Silver Ball

The Phillies have reportedly made a trade with the Colorado Rockies for Infielder Ty Wigginton in exchange for money and a player to be named later. I think this is a nice little move for the Phils as Wigginton, who batted .242 with 15 home runs and 47 RBI’s in 401 at bats last year, is a solid player at the corners which is helpful makes him a good option to fill in for Ryan Howard in the early parts of the year at first base if Thome doesn’t pan out in the field and he can play third when 2011 Gold Glove winner Placido Polanco who only played 122 games last year and struggled through various injuries of the hip, hernia, and elbow variety.

                I like this move for a lot of the same reasons I liked the Thome deal and that’s because the Phillies are starting to fill role players. Role players that we definitely need as baseball teams encounter many injuries throughout a 162 game season. We’ll see if the Phillies have anything else up their sleeves for the rest of the offseason but if this move is any indication the 2012 campaign should be an exciting one.

                You go Reuben.

The Phillies, according to Jim Salisbury, have reached an agreement with Jon Papelbon for 4 years and is approching $50 million. Now before this I had heard the rumor that the Phillies had reached a similar agreement with Ryan Madson for 4 years and $44 million and I thought, “Man, that is way too much to be spending on a closer.” And then they make this move.

This seems like an awful lot of money to be spending on a guy who, the last time he pitched in a game, he was busy giving up the game winning hit to Baltimore Oriole Robert Andino. An appearance that not only added to the fact that he had given up a run in 3 of his last 4 appearances of 2011, but nailed the door on a whale of a collapse as the Tampa Bay Rays came back after being 9 GAMES BEHIND THEM ON SEPTEMBER 3rd. Obviously, I don’t think closers have enough power to actually impact a team so negatively but he wasn’t helping and he certainly didn’t pitch well enough to deserve a contract like the one the Phillies just offered him.

All I know is that he better do exceptionally well to justify all this money.

Everyone knows about Jayson Werth’s absolutely ludicrous contract that he signed to play for the Washington Nationals. Some said, “Werth? More like WerthLESS! He chose money over winning and that is unforgivable! Have fun losing in Washington.” (Writers note: The Nats are shaping up to be a pretty good team what with Zimmerman, Moorse, and the potential of Strasbourg and Harper coming up.) Others defending Werth’s actions by saying, “Hey, if someone offered me $126 million dollars I’d take it. You would do the same thing in his position.” But I have one seriously nagging problem with baseball on this one and that is that the business aspects of baseball absolutely interfere with the game being played the way it should be.

Statistics in baseball are what players strive for in order to hit the jackpot and get their Werthian contracts. That is to say that power hitters aim for that 40 homer a year stat, short stops gun for the 20 – 20 or maybe the 30 – 30 club, and closers go for as many saves as possible. For example if Ryan Howard hits 40 homers he’s going to make a ton of money ($125 million over 5 years) despite his team coming up short in the playoffs after being the favorites two years in a row or his perennially low batting average and shortcomings in the field. If he struck out less and hit the ball to left field more often at the expense of hitting fewer homers it might help the team but that’s not what the game is about anymore. This creates a type of player that I like to refer to as ‘Stat Chasers.’ A great example of a stat chaser is Jose Reyes of the Mets who wanted to preserve his league leading batting average so in the last game of the season he bunted for a hit, decided that that was enough, and pulled himself out of the game to keep his average up. Did that help his team win? Did it boost their morale? No. It served only to put that he led the NL in batting average last year on his resume so he could make more money. Also the Statistic of saves totally ruins otherwise good pitchers. Now, my thoughts about the closer position are well documented (I mean, this is my third mentioning of it in only a few posts). But this all goes back to the big payday that relievers are gunning for. Take Madson for example. He has been in our bullpen for a while. He has paid his dues and worked hard to become the spectacular relief pitcher that he is today. However, no one cares about a bullpen pitcher who wins 3 games a year, no one notices a pitcher who leads the league in holds, and most importantly no team pays a pitcher who doesn’t save at least 20 games for them in a year. So now he has become the best pitcher and he is in line for the money that he deserves but for the wrong reasons. He got the title closer and that is more of a detriment to his ability to help a team win than anything else but now he is getting the saves and so he can get the money. Even though some saves are him coming in and nailing it down against the Mets when they are up by 3 and the 6, 7, and 8 batters are due up. Now, I’ll never blame the players I usually don’t blame the players (looking at you Reyes) but in the wake of the offseason and contract negotiations with key Phillies like Ryan Madson and Jimmy Rollins I feel like it’s something that fans should consider when keeping up to date on any moves that the Phils might make in the near future.        

