FTN wrote:the red sox got back 2 good prospects in their a-gonz/crawford/beckett dump. you're not getting taijuan walker back from seattle, but you could probably get something decent. in fact, they'd probably give us smoak or ackley in return, since both of those guys look completely and totally lost in seattle.

Is that significantly better than getting to watch Lee a few more years and possibly surprising people one of those years, or -- if things get even worse -- trading him then or getting a draft pick?

yea we're just one player away from having a better roster than atlanta and washington, we should stay the course.

the cool thing will be saying how far the payroll nosedives this winter, when we're coming off a 77 win season and half empty stadium. we already have how much committed next year, $125M?

FTN wrote:yea we're just one player away from having a better roster than atlanta and washington, we should stay the course.

that's not at all what I'm saying

i give up

i know what you are saying. you're saying they should just play out the string for the next 3 years, until the current core retires, and hope for the best. and you think that will be entertaining. i dont think that will be entertaining at all. i think this team has major issues that 1 or 2 moves won't paper over, and that fluking our way in to a playoff spot is going to be difficult.

Eem wrote:I'd rather gamble on someone who might suck but has a chance of not sucking than taking on Justin Smoak

More than 1500 PAs and a .676 OPS. SAFECO kills bats but his road OPS is .708.

The more I think about it, the more I'm having a hard time seeing how Amaro makes it past this season if the Phillies have one of in not the worst offense in the majors. His design, his moves, his players. He really does not have a single excuse.

smitty wrote:

Eem wrote:I'd rather gamble on someone who might suck but has a chance of not sucking than taking on Justin Smoak

More than 1500 PAs and a .676 OPS. SAFECO kills bats but his road OPS is .708.

Cameron recently wrote about it, but he essentially highlighted that Smoak can't hit and never has been able to. I looked at his minor stats and was stunned by how little power he showed even before he got to the majors. The hype about him created a serious illusion in my brain, and apparently a lot of other people's, too.

Howard is one of the 10 worse 1st baseman in the league, right?

Eem wrote:

smitty wrote:

Eem wrote:I'd rather gamble on someone who might suck but has a chance of not sucking than taking on Justin Smoak

More than 1500 PAs and a .676 OPS. SAFECO kills bats but his road OPS is .708.

Cameron recently wrote about it, but he essentially highlighted that Smoak can't hit and never has been able to. I looked at his minor stats and was stunned by how little power he showed even before he got to the majors. The hype about him created a serious illusion in my brain, and apparently a lot of other people's, too.

smoak fooled everyone. keith law was still trying to believe even this spring. then he got sidetracked making a peach pie and now hes off the bandwagon too

Eem wrote:

smitty wrote:

Eem wrote:I'd rather gamble on someone who might suck but has a chance of not sucking than taking on Justin Smoak

More than 1500 PAs and a .676 OPS. SAFECO kills bats but his road OPS is .708.

Cameron recently wrote about it, but he essentially highlighted that Smoak can't hit and never has been able to. I looked at his minor stats and was stunned by how little power he showed even before he got to the majors. The hype about him created a serious illusion in my brain, and apparently a lot of other people's, too.

Big guy. Fine defensive first baseman. Switch hitter. Draws some walks. LOOKS like he should be good. But he really never has been.

Jermy Hermida Effect.

FTN wrote:i know what you are saying. you're saying they should just play out the string for the next 3 years, until the current core retires, and hope for the best. and you think that will be entertaining. i dont think that will be entertaining at all. i think this team has major issues that 1 or 2 moves won't paper over, and that fluking our way in to a playoff spot is going to be difficult.

Well that simplifies my recent posts to the point of condescension. But alright, I'll play along.

We dump Howard and Lee for nothing (and/or fringe prospects). What's next? What's your plan to put us in league with the Nats and Braves, since that's the threshold you put on me? A plan so much better and faster than incremental changes (with returning players or picks) when the current guys start leaving that you're cool with a garbage product the next several years.

Unless the Phils are willing to eat most of Howard's salary, no one's taking him even with Lee. Who's going to add $50MM of salary for the next few years if they take both? The Dodgers did it last year. They're not going to do it again this year. The Yanks have a stated goal to get below the luxury threshold by next year. The Red Sox unloaded their bad contracts and aren't going to load up with more one year later. A likely destination for Lee -- Texas -- isn't taking on $50MM of salary. There's nobody.

