Squire wrote:At least he doesn't make the punk sabremetrics intern carry his luggage.

JFLNYC wrote:The last few years we've gone from great to mediocre to bad to irrelevant.

Roger Dorn wrote:

JFLNYC wrote:The last few years we've gone from great to mediocre to bad to irrelevant.

We've just been unlucky with injuries, can't put that on the front office

my cousin mose wrote:

VoxOrion wrote:

Woody wrote:Marlon Byrd is BACK, though

I wonder what Marlon Anderson is up to?

And why stop there? What's Desi Relaford up to?

Scott Boras on the Phillies trying to add youth while keeping a competitive core: "It's like eating and brushing your teeth at the same time. You want clean teeth, but then again you want to survive. So I don't know quite how you do it."

Philadelphia Phillies -- What we have here is a team that can't say the word "rebuild." So the Phillies have signed three free-agent position players (Marlon Byrd, Carlos Ruiz and Wil Nieves) who will all begin next season at 34 or older. They signed a 33-year-old starter (Roberto "Don't Call Me Fausto" Hernandez) whose 5.03 ERA over the past six seasons is the second-highest (behind Luke Hochevar) in baseball among pitchers with 800-plus innings. And amid all that, they floated the names of Jonathan Papelbon, Cliff Lee and Domonic Brown as potential trade bait, to the confusion of many. "I just don't understand exactly what they're doing," said one AL exec. "If you're seriously trying to win, you don't do it this way. And if you're trying to get younger, you don't do it this way. At some point, they've got to pick a direction and go with it."

-stark

Wheels Tupay wrote:I think it is pretty obvious what they are trying to do. They have this core for 2-3 more years, most of whom have large contracts. They can't blow it up because of the contracts and they want to sell tickets. So they resign their popular players (Chase and Chooch). They add Byrd on a two year deal instead of going for the big names, like Choo because they are not trying to completely F up future payroll. The next two years they will keep their fingers crossed that Utley, Chooch, Howard etc are good. If they somehow are (Which has like a five percent chance of working) Byrd would be a nice complimentary player. In two off seasons, we will have money to spend.

Wheels Tupay wrote:I think it is pretty obvious what they are trying to do. They have this core for 2-3 more years, most of whom have large contracts. They can't blow it up because of the contracts and they want to sell tickets. So they resign their popular players (Chase and Chooch). They add Byrd on a two year deal instead of going for the big names, like Choo because they are not trying to completely F up future payroll. The next two years they will keep their fingers crossed that Utley, Chooch, Howard etc are good. If they somehow are (Which has like a five percent chance of working) Byrd would be a nice complimentary player. In two off seasons, we will have money to spend.

azrider wrote:granted rube got the phillies into this mess... but with that being said, i think he has done a so far decent job this offseason.

i would like to use poker as an analogy. right now, the phillies do not have the best hand at the table. someone else posted about all the things that would have to go right in order for the phillies to get to the post season. i pretty much agreed with his assessment. however, it is clearly not out of the realm of possibility as other imperfect squads have not only made it to the post season, but on to win the world series. i'm clearly not in favor of putting more down on this hand... aka trading prospects or giving out budget busting 8-10 year old deals to 30+ year old all stars. i don't want them to dig a deeper hole, and one they can not get out from.

i would say ride this hand out at least until august and then maybe again till next august. hopefully one of two scenarios play out... either you get lucky and maybe get some health and statistical anomalies from your aged core, or you get the young players such as brown, asche, biddle, gonzalez and franco to come on strong and become your next core with the possibility of other younger players overachieving like ruf, rupp, galvis, hernandez, martin, aumont that may force some of the older players out.

it's not the best strategy, but the phillies have a lot of resources tied up in players that have negative value, due to some combination of salary, production, and ntc. taken into consideration the sunken costs involved and probably marginal improvement in production of a replacement, it's really more cost effective to roll with these and hope one of the two scenarios above play out. i'm not blowing all my money of this hand, nor with the money i have invested, do i want to walk away either.

kimbatiste wrote:

azrider wrote:granted rube got the phillies into this mess... but with that being said, i think he has done a so far decent job this offseason.

i would like to use poker as an analogy. right now, the phillies do not have the best hand at the table. someone else posted about all the things that would have to go right in order for the phillies to get to the post season. i pretty much agreed with his assessment. however, it is clearly not out of the realm of possibility as other imperfect squads have not only made it to the post season, but on to win the world series. i'm clearly not in favor of putting more down on this hand... aka trading prospects or giving out budget busting 8-10 year old deals to 30+ year old all stars. i don't want them to dig a deeper hole, and one they can not get out from.

i would say ride this hand out at least until august and then maybe again till next august. hopefully one of two scenarios play out... either you get lucky and maybe get some health and statistical anomalies from your aged core, or you get the young players such as brown, asche, biddle, gonzalez and franco to come on strong and become your next core with the possibility of other younger players overachieving like ruf, rupp, galvis, hernandez, martin, aumont that may force some of the older players out.

it's not the best strategy, but the phillies have a lot of resources tied up in players that have negative value, due to some combination of salary, production, and ntc. taken into consideration the sunken costs involved and probably marginal improvement in production of a replacement, it's really more cost effective to roll with these and hope one of the two scenarios above play out. i'm not blowing all my money of this hand, nor with the money i have invested, do i want to walk away either.

I don't really disagree with you and can understand the analogy that we are the short stack at the table. The problem though is that we are constantly reducing our chances of pulling a lucky streak because Rube has no idea how to evaluate a good hand (i.e., judging a pitcher by win totals). So there is very little chance of us hitting a few lucky cards but Rube thinks its best to take your shot on a gut-shot straight draw (Byrd, Fausto, and Chooch, Howard, Rollins, etc. all rebounding).