in his slider and the rest is a work in progress. If he ever learns to throw a changeup, he might have another shot at the Majors. Till then, he's AAA fodder. Considering some of the young pitching prospects currently in the system, Kendrick could soon find himself a career IronPig.

Likely Gone in 09:

RP Rudy Seanez, RP Clay Condrey, RP Les Walrond, RP Scott Eyre*, OF So Taguchi, OF Matt Stairs, C Chris Coste - Seanez, Condrey, and Walrond are all interchangeable parts. I see Walrond staying around as a AAA starter as he is more of a AAAA player at best. Eyre might cost too much to come back (see below). Taguchi didn't really contribute much of anything the entire year so there is no reason whatsoever to expect him back. He's also winding down as an MLBer. The same can be said for Stairs though he will be able to go out on his own terms. Stairs will play in 09 if he wants to. I predict a retirement (and free drinks at any Philly bar for the rest of his life) for Matt Stairs. He solidified himself in Phillies Lore with under two months of effort. Coste will likely get pushed out due to his increasing age and hotshot young catching prospect Lou Marson.

Newcomers for 09:

SP J.A. Happ, C Lou Marson, SS/UT Jason Donald, SP Carlos Carrasco.


My prediction is that guys like Eyre and Stairs MIGHT be back but I wouldn't count on it. Stairs could very well retire as he's already 40 and now is a World Series winner. Eyre provided a great effort down the stretch as the perfect LOOGY and compliment to premier lefty reliever J.C. Romero. To get him back we might have to pay more than we're willing to spend. Donald is currently working at several different IF positions in the Arizona Fall League and he has the range to play 2B, 3B, and SS in the majors. I predict he's in and Bruntlett is out. Carrasco will continue to complete his skills in AAA and will be the first guy called up in case of injury. Happ isn't so much of a newcomer as 2009 will technically be his 3rd season on the Phillies. However, he's still a rookie and he has proven that he has the stuff to be a decent starter for the Phillies. I see him winning the #5 spot out of Spring Training.

Finally!

It only took 28 years. Finally, thank God, we won it all. Think of it this way, no matter what happens for the next five years, WE WON A WORLD SERIES. A Mets fan tries to bash the Phillies...Yeah, that's great, WE WON A WORLD SERIES. The bottom line is that everything after this is gravy for at least five years, hell maybe ten years considering its Philly. The Phillies won the World Series and they did it as a team. Role players like Carlos Ruiz and Jayson Werth carried them to the championship. Guys like Eric Bruntlett, Matt Stairs, Geoff Jenkins, and Pedro Feliz had huge hits and even the big names came through when it mattered. Perhaps the most fitting moment of the 5 game series occurred when the maligned LF Pat Burrell, the longest tenured player on the roster came up to the plate in a key at bat with a huge insurmontable 0-13 line hanging over his head to that point. Pat the Bat, Manchine, PtB, whatever you want to call him came through and came through huge. He absolutely hammered a ball 400 feet to straight center. Off the bat it was a homerun on any other night. Unfortunately for Pat the wind was blowing straight in from Center. That didn't matter so much as Pat got every bit of that ball and got just enough to bank it off the wall for a standup double. Like clockwork, Burrell was lifted for a pinch runner and his Phillies career had its final moment. The pinchrunner ended up scoring the winning run for the clinching game of the World Series as Pat stood with tears in his eyes in the dugout. Pat did his job and helped his team, his only professional team, go ahead for the last time. After season after long season of losing, this victory had to be sweetest of all for Pat. And sweetest of all: WE WON THE WORLD SERIES!!!

Redemption!