Floppy is right: No sense keeping Lee (or any other veteran of value) because, by the time the Phils are contenders again either he'll (they'll) be toast or his/their contracts will be over. It can't be stressed enough that this organization needs some bona-fide elite hitters and/or hitting prospects because no one currently in the organization qualifies, with the possible exception of Utley. If anyone is thinking that Tommy Joseph, Cody Asche, etc., are going to be anything more than decent big-leaguers (if that), he's kidding himself. The odds of anyone currently in the Phils' farm system becoming as elite a major leaguer as Rollins, Utley or Howard are so small as to be insignificant.

I've said it before: The Phils had the very good fortune to have drafted and developed 3 MVP-caliber players and one Cy Young caliber pitcher roughly simultaneously. If the Phils are to contend again, the production provided by those 3 hitters, who are in their decline years, needs to be replaced to some large extent. A lineup core of Joseph, Asche, Dom and Revere is not going to cut it going forward.

JFLNYC wrote:I've said it before: The Phils had the very good fortune to have drafted and developed 3 MVP-caliber players and one Cy Young caliber pitcher roughly simultaneously. If the Phils are to contend again, the production provided by those 3 hitters, who are in their decline years, needs to be replaced to some large extent. A lineup core of Joseph, Asche, Dom and Revere is not going to cut it going forward.

That concerns me greatly. So if it was something like Lee and Michael Young for a blue chip hitter I would strongly consider it.

And I strongly suspect they'll alter their draft approach some. Can you trade prospect pitching for prospect hitting, or is that uncommon? Can't think of too many examples off the top of my head other than Montero and Pineda.

Grotewold wrote:

FTN wrote:i know what you are saying. you're saying they should just play out the string for the next 3 years, until the current core retires, and hope for the best. and you think that will be entertaining. i dont think that will be entertaining at all. i think this team has major issues that 1 or 2 moves won't paper over, and that fluking our way in to a playoff spot is going to be difficult.

Well that simplifies my recent posts to the point of condescension. But alright, I'll play along.

We dump Howard and Lee for nothing (and/or fringe prospects). What's next? What's your plan to put us in league with the Nats and Braves, since that's the threshold you put on me? A plan so much better and faster than incremental changes (with returning players or picks) when the current guys start leaving that you're cool with a garbage product the next several years.

first, i dont think its possible to dump howard and get anything in return back, but i also dont think a team will take both howard and lee. therefore, id be trading lee in a standalone deal, and to do that will be a lot easier, and will net you something in return. the dodgers need another starter now, the need will be less when greinke comes back, but if they think they can win the world series they'd surely get involved. zach lee is their best prospect, and would probably be our best or second best pitching prospect, and hes less than a year away from being big league ready.

second, id move papelbon to a contender at the deadline that needs bullpen help. there is at least 1 every year. it looks like madson might be dead, so the angels are a fit right now. you probably wont get kaleb cowart from them, but stranger things have happened. hes on 2/26 after this year, that 2016 vesting option is a long way away. you can get a good prospect for him. not a stud, but a good prospect.

third, id trade rollins to a team that needs a shortstop. given his very reasonable AAV and short term commitment, he'll net you a really good prospect. not jurickson profar, but a top 75 guy probably, especially if the acquiring team is hurting at SS. the dodgers are an obvious fit here again, since they are trotting out justin sellers.

we have a ready-made replacement for rollins in galvis. we have plenty of young starters to replace lee. we don't need a $12m closer when we aren't going to win anything, and adams is fine there right now. id look to move him this winter though, because hes a $6m luxury.

id get young to waive his NTC in july to go to a contender.

after trading young, i'd play asche at 3b every day for the rest of the season. hes going to struggle at first, hes always a slow starter, but see what he can do. id put morgan in the rotation in lee's spot. utley will be re-signed this winter to a nice team friendly deal (this happens both in my scenario and i think its going to happen IRL), we keep chooch and revere.

if we can find someone to take howard with us paying 75% of the deal or less, we pounce. halladay walks or comes back on a really friendly deal, like 2/12. we plow all of our resources in to the best available free agent hitters. we spend nothing on pitching. and we finally fix the terribly skewed budget allocation for this roster.

its not going to happen overnight, just like you don't bandage over a 5 inch crater in someone's stomach with a bandaid. but you have to cauterize the wound and then start to re-build. even getting rid of lee, howard, rollins, and papelbon isn't going to put us back at square 1. its going to remove a bunch of really expensive (with the exception of rollins) luxury pieces.

