I don't know. I think that it is pretty clear that article is garbage. Maybe the guy was having a bad day or just heard some hard news and decide to vent by writing an emotionally charged, unsupported piece. I don't actually think you agree with him. You said you stand behind everything on your site though, so I don't know what to believe. It is acceptable to retract things though. To me, that article deserves to be taken back or at least explained further.

I am not optimistic that this will happen. You all shouldn't be either.

I was suprised at the amount of bass in Crashy's voice. I expected the monotone, but not the boom

CalvinBall wrote:I don't know. I think that it is pretty clear that article is garbage. Maybe the guy was having a bad day or just heard some hard news and decide to vent by writing an emotionally charged, unsupported piece. I don't actually think you agree with him. You said you stand behind everything on your site though, so I don't know what to believe. It is acceptable to retract things though. To me, that article deserves to be taken back or at least explained further.

I am not optimistic that this will happen. You all shouldn't be either.

he doesn't have to agree with it to support it

Barry Jive wrote:

CrashburnAlley wrote:On a larger note, I find it absolutely hilarious how, within hours of each other, people are posting about how god damn pessimistic we are, but then saying the exact same thing three posts later. This is why message boards are the dregs of sports discussion, almost as low as talk radio.

This is crap. It's not like we're all part of one large consciousness here. There are different posters with different opinions backed up by varying degrees of rationale. And this is what I was talking about with the podcast. You can't whine about a collective backlash and take them down based on a few people's opinions.

I'm curious what "the same exact thing" refers to. I don't remember anyone saying that all they feel is rage about the Phillies management, for example.

CalvinBall wrote:I don't know. I think that it is pretty clear that article is garbage. Maybe the guy was having a bad day or just heard some hard news and decide to vent by writing an emotionally charged, unsupported piece. I don't actually think you agree with him. You said you stand behind everything on your site though, so I don't know what to believe. It is acceptable to retract things though. To me, that article deserves to be taken back or at least explained further.

I am not optimistic that this will happen. You all shouldn't be either.

I don't expect my writers to espouse all of my opinions. I still think the Phillies are a team that will finish in the mid-90's in terms of wins this year and peter out from there, without knowing what moves they make in the future (like retaining Hamels). I also don't think Freddy Galvis is going to have the bat to stick around against Major League pitching long-term. But that doesn't mean I should excoriate Bradley Ankrom and redact his article.

Bob Grotz ‏ @BobGrotz
Amaro won't comment on Cole Hamels' negotiations. "You can ask it as many ways as you want," he said. "You still won't get bleep."

SMUG ALERT LEVEL AT CODE RED

CFP wrote:

Bob Grotz ‏ @BobGrotz
Amaro won't comment on Cole Hamels' negotiations. "You can ask it as many ways as you want," he said. "You still won't get bleep."

SMUG ALERT LEVEL AT CODE RED

Hammel will be a doydgers next year

its symptomatic of the fangraphs culture, whether crash wants to admit it or not.

cheap roster construction trumps actual performance. its better to get a 2 win player for $5M than it is to get a 5 win player for $15M. even though the 5 win player is better and provides more production. he costs more. spending money is bad and a sign of not being very smart.

what troubles me about phillies fans is that it seems, even with a world series, that they are scarred by what happened 15 years ago, when the team played in a run down dump in front of 15,000 fans a game. the current version of the franchise has nothing in common with those teams. everything has changed. but fans don't want to believe it. everyone spends so much time worrying about when we might miss the playoffs instead of focusing on our historic pitching rotation, the unprecedented (for the phillies) 5 straight divisions, 2 pennants, and 1 world series. these really are the halycon days. and people are missing all of the fun, because they are waiting for the anvil to fall on their head.

then, if the phillies do hit a rough patch, it will be "seeee i told you everything was ruined!" and they will gloat for a minute that they saw the rain clouds coming, and then after their moment of gloating wears off, they'll realize they didn't even enjoy the good times when they were here. everyone has their worries about the team. but every team has issues, and every team will deal with rough stretches. the sad thing is, i didn't enjoy 2008 as much as i should have, because i was worrying constantly during that run what was going to go wrong, and where things would get fucked up. then they won. on the more short term things, i still worry sometimes. but big picture? give me a fuckin' break. the phillies are in a position to win 90-100 games per year every year from now until forever. fans want the team to be committed to winning. by going out and making big signings and trades every winter, fans will keep going to every single game. teams run in to trouble and their "window closes" when they decide to stop spending money. and this normally happens when fans stop caring. the phillies basically own the town right now. CBP is still a destination, and will be for the foreseeable future. it would take a Mets like collapse, both on and off the field, to really alter the Phillies current path. And given the nature of ownership, the new tv deal, etc, this isn't going to happen.

i guess you can be miserable and expect the phillies to suck soon, but why bother? this is a good team. with a solid financial foundation and elite starting pitching. its a fun team to watch. its a team that can and should make the playoffs 9 of the next 10 years. enjoy it.

I still can't believe this numb nut, Juan Pierre, is going to start in left field on opening day. You people should be ashamed of yourselves for defending this. Or at least take long showers trying to wipe the stink off of this.

