I suspect he's talking about how, after losing their most productive offensive player after the 2010 season, Rube opted to try to convince himself and us that the production could be replaced by Ben Francisco rather than signing, e.g., Lance Berkman. Berkman, of course, signed with the Cards for 1/$8MM, had a slash line of 31/94/.301 with a .959 OPS and a 164 OPS+. Not only was he a key contributor to the Cards' WS victory that year, but he also stuck a dagger in the Phils during the NLDS. After realizing Francisco wasn't the answer, of course, Rube went out and got Pence at the cost of some of his best prospects. And, btw, that's not second guessing since the Berkman alternative was advocated both here and elsewhere at the time.

As for Coco Crisp, he's been a 3.1, 2.0, 2.6 and 2.2 (so far) WAR player over the last 4 years, currently making $7MM on the last year of his contract (with a team option for $7.5MM for 2014).

Crisp’s been pretty hot over the last week, and as the “last calendar year” timeframe has moved on to no longer include a brief cold spell from last June, Crisp looks even better — he’s 20th in baseball in wOBA, right in between Carlos Gonzalez & Carlos Santana. That’s pretty impressive company, and it only looks better when you go by WAR, where he sits at 17th.

While it’s more than unlikely Crisp has suddenly found a new true talent level at his age, this isn’t a BABIP fantasy, and it’s probably important to remember that he’s been a little underrated for years. Crisp has four different three-win seasons under his belt, peaking at 5.1 WAR in 2004, but he was injured in 2009 and missed much of the first half of 2010 as he dealt with injuries to his shoulder, fingers, and intercostal.

Link

And, again, not second guessing:

Get Coco Crisp. He's basically the same as Pagan or Vic (or even Bourn, unless you buy that he's a 6 WAR player). He's got 1/7 on his deal with an option for 1/7.5. At that price you've got plenty left to address other needs.

Link

jerseyhoya wrote:Commies have five year plans, and they usually result in a lot of people starving and/or being executed

Mao ZeMaro

Yes.

They also had very specific industries. Number 2 Relief Pitcher Plant outside of Houston is operating at 47% efficiency as well. Number 1 plant in Oswego, NY is better at 63% but is lacking horsehide for baseballs as the "Heroic People's Horse Ranch" outside of Salina, Kansas has been hit by a large tornado and our peace-loving friends in Haiti have not been able to produce enough rum for our stankhanovite brothers to actually craft baseballs.

I suspect we will have to buy baseballs and relief pitchers on the international market using our hard currency reserves generated by the sales of malware and pron. Beloved Chairman Selig is unhappy and Great Leader Amaro has been looking to bridge the gap between the Trostkyite clowns in Mongolia in order to get some relief pitchers from the steppes.

I suspect we are in for hard time as The Bullpen FIve Year Plan numbers are not so good right now.

But thankfully State Store 14 in Ardmore has good amounts of Stoli vodka to drown our sorrows. Perhaps the running dog capitalists have cracked the code on the relief pitching paradox as described by Comrade Smitty in his legendary treatise "Baseball is a Funny Game."

If only we were not atheists and could accept the worship of Bas'Baal.

Sigh.

jerseyhoya wrote:Commies have five year plans, and they usually result in a lot of people starving and/or being executed

djbigpelf, don't you have something better to do, like eat foods loaded with fatty acids?

Murphy wrote: Amaro cited Howard's Achilles injury as being a factor in his current struggles, but Howard suffered that injury when he was in the last year of his old deal.

I know what he's getting at here -- that the Achilles injury is partly on Amaro because he didn't need to address the contract until after it happened. I'd argue that's disingenuous, since it was a freak injury that could have happened to any player who got extended before their deal was up, but OK. But the injury is a factor in his struggles. It's fine for Amaro to say that today.

Murphy wrote:Amaro cited Howard's Achilles injury as being a factor in his current struggles, but Howard suffered that injury when he was in the last year of his old deal. The five-year extension he signed in April of 2010 did not begin until 2012. The Phillies thought they were getting a concession from Howard in agreeing to a deal of five years. But the five-year, $125 million contract that Josh Hamilton signed as a free agent this offseason suggests that they misread the market, and that Howard would not have been as likely to command a longer deal had they allowed him to reach free agency.

Hamilton as the be all and end all comp? No mention of Pujols and Fielder, who play 1B/DH and got twice as much?

