The B1G Piece wrote:Phillies have second best record against NL East, behind Washington.

wat.

Barves

Keep on Barvin'!

ffs

My buddy's mom is a season ticket holder. She got married like 3 years ago and her kids surprised her by hiring the Phanatic to come to the reception. It was awesome.

im excited for hoskins to come up this weekend or whenever it is supposed to be.

when altherr comes back guess TJ finally gets put on the bench?

BigEd76 wrote:

Bill McNeal wrote:From a link mlb at bat sent me. I've found

Toco
Tojo
Torrito
Cesita
Vincente
Nola
Compa F
Nova
A-A-Ron
Pavo
Fein Machine
A-Mo
Pivetta
TK
Compa H
Buck
Knapp Time
Nicky Dubs
Pinto Bean
Compa G
Eick

For those that can't figure out some of the nicknames:

Where's Gramps? Guess they forgot Joseph's jersey

gr wrote:Not exactly sure where to post this, but I called the Phillies marketing department to inquire about hiring the Phanatic to appear during our wedding weekend in late Sept. First, the contact In got from a friend who's dad works at CBP, refused to get back to me. After 9 months of intermittently checking in, she finally referred me to someone else, but only gave me a general phone number, not her email. I call that person. A few days later I get a call back at a time when I couldn't pick up then phone. I call a few more times, never getting a live person (or a dead one, sit on it Bucky).

Then, on Monday, I call again. She picks up the phone.
"Hello" (Not, hello this...just hello, like a home phone)
"I'm calling for [name redacted (again, Bucky etc)"
"Speaking"
"Hi {name], we traded phone messages last week, I'm calling about-"
"Yeah, I get alot of calls, you have to be more specific"

I was in the middle of being more specific, but don't let that bother you. She proceeds to alternate between cutting me off and saying things aren't possible. So, I switch to my backup tactic, which is to continuous ask questions about what the options are. Since it's a game night, I suggest having him at the church pre-ceremony to greet folks in the courtyard.

"That won't work. You don't want that at your wedding."

BITCH THATS MY DECISION. I AM IN CHARGE OF MY WEDDING NOT YOU. GET @#$%ing BENT.

Finally, after I explain that it took about 9 months for me to reach her, she says something like "all you had to do is email me" and I explain I would have but didn't have her email (and that I left my email on her voicemail).

"Well, I've been doing this for 20 years and no one's ever had a problem before."

Yeah. I bet they have. In fact, she detailed to me all the requests that she gets that the franchise won't do or consider. None of which were similar to or had anything to do with what I was asking for.

Great ambassador for the club.

You don't want that at your wedding... lol

They definitely would be willing to send one of the guys in the TMac costumes though

what the hell is friend g? friend f?

nicknames

I'm disappointed they don't call Tommy "Abner"

gr, you can play this podcast with the Phanatic for your guests

I was looking at it last night and if my count was right the Phillies are 8th in the NL in runs allowed and 16th in MLB. Pretty much the definition of mediocre but because I WATCH THE GAMES I would have guessed they were substantially worse than mediocre at stopping the other team from scoring, if only because of the bullpen.

Of course they are 15th/29th in runs scored, so...

Get Mike Trout.

Too bad they needed G rated nicknames... I'm sure someone in the league is bitch tits or tiny dick

Zolecki reporting Hoskins will be called up today. YE

are we past the date that costs an arb year

Bucky wrote:are we past the date that costs an arb year

Well past it.

After the death of Dutch I was thinking a bit about those post-93 teams, especially the immediate aftermath and how quickly things fell all to pieces, and one player I thought of was Jon Zuber. There is a lovely article about him on sabr available here. I think his story is an interesting and bittersweet object lesson in the fallacy of the idea of true "meritocracy" existing in anywhere - if we take meritocracy to mean a system of advancement that puts every consideration other than pure, raw, physical and/or mental ability aside. If such a system were to exist anywhere, surely it would be in the realm of professional sports, where production would seem to trump every other concern. At the top of the food chain, that is no doubt true, or at least mostly true - special players will be forgiven all manner of personal indiscretions (except, apparently, protesting police brutality against African Americans). But at the margins, sports is like any other business - politics and fads have as much to do with who gets promoted and who doesn't as evaluation of actual ability. This is perhaps neither surprising nor particularly poignant when it comes to the obvious: everyone knows that players at the margins of major league rosters are held to a different, higher standard when it comes to behavior than are the star players. I heard a story on the radio just yesterday of a player cut by the Patriots for falling asleep during a team meeting during a playoff run of theirs - a player they never replaced, choosing to go through the entire playoffs down one player, as if to literally enact the notion that "The New England Patriots" are bigger than any one man.

