Philly the Kid wrote:If Howard's career arc was closer to say Big Pappi, and Utley and Howard did not decline so quickly and after less than a 10 year run, even Pujols had a 10 year run of greatness not a 5-6 year run. That could have helped.

Grotewold wrote:

Philly the Kid wrote:If Howard's career arc was closer to say Big Pappi, and Utley and Howard did not decline so quickly and after less than a 10 year run, even Pujols had a 10 year run of greatness not a 5-6 year run. That could have helped.

Even if Halladay were 75% his old self in the third year of the contract we all celebrated, we don't trade Pence and Victorino and who knows. But they've been so bad at identifying talent for so long, a steep downturn was coming

Trent Steele wrote:What I learned from that article is that if you suck enough, there is literally no contract awful enough to make a difference.

Philly the Kid wrote:[

So is drafting in the first 2 rounds of MLB, essentially almost all luck?

momadance wrote:

Phred wrote:

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:

mcare89 wrote:

momadance wrote:

LongDrive wrote:Friend of mine is on a flight with Rube right now from Chicago. He says Amaro doesn't look too happy and is flying coach.

Coach and a non-direct flight. They must hate him.

I rode back from Vegas over the summer with Montgomery in coach. It's a cheap organization from top to bottom.

You'd think that these guys would have enough FF miles to get upgrades.

To paraphrase Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glennross...1st class is for winners.

I'd bet that he flew 1st class to and from the 2008 winter meetings.

PTOITWCFTPP wrote:

momadance wrote:

Phred wrote:

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:

mcare89 wrote:

momadance wrote:

LongDrive wrote:Friend of mine is on a flight with Rube right now from Chicago. He says Amaro doesn't look too happy and is flying coach.

Coach and a non-direct flight. They must hate him.

I rode back from Vegas over the summer with Montgomery in coach. It's a cheap organization from top to bottom.

You'd think that these guys would have enough FF miles to get upgrades.

To paraphrase Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glennross...1st class is for winners.

I'd bet that he flew 1st class to and from the 2008 winter meetings.

Furiously plays Snake on Nokia

MattS wrote:Couple thoughts..
-Draft failures don't necessarily go back to lack of sabermetrics. Rob Neyer had a really interesting follow-up piece here (http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/just-a-bit ... ory-121214) that I learned from even though it was about my own article. I think the Phillies are as bad at visible things like sabermetrics as they are at the invisible things like amateur scouting. Being unscientific is going to hurt you in anything you do, whether you run regressions or not. I'm sure there is randomness to draft luck but I don't think the distribution of the results looks like luck to me. The Phillies are way too far to the left of everyone else on that graph.
-I actually was expecting the article to show that the problems of the Phillies were all the players they traded away, and then I had to come up with an actual explanation when that didn't explain it. So I checked the draft results, felt comfortable, and wrote up the article. Then I started googling to see if there were any good quotes to throw in there, and found the schmenkman piece. So I had to fit it in. I tried to make sure I gave it a prominent paragraph in the draft section. The overall placement in the article is more reflective of my flow of consciousness/research than anything else. I also had to throw in a comment about Rollins at the end too while waiting for a slot to publish the piece in.

phorever wrote:awesome work matt.
any thoughts on whether or not the tide has turned over the past couple years? the crashburnalley crowd have been making this claim, and i'm inclined to agree.

yesterday and today i have twice almost posted and then deleted assertions that
franco and crawford and nola and giles are the first cluster of prospects since the early 2000s to have age-level-position performances near the levels of rollins and burrell and myers, and that asche and quinn and valentin and herrera and joseph and dugan and altherr aren't a bad match for the rest of what the 2004 phils system contributed to the 2007-09 run. we don't have a hamels-level prospect, but we have hamels himself under control through 2018, we have two more top-10 draft picks coming over the next couple of years, and management so far this year is doing a better job getting return for vets in trades than the 2004-07 organization did when losing for just about zero 2007 return all of abreu, floyd, thome, bell, polanco, millwood, milton, wolf, Wanger, and lieberthal.

also, any thoughts on the injury plague that seemed hit young phils players especially hard the past 3 seasons. pitching losses like morgan and pettibone are kinda normal, i guess, but what about galvis, hernandez, ruf, rupp, revere, asche, franco, dugan, joseph, altherr, quinn, and biddle's freak health issues (whooping cough and hail !?!?) ? am i imagining this seeming run of horrible injury luck with prospects?