Murphy wrote: All of those battling lines and OPS-pluses and home run totals look attractive now not just because of players like Michael Young and Delmon Young and Ben Revere, but because of the big decision that the Phillies made to acquire Hunter Pence at the trade deadline in 2011, shipping away two blue chip prospects in Jonathan Singleton and Jarred Cosart to the Astros in return. Pence was a solid run producer for the Phillies, hitting .289/.357/.486 with a 125 OPS+ and 28 home runs in 676 plate appearances during his time with the club. But then they traded him away without a plan -- or, at least, without a plan they could execute -- to replace him. They did not have the blue chip prospects required to acquire Justin Upton, who is hitting .247/.358/.477 with a 126 OPS+ and 15 home runs in 289 plate appearances for the Braves while $5 million less than Pence is earning with the Giants in his final year of arbitration

So Pence (125 OPS+) was "solid" but it's a disaster because we might have been able to give up more for Upton (126 OPS+ and dropping)? OK.

The point of acquiring a bat instead of Papelbon is totally fair, although I continue to question if that nets out positively. Can you even imagine the bullpen the past two years? And it appears we're gonna make out OK on a Papelbon deal if it comes to that.

As to JFLY's Berkman point, again, there's some fairness to that. But I'd at least mention the presence of Domonic Brown that winter. You know, the guy the Phillies "jerked around" and buried for longer than they should've

the russians, son, don't take a dump without a plan.

Grateful for that.

Grotewold wrote:

Murphy wrote: Amaro cited Howard's Achilles injury as being a factor in his current struggles, but Howard suffered that injury when he was in the last year of his old deal.

I know what he's getting at here -- that the Achilles injury is partly on Amaro because he didn't need to address the contract until after it happened. I'd argue that's disingenuous, since it was a freak injury that could have happened to any player who got extended before their deal was up, but OK. But the injury is a factor in his struggles. It's fine for Amaro to say that today.

Murphy wrote:Amaro cited Howard's Achilles injury as being a factor in his current struggles, but Howard suffered that injury when he was in the last year of his old deal. The five-year extension he signed in April of 2010 did not begin until 2012. The Phillies thought they were getting a concession from Howard in agreeing to a deal of five years. But the five-year, $125 million contract that Josh Hamilton signed as a free agent this offseason suggests that they misread the market, and that Howard would not have been as likely to command a longer deal had they allowed him to reach free agency.

Hamilton as the be all and end all comp? No mention of Pujols and Fielder, who play 1B/DH and got twice as much?

Well, the one thing I'd say about the Achilles is that by extending Howard so early, Amaro missed the chance to gauge in 2011 whether he should actually lock him up before the contract expires. And we didn't see anything from Howard in 2011 that suggested he should extend Howard during the season, especially not at an above-market deal. So if he hadn't jumped the gun, then he would've had a full 2011 season of data, including the Achilles injury. IMO, High Cheese didn't phrase it very well, but he has a valid point.

I concede that Amaro could have extended Howard during the 2011 season and run into the same Achilles problem, but based upon the 2010-11 performance, it probably would've been for less years or less money, so the deal wouldn't be quite as painful now.

The Howard contract is a big fat L. Let me get that right on the table.

But I don't think it was terrible to think in early 2010 that you could save some money by extending Howard, and that he could remain productive through at least 2014 or even 2015 (as Murphy mentions).

I know Pujols and Fielder were better players, especially Pujols back then, but did anyone here really think they'd get twice as much? Or that those guys were less likely to break down than Howard? Hell, the Pujols to the Phils thing was a legitimate idea here on BSG. And as I've said many times before, it was never realistic to let Howard's deal play out and replace him with a non marquee guy. Right or wrong.

Grotewold wrote:The Howard contract is a big fat L. Let me get that right on the table.

But I don't think it was terrible to think in early 2010 that you could save some money by extending Howard, and that he could remain productive through at least 2014-2015 (as Murphy mentions).

I know Pujols and Fielder were better players, especially Pujols back then, but did anyone here really think they'd get twice as much? Hell, the Pujols to the Phils thing was a legitimate notion here on BSG. And as I've said many times before, it was never realistic to let Howard's deal play out and replace him with a non-marquee guy. Right or wrong.