After a long and somewhat contentious year for 1B Ryan Howard, the Phillies slugging 1B finally, truly, and completely won over the passionate, raucious blue-collar fanbase of Philadelphia. Howard was a much maligned player for most of this season as he started off the first two months of the season on one of the deepest slumps in recent memory for any player of his stature. It took Howard until July 4th to permanently drag his average over the .220 mark. Howard looked completely lost for long stretches of the season. The rabid fanbase quickly turned on the big slugger. Many said he should be platooned as he simply could not hit left-handed pitching. Many said he should be traded for anything they could get. Some of the more rabid fans even used the blogs to lambast Howard on a daily basis. This blogger specifically focused all of his frustration and anger and an underperforming ballclub at what Harry Kalas calls "The Gentle Giant". I went so far as to track his daily strikeout totals as they spiraled towards shattering his own MLB single-season record. Quietly though, things began to change. Ryan kept plugging away and the repeated slumps got less and less frequent as the season wore on. As other players wore down, Howard came on stronger and stronger, posting MVP-type numbers over the 2nd half the season. Howard had a historic September during which he carried the team for the entire month, refusing to lose the division. Howard hit a smoking .352 with 11 HR/32 RBI for the month. Then came October and with it the old Ryan Howard. Many of us quickly jumped on the familiar and easy target. He can't field. He lacks concentration in the field. He's too easily neutralized by a good lefty. We spouted all these easy attacks, ripping him in all aspects of the game. He had an atrocious 2-11 with 5 K in the NLDS

and the attacks were vicious. Then came the NLCS and with it, Ryan began to woke up. He batted .300 but slugged an abysmal .350 due to breaking ball after breaking ball down in the zone. The book on Howard is well known and the Dodgers followed it religously. The World Series started off the same way in Games 1 and 2 as Ryan just looked lost at the plate. Then came Game 3 in Philadelphia. Howard smashed his first HR of the postseason and with it ended weeks of frustration. Game 4 brought us the Ryan Howard we all cheered on in September. Howard crushed 2 HR and picked up 5 RBI including 3 on a crucial 4th inning shot that broke the game open. Howard was the hero of game 4 and he finally won over the toughest fans in baseball. Tonight is a possible clinching Game 5 and we'll cheer Ryan on as he leads the Phillies towards a long awaited championship.

Jamie Moyer: Playing The Game The Right Way

Most 45-year-old men would be at home watching last night's game on tv with their family or even in the stands cheering the team on. Most Major Leaguers are long retired by the time they reach 45. They are broadcasters, scouts, coaches, or managers by the time they reach that esteemed age. Jamie Moyer is different. At 45, he is at the top of his game pitching a gem to help win Game 3 of the 2008 World Series. On guts, guile and pure determination, Moyer shut down a young Rays lineup with the same stuff he's had for his entire career. His fastball never topped 82 mph but that didn't matter. Moyer took the team on his back and propelled them to a crucial Game 3 victory on a brisk rain-soaked field in South Philly. Moyer proves that its more about hard work and determination than pure ability. He has never thrown over 90 in his career or been the guy that will repeatedly strikeout the side with fireball after fireball. Moyer made perhaps the best defensive play of his career in the top of the 7th inning last night on a running bunt by LF Carl Crawford. Crawford, well known as one of the fastest players in the league, bunted towards 1B and took off running. Moyer, displaying the speed and agility that some 21-year-olds don't have, bounded off the mound, gloved the ball and quickly shoveled it too a waiting Ryan Howard who barehanded it just before Crawford's foot hit the base. This was a crucial play that would kill a potential rally right after the Phillies had taken a commanding 4-1 lead on the strength of back-to-back homeruns by sluggers Chase Utley and the previously mentioned Howard. Moyer showed that he was there to win and was gonna leave everything on the field in what may be his final game as a professional. But it was not to be. The 1B ump, who admitted after the fact that he relied on the sound of the ball hitting the glove instead of his own eyes, called Crawford safe in an absolute travesty of a call for the game's biggest stage. The Rays went on to chase Moyer from the game scoring two runs that should never have been on base in the first place. Instead of going into the 8th with a commanding 4-1 lead to hand off to the dominating Madson/Lidge 1-2 punch, they had a shaky 4-3 lead with the very dangerous B.J. Upton leading things off. The Phillies won in the end on the most spectacular infield hit in the history of Citizen's Bank Park by C Carlos Ruiz but that doesn't matter. The officiating in this World Series had been questionable at times and downright scary on occasion. Jamie Moyer has been robbed of his place in history by losing both his Win and place on every highlight reel for the next 20 years. The team won and that is all that is important. That is what Jamie would tell us if he were asked and it wouldn't be just another line from a spoiled athlete. It would be the truth. A truth founded deep down in the heart of a man who plays the game the right way, the way the game deserves to be played. Moyer goes out there every 5th day, takes the ball for his team, and honors the game he plays. He honors it with his work ethic. He honors it with the reverence for the respect he shows for the history of the game. He understands that baseball is not just a game. Baseball is a part of our cultural history and our lives. He realizes that 45,000 fans come to the stadium to watch something that is far more important than a mere game to them. It is a part of their life, something they will tell their kids and grandkids. Moyer again proved that respect with his spectacular play last night and his constant mentoring of the players around him. There's a good chance that Jamie Moyer will never be inducted into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown but that doesn't matter. He's the first to tell you that the accolades aren't important. It's about winning and winning the right way.

