BigEd76 wrote:btw Gillick told Cooney in an interview today that Rube is staying because Cole and Cliff were hurt. Great

This checks out, because for the third consecutive year, the Phillies were the only team in baseball to suffer any sort of injuries. Next year, that won't happen.

Well I was 95% sure Amaro was going nowhere, but saying that it's because Lee and Hamels were hurt is ridiculously insulting to anyone who pays attention to the game at all. Truth is, we were very fortunate with injuries during that great run. That's not surprising when your guys are relatively young and in their prime. It's also not surprising that you get more injuries as you get older. And really, did we have a bad injury problem this year? I don't feel like we did. We lost Lee, but how many teams lost an important starter this year? I feel like there was a rash of injuries to good starters, and most of them weren't wearing philies uniforms.

I'm not going to allow myself to get angry about this, but it is insulting.

dajafi wrote:

The Dude wrote:he's the opposite of billy beane

That's exactly right. Down to Beane not going to Stanford.

And Rube taking his team to a World Series

Cole made 30 starts. He missed a few weeks to start the year. What am I missing?

CFP wrote:Cole made 30 starts. He missed a few weeks to start the year. What am I missing?

....the ridiculous contortions of logic that Montgomery and Gillick and a few members of this board will employ to accept Amaro fielding another last place team with a top 5 payroll?

johnmiddleton
Wonderful. RT @MattGelb: A.J. Burnett allows five runs (four earned) in his 32d start, which bumped his 2015 player option to $12.75 million.

But you wouldn't want to invest $10MM/yr. on Rusney Castillo.

Eskin was on the morning show with what I fear might be the new leaked-to-the-press company line: that Amaro has not been given total freedom and that most of the bad moves were not necessarily his fault. And that he deserves another year or two with total control to fix things. On Howard contract: "Well, Proefrock is the numbers guy, he put that deal together..." On Utley and Howard extentions: "Ruben was TOLD to make sure they stayed Phillies." I can't tell if this is just Eskin being an idiot, him defending a guy he likes personally--or both-- or him espousing the new mantra to defend the status quo. I could give more detail but it's frankly too nauseating

Well, they'll all be gone next year when the team barely draws two million. Question is what Amaro will do with "total control."

I wouldn't expect them to get that it's actually insulting to point to the injury thing. (If the Braves did that, Wren might have gotten a lifetime extension.) Whats somewhat surprising is that I don't think they get is how boring the team is.

It's stunning how tone-deaf and incompetent they've become. Despite all the money they spend, they're not truly committed to winning if it means hurting the feelings of anyone in upper management or if any move might have even the appearance of disloyalty. The franchise is run less like a competitive business and more like the Raccoon Lodge.

No matter what his level of control is, it already appears that the 29 other GMs think he is a buffoon and won't deal with him.

I do believe that Howard/Rollins/Utley/Hamels are part of an organizational strategy to sort of solidify the brand and create "Phillies for life", which as everyone knows is increasingly rare these days. I do believe that has its merits, but one of them is not "winning".

If they don't sign Yosmany Torres, I'm not buying a single ticket next year.
Then again, I didn't buy a single ticket this year either.
In any event, I'm convinced that the Hamels to the Red Sox trade is going to happen after the World Series is concluded.

this is depressing

BigEd76 wrote:btw Gillick told Cooney in an interview today that Rube is staying because Cole and Cliff were hurt. Great

Unfuckingbelievable. Somehow we had a GOOD season for injuries despite having one of the oldest rosters I've ever had to suffer through (a pre-season bet on no DL stints for Howard, Utley, Rollins, and Byrd had to get you at least 70:1 odds, right?), but they're going to use a delayed spring training for Hamels and the one serious injury on the entire roster to make an excuse for Ruben.

I seriously hate this franchise. It's really hard to believe how quickly they've regressed into 90s-era incompetence since the run ended.

Yeah. Might have been the team least effected by injuries in the league. They need to make a bunch of moves and they don't have anyone who can do so right now. Not optimistic unless the change a bunch of things.

2014: 2,423,852 (10th of 15)
2013: 3,012,403 (4th of 15)
2012: 3,565,718 (1st of 16)
2011: 3,680,718 (1st of 16)
2010: 3,777,322 (1st of 16)
2009: 3,600,693 (2nd of 16)
2008: 3,422,583 (4th of 16)


If you figure the average ass in a seat is worth $75, which I think is conservative, the terrible play of the team over the last 2 years has cost them ~$135M. (3.6M in attendance to 3.0 and then 2.4 = deficit of 1.8M tickets * $75 = $135M).

The first-to-worst mockery, then general disdain for Amaro by nearly everyone , and their presence atop any "can't buy wins" list has also hurt the brand, for whatever that's worth.

Another 70-75 win season is going to drop attendance further next year - probably another $135M hit on top of that already suffered - and they can't do much about that yet. But if they bottom out at ~$150M/year of lost revenue, every single day that they don't make a decision to right the ship costs them about $400K. Using FG value of about $5.5M/win, the team loses a win's worth of spending every 2 weeks - we can afford 26 fewer wins each year than we could in 2008-20011.

But, hey, everything's fine. Patch up here, add a guy there, and hope, and we might contend long enough to pretend there's no problem next year, too.

We will feel this in the payroll, and decision making. And we'll be told it's our fault, that we no longer support the team.

Malibu Middleton is already creating a "Shore is Disloyal" meme.

By the way....that is really excellent analysis. Kudos.

Shore start a blog. your first 6 months of content could just be cut-n-pastes from here

swishnicholson wrote:He feels he's now re-acclimated to playing a full season now, and so it's onward and upward from here.

I'm positive his plan for next season is to lay off the low outside slop and/or take it to left - you just wait & see

Shore wrote:2014: 2,423,852 (10th of 15)
2013: 3,012,403 (4th of 15)
2012: 3,565,718 (1st of 16)
2011: 3,680,718 (1st of 16)
2010: 3,777,322 (1st of 16)
2009: 3,600,693 (2nd of 16)
2008: 3,422,583 (4th of 16)


If you figure the average ass in a seat is worth $75, which I think is conservative, the terrible play of the team over the last 2 years has cost them ~$135M. (3.6M in attendance to 3.0 and then 2.4 = deficit of 1.8M tickets * $75 = $135M).

The first-to-worst mockery, then general disdain for Amaro by nearly everyone , and their presence atop any "can't buy wins" list has also hurt the brand, for whatever that's worth.

Another 70-75 win season is going to drop attendance further next year - probably another $135M hit on top of that already suffered - and they can't do much about that yet. But if they bottom out at ~$150M/year of lost revenue, every single day that they don't make a decision to right the ship costs them about $400K. Using FG value of about $5.5M/win, the team loses a win's worth of spending every 2 weeks - we can afford 26 fewer wins each year than we could in 2008-20011.

But, hey, everything's fine. Patch up here, add a guy there, and hope, and we might contend long enough to pretend there's no problem next year, too.

We will feel this in the payroll, and decision making. And we'll be told it's our fault, that we no longer support the team.

The players just have to play better.