Phillies Finally Sign Harper and Surprise, It Makes Sense.

So the Phillies finally got their man, wrapping up generational talent Bryce Harper for 13 years and $330M. It's the biggest contract ever (though not the highest AAV), and this is causing some otherwise sensible people to lose their minds.
Before we get into the crazy, let's make one thing clear. The Phillies can afford this. They can afford this and the Andrew McCutcheon deal and the David Robertson deal and the Aaron Nola extension. If they had decided to go that way, they could have afforded Manny Machado's deal on top of it, and probably whatever Dallas Kuechel gets, too. They are a lone team in one of the biggest markets in the country, with a sweet cable deal that's a license to print money. They can afford to spend money to put better players on the field. (Which, history has shown time and again, leads to more butts in seats, more shirseys sold, and more $10 beers getting guzzled at the ballpark, i.e. more profit.)
The main objection to the Phillies - freely and of their own accord - paying Harper this money is that it's a lot of money. To which I say yes, yes it is and it's doing what a baseball team's money is supposed to be doing - paying players, who happen to be the product. (We'll leave the real estate conglomerate that is the Atlanta Braves alone for the moment.) What else exactly should a team be doing with its money? Hoarding it for a rainy day? Trust me, they're not going to turn it into cheaper seats and beers. Keeping it in the owner's hands so they can buy a Dan Snyder-style mega yacht? Surely that can't be what people are actually rooting for.
No, the Phillies did what they were supposed to - they took their revenues and plowed them back into the product, with an eye towards competitiveness and the profitability that comes with it. By shrieking about the size of the contract, all the various voices are doing is demonstrating a lack of understanding of basic economics.

Thoughts On Spring Training, Part II

Teams and their spring training stadiums tend to match personalities. George M. Steinbrenner Field, the home of the Yankees, rises majestically from a sea of greenery even though it's in the heart of Tampa. The Blue Jays' stadium is across the street from a community center. Detroit's Joker Marchant Stadium, one of the old warhorses of the Grapefruit League, is nestled into a quiet community. There's a church across the street that has game day parking. And the Phillies' stadium is basically in the parking lot of a mall.

Make no mistake, it's a great stadium and a wonderful place to see a ballgame. But as we pulled into the lot, the cop directing traffic had one bit of advice for us: "You're gonna exit through the Buffalo Wild Wings".

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Joker Marchant was full of old men from places like Wayne. They all seemed to know each other and they had a rip-roaring good time, even as the Yankees no-hit the Tigers. For the life of me, I could barely see anyone younger than me in our section. There had been swarms of kids playing in the park out past the left field wall before the game, but damned if I could see any of them once first pitch happened. 

Joker Marchant is a fine old stadium. It's been refurbished but the steel bones of the original construction are still evident. There's no permanent concession stuff in the upper level, none of that tomfoolery. You're there to watch a ballgame and by God, a ballgame you will watch. The sightlines are magnificent. A ballgame you will watch indeed. 

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The crowd at the Phillies game surprised me. It was younger, with a fair number of kids, and a double bucket of nostalgia. The jerseys that fans were wearing covered the gamut - a ton of Chase Utleys, sure, but there were multiple Greg Luzinskis, and a Bob Boone, and so on and so forth. There was even one kid in what appeared to be a Juan Eichelberger jersey, which was odd, because Juan Eichelberger to my knowledge never played for the Phils. And the crowd was loose and into it, in part because the Phillies put a 9-0 thumping on a bunch of guys in Atlanta uniforms, and in part because, well, that was just the crowd. A cold wind blew throughout the game, so if you weren't in the sun, you were shivering, and so there was a constant stream of people leaving their seats in the shade, heading over to a patch of sun, warming up and heading back, possibly having acquired a cheesesteak along the way.
Me, I bought my dad a windbreaker. 