       There are many reasons to like the Jim Thome aquistition like the ones that I noted in my last post, but here’s my favorite part about it. The Phillies are investing money in positions that need to be upgraded. Thome to me represents what I hope is a departure from the ‘get the biggest name possible’ mentality that the Phillies organization has been following for the last few years.

     In fact when you think of the 2008 season, which moves helped us the most? Joe Blanton and Matt Stairs. Blanton was solid throughout the regular season and helped steady out the rotation and preformed admirably in the playoffs and Stairs hit that famous two run bomb of Jon Broxton in the NLCS and was the same home run threat off the bench that Thome could end up being.

      I say ’could end up being’ not because I’m wondering if Thome can still hit, in the last two years he has averaged 20 homers a season with less than 280 at bats each season, I say ’could end up being’ as almost a bad thing because Thome could help us so much more. If Howard is injured in the early stages of the season Thome could come in and be a bonified power threat in the form of a starting first basemen which would help the team out greatly. I mean those benefits include protecting whoever the three hole hitter is (please don’t let it be Hunter Pence) and providing veteran leadership for the younger members of the team.

     Not too shabby for a one year $1.25 million dollar contract. Seems like a bargain to me.

More in depth reaction to come but my initial response is euphoria. While there is some question as to if Thome can still play first base you could say the same about Ryan Howard (zing) and the move still adds depth to the Phillies bench and adds a legitimate Home Run threat off the bench. A threat that would be particularly effective against hard throwing righty relievers that typically close games like Storen in Washington.
Way to go Amaro, for real this time. 

http://houston.culturemap.com/newsdetail/04-24-11-it-is-time-to-drive-fantasy-baseball-players-nuts-and-eliminate-the-closer-obsession-put-winning-first/

They bring up many of the same ideas that I had discussed in my Ryan Madson Brushback and also other points including situations in which teams use closers when they would be using a lefty specialist if wasn’t the ninth inning.

Keep fighting the good fight.

Let’s take a quick double take on the subject of people thinking Manuel is to blame when it comes to the Phillies post season struggles.

I have heard many people over the last few weeks blame the Phillies season’s abomination of an ending on Charlie Manual. I mean it sort of makes sense, you have one of the most talented group of players the Phillies have had since ever (probably). They were expected to win the World Series and they didn’t even get past the first round. Taking nothing away from the Cardinals, that is unacceptable. So who do you blame? The players at first but it never takes long to start blaming the manager.

                So what is Charlie’s biggest perceived weakness, he has too much faith in his players. But looking back on the Phillies in the post season, he sort of needed to. The earliest post season example I can think of is the 2007 NLDS against the Colorado Rockies. Young up and comer Kyle Kendrick was pitching early in the game when he loaded up the bases. Now let me first start by saying I know, I really do. You’re thinking “Kyle Kendrick? Pssh, how can you even begin to compare him to anyone on the 2011 roster?” Fair point, but much like Vance Worley, J. D. Durbin, and even J. A. Happ before him, Kendrick was throwing up awesome rookie year numbers ending the season going 10 – 4. Back to the example, Manual demonstrated a lack of faith in his pitcher and pulled him for Kyle Lohse who went on to throw a grand slam and the Phillies season was all but over. You see he had a moment where he showed a lack of faith and the team suffered for it.

                On the other hand, there were many times when the dark Spector of failure was looming over the Phillies and Manuel’s faith would be the spark necessary for the team to eventually come back and win. For example, the following year in the 2008 World Series, game 5 part 2, he had a decision to make. Who would be the Pinch Hitter to lead off the game when play was continued? He chose to put faith in Geoff Jenkins who no one would have expected in that situation and his faith was rewarded by Jenkins lacing a double into right and representing the winning run and eventually scoring. Another example of faith is nearing the end of the 2010 season with their closer Brad Lidge. We all remember Lidge’s perfect season in 2008 which was followed up by an atrocity of a 2009 campaign in stark comparison. So this brings us to the 2010 season after Lidge had gone through a rough season and an injury laden one respectively when the Braves came into town for an important late season 3 game series. I was lucky enough to be at every one of those games and the Phillies stifled them by way of a sweep and Lidge was called on to close every game and every game he overpowered them. This isn’t even counting what happened with the young bullpen this year when he gave guys like Michael Stutes, Antonio Bastardo, and even Michael Schwimer opportunities to prove their worth to the team and in fact they filled in wonderfully during the absence of veterans like Jose Contreras and Brad Lidge as the young bullpen pitchers became key in the Phillies miraculous 102 win season. Basically what I am saying is that someone should think twice before they pin the Phillies atrocity of an ending on our skipper when his only crime was following the rule of “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”