If we had re-signed Brandon Moss one of two things would have happened - he would have outhit Juan Pierre (likely) or he would have not earned a job and the rightful starting lefthanded bat in a platoon would be Laynce Nix.

jeff2sf wrote:I still can't believe this numb nut, Juan Pierre, is going to start in left field on opening day. You people should be ashamed of yourselves for defending this. Or at least take long showers trying to wipe the stink off of this.

If we had re-signed Brandon Moss one of two things would have happened - he would have outhit Juan Pierre (likely) or he would have not earned a job and the rightful starting lefthanded bat in a platoon would be Laynce Nix.

How many other people are in the Laynce Nix fan club?

FTN wrote:i guess you can be miserable and expect the phillies to suck soon, but why bother? this is a good team. with a solid financial foundation and elite starting pitching. its a fun team to watch. its a team that can and should make the playoffs 9 of the next 10 years. enjoy it.

but if that were the attitude of a stat-centric blog focused on in-depth analysis it wouldn't go anywhere. By its nature Crashburn Alley is supposed to question everything. There's a place for that. But it's also why they shouldn't resort to crybaby rage posts, because those are about as productive as us ignoring things like Juan Pierre starting in favor of big-picture optimism.

FTN wrote:its symptomatic of the fangraphs culture, whether crash wants to admit it or not.

cheap roster construction trumps actual performance. its better to get a 2 win player for $5M than it is to get a 5 win player for $15M. even though the 5 win player is better and provides more production. he costs more. spending money is bad and a sign of not being very smart.

what troubles me about phillies fans is that it seems, even with a world series, that they are scarred by what happened 15 years ago, when the team played in a run down dump in front of 15,000 fans a game. the current version of the franchise has nothing in common with those teams. everything has changed. but fans don't want to believe it. everyone spends so much time worrying about when we might miss the playoffs instead of focusing on our historic pitching rotation, the unprecedented (for the phillies) 5 straight divisions, 2 pennants, and 1 world series. these really are the halycon days. and people are missing all of the fun, because they are waiting for the anvil to fall on their head.

then, if the phillies do hit a rough patch, it will be "seeee i told you everything was ruined!" and they will gloat for a minute that they saw the rain clouds coming, and then after their moment of gloating wears off, they'll realize they didn't even enjoy the good times when they were here. everyone has their worries about the team. but every team has issues, and every team will deal with rough stretches. the sad thing is, i didn't enjoy 2008 as much as i should have, because i was worrying constantly during that run what was going to go wrong, and where things would get #$!&@ up. then they won. on the more short term things, i still worry sometimes. but big picture? give me a #$!&@' break. the phillies are in a position to win 90-100 games per year every year from now until forever. fans want the team to be committed to winning. by going out and making big signings and trades every winter, fans will keep going to every single game. teams run in to trouble and their "window closes" when they decide to stop spending money. and this normally happens when fans stop caring. the phillies basically own the town right now. CBP is still a destination, and will be for the foreseeable future. it would take a Mets like collapse, both on and off the field, to really alter the Phillies current path. And given the nature of ownership, the new tv deal, etc, this isn't going to happen.

i guess you can be miserable and expect the phillies to suck soon, but why bother? this is a good team. with a solid financial foundation and elite starting pitching. its a fun team to watch. its a team that can and should make the playoffs 9 of the next 10 years. enjoy it.

This is what I was talking about, with regards to elitism. There's no right or wrong way to be a baseball fan. If you want to be a sunshine-and-lollipops Phillies fan, by all means go ahead. Likewise, if you want to be a shit-gets-fucked-up-real-soon kind of Phillies fan, do that if you want. Stop worrying about how other fans choose to watch baseball. For as much as you claim the pessimist is missing, you're missing even more by spending your time wondering what's going on in his head.

Barry Jive wrote:

FTN wrote:i guess you can be miserable and expect the phillies to suck soon, but why bother? this is a good team. with a solid financial foundation and elite starting pitching. its a fun team to watch. its a team that can and should make the playoffs 9 of the next 10 years. enjoy it.

but if that were the attitude of a stat-centric blog focused on in-depth analysis it wouldn't go anywhere. By its nature Crashburn Alley is supposed to question everything. There's a place for that. But it's also why they shouldn't resort to crybaby rage posts, because those are about as productive as us ignoring things like Juan Pierre starting in favor of big-picture optimism.

i get that. my problem with not only that post, but of most of the writing out there, is that its written in such haste, and its conclusions are always definitive. and baseball does not work like that. nothing really works like that.

I agree with you, but isn't that attitude what you hate about smitty's posts? You post with more conviction than most people here

CrashburnAlley wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:I don't know. I think that it is pretty clear that article is garbage. Maybe the guy was having a bad day or just heard some hard news and decide to vent by writing an emotionally charged, unsupported piece. I don't actually think you agree with him. You said you stand behind everything on your site though, so I don't know what to believe. It is acceptable to retract things though. To me, that article deserves to be taken back or at least explained further.