Thoughts On Spring Training, Part I

I took my father to Florida for a week to experience the wonders of spring training. What we were hoping for, I'm not exactly sure; we'd been talking about the trip for a while, since well before my mother passed away, and it was always going to be some time in the future when things were better, whatever that meant. This year, it meant doing it now.
I don't think either of us were looking for some sort of mystical Field of Dreams experience where suddenly our father-son bond started glowing or some such. Nor were we checking off items on a bucket list. Rather, it was a thing we both thought we'd enjoy, and that we'd enjoy doing it together. That's all. No magic. Just basic enjoyment. There's something to be said for that, though.

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We saw four games at four different stadiums. The Blue Jays play across the street from a community center. The Phillies play in the parking lot of a mall, and to get out after the game, you need to exit via the Buffalo Wild Wings lot. The Yankees' stadium, named for the late George M. Steinbrenner, sits majestically in the middle of greenery, as if to say "practice your genuflection here". And the Tigers, well, Joker Marchant Stadium, a renovated warhorse of a ballpark, sits out in Lakeland, in a neighborhood but not quite of it. 

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Spring training is big business. The first game we attended, Red Sox at Blue Jays, was sold out online. "No problem," I thought. "Someone will be selling tickets at the game."
Someone was, for $100 a pop. 
There's special spring training programs, designed to let you know who the guy wearing number 89 and playing shortstop for your team after the fourth inning is. The Phillies and Tigers wanted $4 for theirs. The Blue Jays, $5. The Yankees? $10, though it was better bound and twice the size of the others. Because, well, Yankees. (Still doesn't explain why they were getting more for lemonade than anyone else. Except, well, Yankees.)
All of the programs ran through everyone who might possibly be appearing in a spring training game. Everyone but the Yankees did so in numeric order, the better to answer the question of "Who the heck is #78 and what's he doing at first base?" (Answer: Brock Stassi and he's filling in for Tommy Joseph, who took one off the hand and got pulled from the game.) The Yankees, on the other hand, believe in the dignity of Being A Yankee. Their program lists players alphabetically, as if to suggest these are Yankees, you should know who they are already.
Yes, even the guy wearing #89.

Ryan Howard's End

The Phillies are kind of awful this year, which is OK. They were supposed to be awful, and to be fair they've been quite a bit less awful than they were supposed to be. They've had some exciting moments, to with some Fred Merkle-level awful baserunning. They've had some nice moments from some young players, and they've said goodbye to pretty much everyone left over from the glory years.

Ryan Howard, Beer Bottles, and the Graceful End

Once upon a time, Ryan Howard was a very good baseball player. Maybe not as good as some people addicted to the adrenaline rush of a cloud-scraping home run might thing, but still, pretty darn good. His best years coincided with the best years of a franchise that's been around since the 1880s and, by and large, hasn't been very good; they certainly wouldn't have been as good as they got during that golden window in the mid-to-late 2000s without him. He wasn't the most graceful fielder, but he tried hard and worked at it, and for a while he made himself more or less passable through sheer effort, and he was by all accounts a nice and honorable and intelligent guy, exactly the sort of guy you want to be the centerpiece of your team. He was the sort of guy you wanted to root for, because he seemed like a genuinely good guy who could play well.

On Surviving The Greatest Phillies Rotation Ever

Not shown: Joe Blanton

Back in the day, the Philadelphia Phillies employed what was supposed to be one of the all-time great rotations. It featured Cy Young winner Roy Halladay, Cy Young winner Cliff Lee, rising star Cole Hamels, and perennial Cy Young contender Roy Oswalt. People drooled over this rotation. It was going to be one for the ages. The Phillies were going to sling their way back to the World Series and possibly win every game by shutout along the way. (I exaggerate, but only slightly.)

Top 10 Questions Coming Out Of The Baseball Winter Meetings

Now that the annual baseball winter meetings have wrapped up and all the job seekers, stringers, and agents for backup catchers have caught their flights home, it's time for folks to declare "winners" and "losers" of the deals that went down.