Phillies Prove Existence of Merciful God

With the entire world against them, the Phillies dominated a young Tampa Bay Rays team for most of the night yet went into the bottom of the 9th with a 4-4 tie game. The Phillies had been up 4-1 in the 7th when an absolutely brutal call on a play at first base changed the entire complexion of the game. SP Jamie Moyer made perhaps the most impressive hustle play in the history of the franchise only to see a botched call by 1B umpire Alex Halion steal his spot in history. Watching this game was an exhausting experience to say the least. Our big names continued to struggle for much of the game but heroes come from unexpected places. A 45 year old starter dominated a young opponent. A defensive replacement in the much-maligned UT Eric Bruntlett came through in a crucial situation in the bottom of the 9th on the bases. C Carlos "Chooch" Ruiz continued his bid for an MVP Trophy after batting a utilitarian .219 during the regular season. The Phillies are beginning to have the feeling of a team of destiny this October as they continue to find ways to win despite somewhat lackluster performances by their big stars. Tomorrow has SP Joe Blanton facing off against the young SP Andy Sonnanstine for the Rays. The road to winning the World Series is now looking clearer for the Phillies. Blanton will be on the mound and Ace Cole Hamels will pitch a possible clinching Game 5 on Monday.

One Down...Three To Go

SP Cole Hamels dominated on the national stage and he is now finally being talked about as an Ace Starter by the national media. This attention and respect is long overdue for Hamels. Hamels is the best left-handed pitcher to wear a Phillies uniform since Carlton and easily the best Phillies pitcher since Schilling. He's eccentric, moody, arrogant and picky. He's also a dominant player not even in his prime yet. At 24 he's still getting better each year. This season he was already a Top 5 pitcher in the National League. If he stays healthy, always a concern with Cole, then he will be a Cy Young contender every season for years to come. So far he's 4-0 with a sizzling 1.55 ERA in the Postseason joining the ranks of other elite players who raise their game to a different level in October. Cole won us Game 1 and there are 3 more to go for the first Championship in 28 years. Game 2 is tonight at 8:35 PM.

Phillies In World Series

So the Phillies are in the World Series for the first time since I was twelve years old and it still doesn't feel real. I haven't posted on this site in a few months as I've been so busy with so many other things in the real world including a new job, moving and other annoyances. The Phillies won the Pennant. Let's repeat that: The Phillies Won The Pennant! That has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? So no matter what happens in the next week, the Phillies will be putting a banner up next season. The only question is whether it will be the franchise's 2nd World Series banner or 6th National League Pennant. The Phillies will be facing the upstart Tampa Bay Rays, a team not expected to really compete this season but one that turned out to dominant the toughest division in baseball for most of the year. I personally picked the Rays as my team that would compete this year but be unstoppable next sesaon as all their young talent got a little older. So I was off a year, I suppose. Of course, no one else in the world, including the Rays themselves, thought so either. The Phillies would probably have matched up better with the Red Sox but that's life. The Rays have great young pitching, underrated young players, and a decent bullpen. All in all it should be a hell of a series. The Phillies will come down to three players on offense: Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, and Jimmy Rollins. They are the heart and soul of this team and have been so for the past four seasons. If those three show up and play like they can play, the Phillies can win. If they go 3 for 27, then we're in trouble. We've got the pitching, we've got the bullpen and we've got great role players like Jayson Werth and Shane Victorino. If the heart of this lineup hits like it can hit, then we can win. It'll all be over in the next 10 days.

Go Phillies!