He wasn't rushed. If anything they pumped the breaks from bringing him up earlier in the year.

i think Nola was handled just about perfectly this year

What a difference a few months make. As recently as June, I was downright apathetic about the Phillies. Now, I can't wait till the offseason moves.

Slow down with the use of the plural there!

my cousin mose wrote:On this day in 2007, shit was getting real

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PHI/PHI200709280.shtml

Most amazing thing is that the Nationals were 72-88. I would have thought they were much worse than that.

Peanut!

rmbr hs frst gm bck h ht grndslm gnst th nts

i lend you some $ if you need to buy a vowel

Lulz

My baseball watching really started around 91 or 92 so my childhood was briefly awesome, plus I had He-Man and Ninja Turtles.

My Polanco years were pretty up and down.

just yesterday saw that the braves had come from way, way, way back to pass the phils in the negative run differential race. stunning "comeback" from phils -160 vs. braves -38 pre-allstar to braves -199 phils -190 now.
how is that even possible in just 67 games? why aren't more people talking about the historic awfulness the braves achieved in the 2nd half?

we're lucky to be winning the worst record race. hope our luck holds.

wwry wrote:

That's the guy that blocked Chase Utley from being called up!

Phred wrote:

wwry wrote:

That's the guy that blocked Chase Utley from being called up!

no, that would be david bell. free agent signing, friend of thome... higher priority for getting starts than trade acquisition polonco, who also could have moved to bell's spot at 3b where his defense was as better than bell's and would have offset any batting dropoff... which wouldn't have been huge considering what polanco did with the bat after he was traded (made a run at a batting title).

No, Polanco most definitely blocked Utley.

I didn't remember July 29, 2002 being quite so awesome.

CFP wrote:No, Polanco most definitely blocked Utley.

no. bell did. after the rolen trade, polanco played well at 3b in 2002 while utley's progress was still being screwed up by the stupid attempt to turn him into a 3b. instead of realizing that in polanco they had a guy who averaged 4 war a season over ten seasons from 2001 to 2010 and in utley a guy who would be an allstar once they put him back at 2b and left him alone, they went and spend way too much on a 4 year contract with david bell, who was less valuable than polanco every season from 2000 until bell's retirement after 2006... except 2004, which happen to be bell's most flukish season, and polanco's worst in a 12-year stretch, and the season utley was sorta blocked and sorta not because he was still recovering from the position switch and dealing with the playing time issue and his ops+ in 2003 had been just 87 and was only up to 93 in 2004 with the lowest obp of his career till this season.

yeah polanco was playing utley's only position and was starting despite worse numbers than either bell or utley in 2004. but prior achievements indicated and subsequent performance proved that the bell is the guy who should never have been signed because his signing screwed up the phils ability to make proper use and keep hold of the two future all-stars they already had. he is the one who should have been dumped early in 2005 when both polanco and utley showed they had recovered from the position roulette debacle.

phils might well have broken through a year or two or 3 earlier if bell had not been signed.

so you're saying bell blocked polanco who in turned blocked utley

(i get it, simplifying for cfp)

I'm not sure I've ever known of anyone to look at that situation that way, but there you have it.

Phils may have made a postseason or two during 2003-2006 if:

1) They moved Polanco to 3B, called up Utley, and benched Bell
2) Thome didn't play hurt for most of 2005, keeping Howard in the minors

In 2005, the Phils finished 1 GB of YOUSTON for the WC. Thome played 59 games at 0.2 WAR (.712 OPS). Howard played just 88 and accumulated 3.1 WAR (.924 OPS).