The ‘Brush Back’ is a piece where I am taking a look at someone who’s either overrated or who people are giving too much credit too outside off of the field.

After the 2011 campaign came to its infamous conclusion, one of the off season questions is what to do with Ryan Madson. Obviously we know what we’d be getting with Madson as far closing is concerned he has a mid-nineties fastball with a stellar change up as his two main pitches and he was very consistent last year converting 32 of 34 save opportunities which put him second in the NL in save percentage not to mention the great work he put in during the post season (I know, it still hurts me to talk about too) shutting down the Cardinals, but there are several other things to consider in this situation.

First of all even if we lose Madson we would still have Brad Lidge who, while I am under no illusion that he would be as lights out as he was in 2008 he still has that closers mentality and could be a good closer again plus we would still have Antonio Bastardo who has proved that he has the capabilities to be a big league closer after converting 8 out of 9 save opportunities and being a key member of the Phillies bullpen posting an impressive 2.64 ERA and finishing the year with a record of 6 - 1. It is worth noting though that these players have both positive and negative qualities. Lidge for one did quite well nearing the end of the season and twice came up big in the post season making key outs, however he has certainly lost velocity on his fastball which makes his slider less effective. With Bastardo there is some cause for concern as he did falter in the later stages of the season. In addition there is a condition that needs to be met in order for him to be a closer. Since he is currently the only lefty in the bullpen which means he is counted on late in the game to come in an neutralize a big left handed bat in a key situation, for example a Prince Fielder or a Bryce Harper, and if they’re saving him for a save situation we would either need to bring up Joe Savery and see how he fairs, or somehow acquire a quality lefty relievers perhaps by signing Pedro Feliciano or maybe taking another look at Dennys Reyes despite the Phillies choosing not to sign him last year after he completed his physical.

                Another way to look at it is financially. The Phillies are into some pretty heavy contracts for the next several years, Howard’s locked into one worth $125 million over 5 years and Utley is getting $100 million for 7 years, basically what I’m trying to say is that the Phillies have tons of money but they also have a very expensive team as they had the second highest payroll in the majors with an imposing $172,976,379 which makes me unsure that they have enough to invest in Ryan Madson as his agent is the notorious Scott Boras. There are numerous other options for closers out there including all-star Heath Bell and possibly others like Joe Nathan and even Jose Valverde who didn’t blow one of his MLB leading 49 saves. Another thing that should be looked at is the fact that it doesn’t matter how good Madson, or any of the other closers are, they aren’t going to help us for more than the last 5 – 6 outs of the game. I feel as though baseball has a fundamental misuse of these great pitchers. That is to say that a closer is supposed to be the best pitcher in the bullpen, he should have the best stuff in terms of pitches and he should be the most unshakeable in high pressure situations. So why are they used in situations like the ninth inning with a three run lead? Most of the guys in that bullpen (yes even David Herndon) can be counted on to not give up three runs in an inning including Lidge and Bastardo of course but also including young pitchers like Michael Schwimer. So having Madson shut the door on the other team in this situation isn’t exactly helping our team when you consider that the extra work may be making his arm tired when less talented pitchers could accomplish the same task. Especially considering during the no nonsense moments in the games, say the 7^th inning with one out and bases loaded with a slim lead and they just took Worley out of the game, who do they run out there? Michael Stutes? Saving Madson for the ninth inning there doesn’t make sense but it would happen more often than not if he were here. Therein lies the issue, Madson’s price has got to be right or else they would be spending too much money on a single guy who can only help so much due to him having the highly coveted label of ‘closer’ when we could be investing it on other aspects of the bullpen especially getting another quality lefty.