But what is poignant is how much fads in the evaluation of performance, and in what supposedly builds a winning team, can affect who gets a job and who doesn't. Here is Jon Zuber's level, age, OBP, and OPS, by year from 1995-1999:

1995 AAA 25 .360 .738 - Never appeared in a major league game for the Phillies, who went 69-75
1996 AAA 26 .394 .811 - Appeared in 30 games for the 1996 Phillies, who went 67-95
1997 AAA 27 .421 .872 - Never appeared in a major league game for the 1997 Phillies, who went 68-94.
1998 AAA 28 .414 .893 - Appeared in 38 games for the 1998 Phillies, who went 75-87
1999 AAA 29 .421 .834 - Never appeared in a major league game for the 1999 Phillies, who went 77-85

The Phillies went an aggregate of 356-436, a .449 winning percentage, over these 5 season. But they could only find 151 PAs across two non-consecutive seasons (96 & 98) to give to a guy who sported a .398 OBP at AAA from his age 25-29 seasons. Meanwhile, at the big league level, the Phillies played Mariano Duncan, Kevin Elster, Dave Hollins, Greg Jeffries, Randy Ready, and even Gene Schall (another guy who probably deserved more of a shot than he got) at 1B in 1995 alone. Before he was out of the organization, the Phillies would also try Ruben Amaro, Kevin Jordan, J.R. Phillips, Benito Santiago, Todd Zeile, Rico Brogna, Darren Daulton, Mike Robertson, Rex Hudler, and Torey Lovullo (???) at first base, although to be fair it was mostly Rico Brogna's position in 98-99.*

In 1999, 29 year old Zuber had to fight for a roster spot with 28 year old David Doster - and lost, despite the fact that Doster had posted an OPS over .800 only once (in 1996, at age 26, .890 - he had a legit good year in AAA that season), never had an OPB over .380 at any level of organized baseball over a full season (he did put up a .400 in 9 games at Clearwater in 1993 and a .405 in 24 games at Tucson in Arizona'a system in 2005, at age 34), and managed to put up an atrocious slash line of .196/ .282 / .309 / .591 / OPS+ 30 in 1999 for the Phils - but somehow stuck around for the whole season, all while Zuber was ho-humming a .295 / .421 / .413 / .834 at AAA.

There is no way, in today's environment, a guy like Zuber, with a demonstrated ability to get on base like this, would be so egregiously passed over. He would have been given a shot, even by the damn Phillies. But this was the era just before Moneyball changed the way teams thought, and the knock against Zuber was that he didn't hit enough home runs and (I assume) that he could only play 1B. What's weird is that, if Zuber had been given a chance get his sea legs under him and adjust to MLB pitching - and why not? It's not as though the Phillies were exactly setting the world on fire in 1995-1997 - it's not as though there weren't plenty of examples of low-power but high-OBP 1Bmen that he could have followed: Pete Rose is the obvious one (though he moved to 1B later in his career), but forget him, there were the then-current Jon Olerud and Sean Casey blazing that exact trail.

Zuber was denied a chance because the Phillies thought a certain way about the first base position, which was the traditional way. That was a philosophical rather than empirical concern, because on the merits, he deserved every chance to prove himself at the MLB level.

gr wrote:Not exactly sure where to post this, but I called the Phillies marketing department to inquire about hiring the Phanatic to appear during our wedding weekend in late Sept. First, the contact In got from a friend who's dad works at CBP, refused to get back to me. After 9 months of intermittently checking in, she finally referred me to someone else, but only gave me a general phone number, not her email. I call that person. A few days later I get a call back at a time when I couldn't pick up then phone. I call a few more times, never getting a live person (or a dead one, sit on it Bucky).

Then, on Monday, I call again. She picks up the phone.
"Hello" (Not, hello this...just hello, like a home phone)
"I'm calling for [name redacted (again, Bucky etc)"
"Speaking"
"Hi {name], we traded phone messages last week, I'm calling about-"
"Yeah, I get alot of calls, you have to be more specific"

I was in the middle of being more specific, but don't let that bother you. She proceeds to alternate between cutting me off and saying things aren't possible. So, I switch to my backup tactic, which is to continuous ask questions about what the options are. Since it's a game night, I suggest having him at the church pre-ceremony to greet folks in the courtyard.

"That won't work. You don't want that at your wedding."

BITCH THATS MY DECISION. I AM IN CHARGE OF MY WEDDING NOT YOU. GET @#$%ing BENT.

Finally, after I explain that it took about 9 months for me to reach her, she says something like "all you had to do is email me" and I explain I would have but didn't have her email (and that I left my email on her voicemail).

"Well, I've been doing this for 20 years and no one's ever had a problem before."

Yeah. I bet they have. In fact, she detailed to me all the requests that she gets that the franchise won't do or consider. None of which were similar to or had anything to do with what I was asking for.

Great ambassador for the club.

I quote this here because if you read the article I link to above, one of the things that is striking about Zuber's story is the kind of attitude that the Phillies permitted to permeate their organization in the late 90s, and perhaps even up to the present moment. Zuber got a shot in 2000 with the Yankees, and although they didn't give him a roster spot either, even though they conceded he'd basically earned it (but he couldn't play CF), he like playing on the Yankees better because all the players treated him with respect in spring training, with some pretty big names even asking him for advice about how to hit left handed pitching. This contrasted with the Phillies, where only four players would even talk to him.

I wonder which four they were.

Also, I feel like this explains a lot about those mid-to-late 90s clubs, and the franchise in general at that time.

* - I actually always liked Rico, I know he caught a lot of flak for being below-average in terms of offensive output for that position, but he overcame a lot to play at all, and he did have some pop and a knack for hitting home runs at the right time, and probably had the best glove I've ever seen from a Phillies first baseman.

BigEd76 wrote:Zolecki reporting Hoskins will be called up today. YE

And me going to my first (and only?) game of the year tonight. Oh, the joy.