His ops+ is above his career's

Well, that makes all the difference. Buy!

You're being pretty obtuse.

must be thursday

How the hell am I being obtuse? Did you just watch Shawshank Redemption again?

From 05-09 Utley had a WAR each year of between 7.1 and 8. This year it's 3.2. He's missed a lot of time due to injury you say? Well, thank goodness we know THAT won't happen in years to come.

It's not being obtuse to accept where this current core is and where it's likely to be over the next few years. I just choose not to drink the Kool Aid that, with a little tweaking and luck, we're thisclose to winning another WFC.

No one thinks the core is good enough (maybe Grote does). But just because they aren't good enough doesn't mean that they shouldn't resign Utley. His signing doesn't prevent anything else. Maybe he falls off a cliff. Maybe he's even better next year and has greater trade value.

Kratz may legitimately be worth 3-4 wins over Ruiz.

Let me be clear: I'm all in favor of brining Chase back for lots of reasons. If they re-sign Chase to a reasonable deal and retool around him, that's a perfectly reasonable strategy. But if extending Chase is just a prelude to standing pat and trying to tweak around the edges, then I disagree profoundly with the approach.

JFLNYC wrote:Let me be clear: I'm all in favor of brining Chase back for lots of reasons. If they re-sign Chase to a reasonable deal and retool around him, that's a perfectly reasonable strategy. But if extending Chase is just a prelude to standing pat and trying the tweak around the edges, then I disagree profoundly with the approach.

Tough to disagree with this. But I don't think the one implies the other, and it might be more likely that they extend Utley to make it more palatable to deal other vets. I damn well hope so, anyway.

Agreed.

You know what I think is the most depressing thing about how we got where we are, the way the run ended.

102 win season, then lose in 5 to the Cards in the DS and losing game 5 1-0. In that 1-0 loss, the era really just unraveled in a pretty spectacular way, it was the end of elite Halladay, it was the end of productive Howard with it being punctuated by him blowing out his Achilles on the last pitch of the game/series/season. It was the embodiment of declining Utley, with his fly out juuuuuust to the track at the end. It's hard to comprehend that the team went from a 102 win juggernaut to a non-competitive also ran without losing any key player in the off season. Just a kick in the nuts... and now here we are, a mediocre, at best, team with 2 elitish pitchers, a very good 2nd baseman and an all star left field and not much else. Fuck.

And now this year, the division is pretty god damn shitty and if we just had a few decent bats and like one more decent arm in the pen we'd be right in it. But we don't so we aren't and now we are going to watch a shitty ass barves team shit their way into the playoffs and play a shitty series against some other shits and one of those shits is going to be in the NLCS and lose to the Cards so the stupid shitty cards are then going to shit their way into another shitty world series. Fuck all this shit.

Gotta say, Bill McNeal hasn't said anything I don't completely agree with there

Yup.

Have felt this way since last year. Now I won't feel so out of place.

Now all websites are getting in on the making fun of Amaro

Laynce Nix made his second straight start Thursday and went 0-for-4 against the Cardinals.
Because someone has to play the outfield with Ben Revere and Domonic Brown out. More than just being a waste of money, Nix has been a waste of a roster spot for the Phillies this year, hitting .188 with a total of six RBI in 112 at-bats. A less stubborn GM would have released him months ago. Ruben Amaro, though, signed him for two years and, by golly, is going to keep him the whole time.

Wiz broke into Bill's account.

Wiz would have used fancier swear words

All in the same boat, it was one beautiful ride.

Bill McNeal wrote:if we just had a few decent bats and like one more decent arm in the pen we'd be right in it.

I'm with you. Buy!

A less stubborn GM would have released him months ago. Ruben Amaro, though, signed him for two years and, by golly, is going to keep him the whole time.

He's released players early before (Durbin and others I think), so I don't think that's fair.