trying to figure out who is going to bat 5th in the lineup....?

Warszawa wrote:trying to figure out who is going to bat 5th in the lineup....?

My guess until Choch is back

Rollins
Revere
Utley
Howard
M. Young
Brown
Nix/Mayberry
Kratz

Ticket sales are down by about 500,000. 2.6m sold compared to 3.1m sold last year at this time.

That's a significant number. Obviously, they'll make some of it back on walk up, but even 200,000 is a big deal and would likely equate to around $15-20m in revenue decline (which is almost pure profit other than cost of goods sold for concessions).

This worries me more than anything else and I hope the failure to truly spend this year isn't reflective of the fact that the Phillies are worried about it. Grote's assumptions are premised on maintaining a luxury-tax level payroll. All bets are off if that doesn't happen.

Maybe the local TV contract means this won't matter, but I don't believe that. We're committed on this board, but most of the Phillies' revenue growth has been driven by people who are not. I firmly believe they will bail if things go badly.

It's a legitimate concern, but I think the automatic sellouts in 2010-2011 were the anomaly. This year's sales are actually above those of this time in 2009, coming off of a WFC. I think the key factor is season-ticket holders who used to scoop up stacks of extra tickets to sell on the secondary market not doing so after having trouble selling those last summer.

I definitely think there are fairweathers who will bail with another down year, but hopefully they'd be replaced by people who just love going to CBP and couldn't easily do so the past few years. And the new tiered pricing system should help.

But I really can't see the Phillies significantly cutting payroll anytime soon, regardless of on-field results. It would be incredibly short-sighted, imo, from a business perspective, in terms of the TV-deal renewal and their current profile locally and nationally. If they let go of this thing it's gonna be really hard to get it back.

My view is that this year is critical. To drop season ticket sales by 15% in one year is big. If they throw up another 80 win season, I think you will see an even larger drop next year, especially if pieces start to get sold off. Things could spiral very very quickly. If fans don't think this is a playoff team in 2014, a large number will just buy tickets on the secondary market (the prices of which will significantly drop) instead of buying packages.

I don't know what ownership will do if that happens, but I'm not optimistic. In my view, Amaro blows with a $180m payroll. I can't imagine what he would do with a $140m payroll.

Good thing we're gonna rule

Interesting Gelb article on the 8th inning in general and Adams in particular. Cliff's Notes: 8th inning guys face the meat of the order more often than closers, and Adams is awesome

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/phil ... enon-.html

long as his arm stays on, we're good

Grotewold wrote:Interesting Gelb article on the 8th inning in general and Adams in particular. Cliff's Notes: 8th inning guys face the meat of the order more often than closers, and Adams is awesome

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/phil ... enon-.html

Adams results are outstanding. Hope he's healthy.

Math in the article is odd. 11.2 baserunners per 9 is low, by my calcs. And I'm not sure if they're counting double plays and CS and stuff, which would reduce batters faced. And even in the article, Papelbon faced 4-6 more often than 1-3 or 7-9. Which means the 8th inning guys IN WINS aren't facing 4-6, but are across all games.

The thing that jumped out at me was how poorly Papelbon did vs. the middle of the order.

What next, the weed in that Jennifer Lawrence photo looks like shake

we need:

1. everyone to stay healthy
2. the final 2 innings of the game to be automatic when we're winning
3. a babip rebound for mikey
4. lee, hamels and halladay to be sub 3.15 era guys and do their jobs
5. our last 2 starters to not be terrible
6. a little bit of luck
7. a nice midseason acquisition

if we get all of that, we can win between 90 and 95 games and we will make the playoffs, which will stop the slide.

worth rooting for

im also rooting for ruin tomorrow jr to commit some sort of major indiscretion that leads to his firing

FTN wrote:we need:

1. everyone to stay healthy
2. the final 2 innings of the game to be
automatic when we're winning
3. a babip rebound for mikey
4. lee, hamels and halladay to be sub 3.15 era guys and do their jobs
5. our last 2 starters to not be terrible
6. a little bit of luck
7. a nice midseason acquisition

if we get all of that, we can win between 90 and 95 games and we will make the playoffs, which will stop the slide.

90% chance of all these things happening, well except for the healthy part

too bad some of those hinge on being healthy

Pretty cool article about Doc

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/mlb--even- ... 44597.html

I'd forgotten that we actually offered more than the Yankees did for Ichiro this winter.

This is both a devastating argument IMO against Amaro, and a pretty interesting what-if: no D. Young, obviously, but would there have been a trade or something following that signing?

I wouldn't have liked that at all, but Steaks hinted it may have been Gillick giving his buddy (Ichiro's agent) some leverage

I still don't think this is Halladay's last year as a Phillies.