I am not optimistic that this will happen. You all shouldn't be either.

I don't expect my writers to espouse all of my opinions. I still think the Phillies are a team that will finish in the mid-90's in terms of wins this year and peter out from there, without knowing what moves they make in the future (like retaining Hamels). I also don't think Freddy Galvis is going to have the bat to stick around against Major League pitching long-term. But that doesn't mean I should excoriate Bradley Ankrom and redact his article.

I don't mean agree with it in the rightness or wrongness of his "argument." I mean agree with it in how he wet about writing it by providing no actual backing to what he was claiming other than recounting a tale about Dan Uggla.

Barry Jive wrote:I agree with you, but isn't that attitude what you hate about smitty's posts? You post with more conviction than most people here

theres a difference between typing a million words and saying nothing and then having an opinion on something and admitting that you might not be right.

CrashburnAlley wrote:

FTN wrote:its symptomatic of the fangraphs culture, whether crash wants to admit it or not.

cheap roster construction trumps actual performance. its better to get a 2 win player for $5M than it is to get a 5 win player for $15M. even though the 5 win player is better and provides more production. he costs more. spending money is bad and a sign of not being very smart.

what troubles me about phillies fans is that it seems, even with a world series, that they are scarred by what happened 15 years ago, when the team played in a run down dump in front of 15,000 fans a game. the current version of the franchise has nothing in common with those teams. everything has changed. but fans don't want to believe it. everyone spends so much time worrying about when we might miss the playoffs instead of focusing on our historic pitching rotation, the unprecedented (for the phillies) 5 straight divisions, 2 pennants, and 1 world series. these really are the halycon days. and people are missing all of the fun, because they are waiting for the anvil to fall on their head.

then, if the phillies do hit a rough patch, it will be "seeee i told you everything was ruined!" and they will gloat for a minute that they saw the rain clouds coming, and then after their moment of gloating wears off, they'll realize they didn't even enjoy the good times when they were here. everyone has their worries about the team. but every team has issues, and every team will deal with rough stretches. the sad thing is, i didn't enjoy 2008 as much as i should have, because i was worrying constantly during that run what was going to go wrong, and where things would get #$!&@ up. then they won. on the more short term things, i still worry sometimes. but big picture? give me a #$!&@' break. the phillies are in a position to win 90-100 games per year every year from now until forever. fans want the team to be committed to winning. by going out and making big signings and trades every winter, fans will keep going to every single game. teams run in to trouble and their "window closes" when they decide to stop spending money. and this normally happens when fans stop caring. the phillies basically own the town right now. CBP is still a destination, and will be for the foreseeable future. it would take a Mets like collapse, both on and off the field, to really alter the Phillies current path. And given the nature of ownership, the new tv deal, etc, this isn't going to happen.

i guess you can be miserable and expect the phillies to suck soon, but why bother? this is a good team. with a solid financial foundation and elite starting pitching. its a fun team to watch. its a team that can and should make the playoffs 9 of the next 10 years. enjoy it.

This is what I was talking about, with regards to elitism. There's no right or wrong way to be a baseball fan. If you want to be a sunshine-and-lollipops Phillies fan, by all means go ahead. Likewise, if you want to be a shit-gets-fucked-up-real-soon kind of Phillies fan, do that if you want. Stop worrying about how other fans choose to watch baseball. For as much as you claim the pessimist is missing, you're missing even more by spending your time wondering what's going on in his head.

I’m not optimistic. And you shouldn’t be either.

CalvinBall wrote:

CrashburnAlley wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:I don't know. I think that it is pretty clear that article is garbage. Maybe the guy was having a bad day or just heard some hard news and decide to vent by writing an emotionally charged, unsupported piece. I don't actually think you agree with him. You said you stand behind everything on your site though, so I don't know what to believe. It is acceptable to retract things though. To me, that article deserves to be taken back or at least explained further.

I am not optimistic that this will happen. You all shouldn't be either.

I don't expect my writers to espouse all of my opinions. I still think the Phillies are a team that will finish in the mid-90's in terms of wins this year and peter out from there, without knowing what moves they make in the future (like retaining Hamels). I also don't think Freddy Galvis is going to have the bat to stick around against Major League pitching long-term. But that doesn't mean I should excoriate Bradley Ankrom and redact his article.

I don't mean agree with it in the rightness or wrongness of his "argument." I mean agree with it in how he wet about writing it by providing no actual backing to what he was claiming other than recounting a tale about Dan Uggla.

His thoughts on the gloomy days that lie ahead for the Phillies rested on the recent rash of injuries and the enormity of the contracts that Amaro has handed out recently. Sounds like something pretty much every Phillies fan says. The only difference is that Michael is more passionate and more eloquent than the average fan, so he was able to accent what that meant to him. If you're used to my type of writing, then I can see how you missed the factual underpinnings of his post, but it is there nevertheless. I'm not a storyteller; Michael is a gifted storyteller.

it's obviously not something every Phillies fan says, or this wouldn't be an argument

by the way, lol at "millions of readers" for your blog, crash.