I find that reasonable, other than concerns about who the hitters would be that we could sign with the freed-up money. But hopefully we can make things interesting this year and then act more incrementally.

It is very concerning. As of this moment the near term looks pretty grim for the franchise. With the exception of Hamels, the core is declining significantly and there's no significant (and by that I mean potentially elite) hitting help available on the farm. It's possible they can use their substantial resources to somehow acquire one or more elite hitters, but there aren't that many around and competition for them is strong, as we saw with Justin Upton. Further, as Floppy alluded to, the decline in attendance has already started, which can lead to a death spiral of of lower payrolls, leading to even lower attendance, etc.

The franchise has to find some way to avoid becoming a carbon copy of the Indians. The similarities are striking: A great young core, signed to favorable contracts leading to several years of perennial contention; a new stadium and a long series of consecutive sellouts. Then the core ages and departs, the fans stay away in droves, payroll is reduced and you're stuck in a cycle of mediocrity.

Philadelphia's a bigger market than Cleveland, so there's hope. But the franchise can't take the half measures Rube did this off season. He arguably had one last chance to go for it with this core. He either had to be all in, which would have meant signing someone like Hamilton and/or Swisher or finding some way to get Justin Upton or he might as well have started the rebuilding. He did neither. He tried to get by with the current core while adding cheap and questionable pieces.

It was unrealistic to think all of Lee, Halladay, Howard, Utley, Rollins, etc., were going to be healthy and productive at this point in their respective careers. He needed to inject some real talent which was either still in its prime or ascending in order to offset the inevitable decline of some of his veteran core. Instead we got Michael Young and Delmon Young. Despite his current struggles I still believe Revere was a step in the right direction but, under the best of circumstances, he's not going to replace the production of a Howard, Rollins or Utley.

Some really bold moves have to be made.

JFLNYC wrote:If anyone is thinking that Tommy Joseph, Cody Asche, etc., are going to be anything more than decent big-leaguers (if that), he's kidding himself. The odds of anyone currently in the Phils' farm system becoming as elite a major leaguer as Rollins, Utley or Howard are so small as to be insignificant.

While their peaks certainly weren't at the level of Rollins, Utley, or Howard, it's worth remembering that Michael Bourn and Carlos Ruiz (i.e. the last significant position players the system produced) were never ranked in the BA top 100. There's more to the prospect game than what Keith Law et al. think of a player.

JFLNYC wrote:
But the franchise can't take the half measures Rube did this off season. He arguably had one last chance to go for it with this core. He either had to be all in, which would have meant signing someone like Hamilton and/or Swisher or finding some way to get Justin Upton or he might as well have started the rebuilding. He did neither. He tried to get by with the current core while adding cheap and questionable pieces.

You are assuming that ownership would have signed off to go over the luxury tax threshold which seems like a big assumption.

JFLNYC wrote:the decline in attendance has already started, which can lead to a death spiral of of lower payrolls

I honestly can't see that. That's 1987 Phillies thinking, not today. I know there are some holdovers, but there's also some new blood that I'm sure got pretty accustomed to the prestige and higher ceiling of profit. To slash payroll for an extended period would be to flush the last eight years down the toilet in terms of public perception and brand. And while the TV deal (2015) may not be the be all and end all, it's at least a factor here.

That's why I'm more inclined to make incremental moves where you stay at least in striking distance most years. Lee for a blue-chip hitter achieves that, especially if Morgan or Biddle looks 2014-ready. But not getting rid of five or six of your best eight players all at once

The minor league hitters are a big concern. Hernandez is off to a good start at Lehigh Valley. He might end up being decent. They have old for their league guys hitting OK. Maikel Franco is one guy who may be a star but he's a long way away. Altherrrrr is off to a nice start which is good to see from one of our tool sheds. But he's still in A ball too.

The Free Agent market is getting more dicey nowadays. Lots of teams are signing their great younger players to extensions. So you are just getting guys who want long contracts into their late 30s. That's what we have now.