I don't disagree with any of that.

the problem with the howard contract, and one that it seems the phillies have made a few times, is thinking "well, its this guy or its nothing"....grote, i've seen you argue the point before that the reason they extended howard way before they had to was that they'd get to howard's free agent year and then there wouldn't be anyone available on the market and they'd be screwed. this assumes that part of their thinking was "either we keep him or we have no first baseman"....when in reality, there are always options, both internally and externally. had the phillies just waited on howard to get to free agency and had he not gotten hurt, they might have had to give him 5/125, or 6/150, or 10/250 or whatever. maybe. but they still had the money to do it. obviously. but if they had backed away, they could have found another player. first base is the easiest position to fill, because you can find even the most worthless slug defensively and he can play a passable first base. obviously the offensive threshold is higher, but lets not get too bogged down in the details.

the point being, we approached it the wrong way. howard would have been an option after the 2011 season even if he was a free agent. and he didn't take a discount in signing that 5 year deal. he signed for market rate way ahead of time. it was great negotiating by his agent, and really poor from the phillies.

I stipulated it was a Big Fat L and that the marquee 1B thing wasn't necessarily smart. I hear you, but you contradicted yourself on saying he could have gotten upwards of $150M and then saying he definitely didn't take a discount with the extension

Fielder didn't get twice as much. He had a 164 OPS+ in the 2011 season compared to Howard's 126 and was 4 years younger than Howard. So that fact that he got 4 more years at essentially the same AAV makes sense. In fact, if you use Howard's AAV as a benchmark and accept that Fielder was the better hitter going into 2012 (he was), you could make the argument that Fielder is slightly underpaid. Moreover if, based on their respective production and ages, we consider the Fielder and Howard contracts to be roughly comparable, it follows that Howard's value in free agency after the 2011 season would likely have been no greater than it was when he signed his extension two seasons earlier. In turn that conclusion underscores the folly of thinking that extending Howard early saved the Phils any money not to mention the additional liability of the Phils assuming the entire risk of injury during those two years.

We've discussed the Howard contract ad nauseum, so I don't mean to belabor the point. But to argue that Pujols' or Fielder's contracts somehow make Howard's look better ignores the fact that the Phils weren't forced to sign any of them. Further, it's revisionist history to suggest in any way that the risks associated with any extension of Howard's contract -- let alone an extension done 2 years early -- weren't readily apparent in 2010.

ek wrote:probably also Montgomery had some say in the howard signing

this is all anyone needs to know vis-a-vis amaro in this particular issue

I disagree that it wasn't twice as much. The Phils (no NL team, really) could offer Fielder a nine-year deal. I get that we didn't need to sign Fielder or Pujols if Howard walked but feel they were dead set on a marquee guy (again -- right or wrong). And if Howard's deal is so awful, why are you using it as a benchmark for Fielder? Why not just say elite 1B were worth $240M on the open market, and analyze whether thinking in 2010 that Howard could even come close to an elite level was reasonable?

Also, why was Howard so much more likely to break down than those guys? He was still very productive through that bad injury in late 2010, which could have happened to anyone.

I wasn't twice as much. Do the numbers. And the whole point about their being set on a marquee guy is that it was wrong.

JFLNYC wrote:I wasn't twice as much. Do the numbers.

OK, sorry. 5/125 versus 10/214

Can we settle on a fuck ton more? Given the implausibility of an NL team paying a fat guy for that long?

Again, BIG FAT L, the Howard contract. Questionable thought process, to say the least. Just not quite the idiocy most would profess, imo.

Grotewold wrote:I stipulated it was a Big Fat L and that the marquee 1B thing wasn't necessarily smart. I hear you, but you contradicted yourself on saying he could have gotten upwards of $150M and then saying he definitely didn't take a discount with the extension

he didn't take a discount relative to the market rate for elite players

FTN wrote:

Grotewold wrote:I stipulated it was a Big Fat L and that the marquee 1B thing wasn't necessarily smart. I hear you, but you contradicted yourself on saying he could have gotten upwards of $150M and then saying he definitely didn't take a discount with the extension

he didn't take a discount relative to the market rate for elite players

You said he could have gotten $150M+, and he got $125M.

Using hindsight, he obviously got a great deal.

Howard's commitment is for $135MM because it includes a $10MM buyout. So Howard at age 31 got 5/$135MM and Fielder -- the unquestionably better hitter -- got 9/$214 at age 27. Considering the Tigers got what's left of his prime years while the Phils bought nothing but Howard's decline years, no, it's not a fuck ton more.