jfc. i met rube when he was a kid. hung around with lots of mutual friends and his brother.

but he must go.

I don't know how credible he is, but one friend who claims he knows people in the Phils front office thinks that they will give Rube at least 3 years to rebuild. They like the talent he's added and think they've been snake bitten by injuries and thus underperforming.

I'm inclined to call BS because I don't think anyone in the Phillies management circles is delusional enough to think only injuries are holding them back. I hope Rubens gone after this year, but realistically he will probably get 1 more year.

"You want to find someone you like better than the team that has him," Proefrock said.
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/phi ... ha9R3Hb.99

That's the quote I love. Using that as a measure, the Phils will succeed time and time again.

It drives me crazy that this argument is always presented in terms of scouting vs. sabermetrics. First of all, they're not mutually exclusive. And, even if they were, the dichotomy is not between those two but, rather, between scouting and common fucking sense.

I've been following baseball since way before the word sabermetrics even existed. But even back in those Dark Ages anyone who still had a marble or two rattling around in his head understood that getting on base was a really good thing when it came to scoring runs. I remember playing Strat-O-Matic as a teenager and trying to make fictitious trades for guys who got on base a lot. In 1972 I remember making a "trade" for Ron Hunt to bat lead off because I knew he'd get on base, since the year before he had been HBP 50 times. I remember working walks in Little League in the mid-60's. I've used them as an example before, but the '93 Phils just wore pitchers down physically AND mentally with their core of patient, high-OBP hitters. The Yankees of the same era were very much the same.

My point is that the Phils don't even need to hire a staff of analysts. All they need to do is take a few minutes and peruse Baseball-Reference or FanGraphs to get a sense of a hitter's approach. Yes, by all means, use your scouts. But unless and until this franchise overcomes its organizational blindspot about OBP, the only hope we have for a good lineup is dumb luck.

To JFL's point, I have a guess that the Phillies face the worst 3-4 pitchers on an opponent's staff more rarely than most teams. Starters tend to go deep against them, and the relievers they see are mostly LOOGYs, setup men and closers.

The beauty of the great offensive teams like the '93 and '07 clubs was that they'd exhaust the starter and get deep into a team's middle relief, then just pummel those guys. But this doesn't happen if the starter always gets through the first five innings throwing 68 pitches and allowing one solo homer.

JFLNYC wrote:"You want to find someone you like better than the team that has him," Proefrock said.

Well they certainly followed that with Yuniesky Betancourt and Delmon Young.

Those numbers on Young last season are amazing. #20 in all of MLB in batting with men on base and #100 in knocking them in. Awful.

is "atrocious plate discipline and pitch recognition" not part of the scouting report on delmon or did rube just ignore that part?

Revere-Hernandez-Brown-Howard-D. Young-Frandsen-Kratz-Galvis-Cloyd

Your 2013 Phillies.

Dom;s batting 3rd though, me likey.

Is Rollins hurt? He was good yesterday.

Sore after fouling a few balls off his foot last night.

Some athletes today can be such pussies. Rub some fucking dirt on it Jimmy.

Jim Salisbury ‏@JSalisburyCSN 2m
Dom Brown tied M. Cabrera for most HRs in MLB in May (12). Dom was 4th in slugging .688 and RBI 25. Ryan Howard's 37 Ks, 2nd in MLB in May

Phillies dominating the top of MLB leaderboards

Don't forget Cole leading the majors in losses and being the first pitcher since 1891 to lose 9 games before June 1. Recordzzzzz!

Also this

Jim Salisbury ‏@JSalisburyCSN 1m
In May, Phils relievers had .363 on base percentage against and .281 BA against, both highest in MLB. OPS against was 802, second highest

Jim Salisbury ‏@JSalisburyCSN 49s
One more May number -- Phils scored 3.46 runs per game, ranking 28th in majors

BigEd76 wrote:Don't forget Cole leading the majors in losses and being the first pitcher since 1891 to lose 9 games before June 1. Recordzzzzz!

Wow. Didn't realize that. That's hard to do, especially with 5-man rotations.

Is today's lineup for real

i'm taking the path of blissful ignorance. don't want to talk about it anymore.

td11 wrote:is "atrocious plate discipline and pitch recognition" not part of the scouting report on delmon or did rube just ignore that part?

Yeh, this is the part that gets me. I think it's stupid to rely almost completely on scouts, but if you're going to do it that way, how in the world does anyone look at DYoung or MYoung or many of the other guys we've gotten under RAJ and think they are suddenly going to start playing the game differently than they've always played it. I also don't see how RAJ can say something like "production is all that matters" (paraphrasing) with a straight face when the players he's signing have been terrible at exactly that skill. The guy thinks his Stanford education makes him smarter than everyone else and that he's got it all figured out. What a joke.

Production is what matters. I look at the Mariners. They have guys with great "approaches." Ackley is very patient. He has also sucked so bad he's back at Tacoma. Saunders and Smoak are also great approach guys. They aren't hitting either.

Meanwhile, the less patient guys -- Morales, Ibanez, Morse -- have been raking.

Everyone understands the value of walks. And given my druthers, I'd like a lineup that is really good at drawing walks like our mid-decade teams. But there are plenty of guys with great "approaches" who just can't hit.

Production is what matters. Rube is right about that. He needs to get some guys who can actually produce runs. What he has right now,isn't doing it.