More major league homeruns than Ben Revere.

gingers are the new market inefficiency

BarryEnright45
Time to pick up the baseball bat again. I am officially a Philadelphia @Phillies. Lookin forward to a new opportunity & great year ahead!

His Twitter description:

Being born in the 209 gives me instant street cred. Being a ginger makes me a part of a secret clan that many still struggle to figure out

Apparently being on Twitter makes him insufferable.

I can't even get up the energy to make a dumb season saved joke.

Howart really does look good fwiw

ReadingPhilly wrote:i praise your lengthy optimism.

Phorever's post is not not really optimism if you read through the post. If everything breaks right, the team will be decent. It's extremely unlikely everything will break right (as he states), so probably they won't. It's possible for these two realities to exist at the same time.

swishnicholson wrote:

ReadingPhilly wrote:i praise your lengthy optimism.

Phorever's post is not not really optimism if you read through the post. If everything breaks right, the team will be decent. It's extremely unlikely everything will break right (as he states), so probably they won't. It's possible for these two realities to exist at the same time.

i read the whole thing. definitely not as chipper as his previous entries, you're right.

ReadingPhilly wrote:

swishnicholson wrote:

ReadingPhilly wrote:i praise your lengthy optimism.

Phorever's post is not not really optimism if you read through the post. If everything breaks right, the team will be decent. It's extremely unlikely everything will break right (as he states), so probably they won't. It's possible for these two realities to exist at the same time.

i read the whole thing. definitely not as chipper as his previous entries, you're right.

you must have missed my official declaration of pessimism. one of my core baseball beliefs is in the proper use of players in their primes. rube finally convinced me that the phils management team is completely ignorant of the concept of aging curves, at which point i gave up hope.

however, i continue to point out that the phils roster is good enough to be a playoff contender.
contrary to the interpretation of swish, i don't even think everything needs to break right for that. sane use of the full existing roster (which i now accept is extremely unlikely) should give 81 wins with neutral luck. in that scenario, i think the offense will be better than decent, while pitching will be the problem, mostly because 3/5 of the rotation and the closer spot are highly suspect. many on this and other phils boards/blogs seem to think it will be the other way around. since i disagree and like to argue baseball, i keep pointing out my counterarguments when i get the chance.

81 probably isn't what you would call decent, but i think they need add in only about half of the available lucky breaks (e.g. mag and hernandez and the pen pitching well and cole and cliff staying healthy on the pitching side, but neutral luck on the offensive side) to be in the 85-90 win decent/contender zone. need to land another good starter or have everything go right (i.e. the above pitching scenario plus asche and outfield all match best projections, and ruf+howard merging into a two-headed 1b monster, while rollins and utley and ruiz all hold on for one more decent season), to make the playoffs.

I really hope I'm wrong, but I don't think this team gets near 80 wins. Too much has to go right for that, and teams like the Nats have a much better chance of rebounding off of a down year. You can quote all the stats and trends you like, but older players will normally trend downward, and Brown doesn't have enough of a track record in the majors to rely on his last year numbers improving.

I also don't disagree with Amaro's plan in general, signing players to short contracts right now, especially as this free agent market was so-so. The issue is spending money on people like Byrd rather than playing Ruf, keeping Mayberry, and giving a Chooch a 3 year extension (which I still think means Joseph is done).

In theory, I don't have a problem with holding money when the FA class is bad. The problem is that it isn't likely to get much better because teams are locking up their good young players. And when you add in the fact that RAJ can't seem to recognize the good, lower tier players that do happen to be available, I just don't see us getting much l.better going forward.

That said, I do think we'll be a bit better this year. Last year was pretty much a disaster with nearly everything going wrong. Some of them were expected (the Youngs poor play, decline in production from the core, etc), but we also got hammered on the Doc injury and horrible bullpen play. I think the defense and bullpen will be better, if for no other reason than they can't get worse, and then the OF will also most likely be better. All of it is faint praise, but I think it will lead to a marginal improvement. Or maybe we will only perform to our pythagorean and that will take away any improvements in performance. Who knows. I just know we aren't competing for the playoffs unless we get extremely lucky.

The reality of baseball now is that you might be able to fill in a hole with a FA, but you cannot build or improve a team that way anymore. I think the Phils are trying to sell tickets by signing familiar names. I think that's the organization's goal this season (and every season) and we have to keep that in mind if we're trying to figure out what the Phils might do going forward.

Of course the organization realizes that the best way to fill the stadium is by winning, but if the Phils know how to do anything, it's how to make money with a crappy team.

http://claydavenport.com/?p=207

Projected in last place, 72 wins, 4th pick in 2015 draft.

These are pretty worthless though, IMO

Rube's plan to get them dissed so they get really really really motivated is working !

How bad do the Phillies have to be for Amaro's job to be on the line? If the orders not to spend money are coming from ownership, then how could they blame Amaro for the team being bad? If not, why is Amaro not spending any money unless he feels complete job security?

I don't think Amaro is going anywhere regardless of what happens this season.

They have the 5th highest payroll in baseball. The problem isn't not spending it's that it's already spent and that their farm system is a failure.

He's gone after this year.

Ticket sales and ratings will fall. Comcast will shit themselves, and Amaro will be the scapegoat. Unlike many scapegoats, he'll richly deserve it. The "I couldn't spend money" excuse won't be there, because he spent like a manic coke fiend for five years previous. Plus, rep-wise, he's approaching Kotite status.

His contract expires after 2015. Don't think he's gone until then at the earliest.

If were Rube, I wouldn't go changing any light bulbs this year.