Which is ridiculous. Because nobody's playing a game for another three and a half months and moves don't get made in a vacuum, and besides, nobody's signed Yoenis Cespedes yet.

Bad Year For Philly

This is how it was supposed to go this year for Philadelphia sports fans.

The Phillies were going to be terrible, but we knew that, and at least they'd finally embraced the notion of the rebuild. Sure, old favorites were going to get shipped off, but we'd see fresh talent brought in, and there would be some glimmerings of hope for the future.

And That Might Be A Wrap, Cole Hamels Edition

Also, the winner of the Phillies "Sam Winchester Cosplay Contest" six years running

Congratulations to Cole Hamels for throwing a no-hitter against his possible future employer, the Chicago Cubs, yesterday. Almost certainly the best pitcher the Phillies have developed since Robin Roberts (who else? Bruce Ruffin? Marty Bystrom? Tyler Green?), Hamels is wasted on a Phillies team that's going nowhere and won't be ready to contend for about another 3 years. He's also cost-controlled, with 3 more years left on his contract, and he's pretty durable, all of which make him an obvious candidate to be moved.  

The Last Ryno

These two statements are both true:

Ryne Sandberg could never have succeeded as manager of the Philadelphia Phillies.
Ryne Sandberg could not have failed more miserably as manager of the Philadelphia Phillies.

On Baseball's Long Season

One of the things I love most about baseball is the fact that the season is so long. There's plenty of time for narratives to play out, for players to rise and fall and then redeem themselves. Developments have time to mature and manifest fully, with clearly traceable arcs that reward the patient viewer.

Consider the Source

One of Buster Olney's confidential sources

Consider the source.

Heading into what will almost certainly be a lost season for them, the Phillies have themselves a very valuable asset in the form of Cole Hamels. Hamels is a very good pitcher who is rather expensive but not outrageously so, and a great many teams would be improved by having Hamels in their rotation. [Assume I've just done a lengthy bit on marginal wins here, and trust me that it's not worth it for a team like the Phillies to keep him around instead of flipping him for young talent; 70 wins + some prospects who could help you win next year > 75 wins.) 

On Rooting For An Awful Team

Your Phillies Marketing Department, Folks.

There is something to be said for being a fan of a terrible team.
I mean, sure, rooting for a winner is nice. Watching the team you back actually win it all is a great feeling, regardless of whether you then decide to move your couch onto the lawn so you can set it on fire to "celebrate" the victory. But even rooting for a team that doesn't go all the way - that just wins more than it loses - is nice. You get more good days than bad ones. More times when you got the desired result than the other guy, the guy who roots for the crappy team, did. More times when your choice of team to support seems like the right one.

And yet....

Rollins West

The rational, calculating fan in me who values victories over everything else is glad that the Phillies' rebuild has officially begun with the trades of Antonio Bastardo and, more importantly, Jimmy Rollins. Bastardoo is a reliever and about to get expensive, not the sort of luxury a team that's unlikely to be winning much in the near future can afford. Rollins is a a late-30s shortstop who's slowly moving into decline phase and makes a ton of money. Trading him while he still has some value officially kicks off the Phillies' desperately needed rebuild process.

The Phillies No Way

Apparently Phillies GM has just unleashed a new organizational bible on the team called "The Phillies Way". 

This, as you might expect, is a terrible idea.

Abreu Into the Sunset

In about ten years, assuming that NASA study is incorrect and society hasn't collapsed into a Mad Max-style hellscape, we'll be talking about Bobby Abreu the way baseball statheads now talk about Tim Raines or Bobby Grich or Dewey Evans. He'll be the guy whose numbers don't scream "HALL OF FAME" at first look, but when you look at them more closely, you start realizing how good he was, and for how long.

And then you realize that there's no way in hell he's getting into Cooperstown, and you write angry tweets or something with the hashtag #Abreu4TheHall, which make you feel better but don't get him any closer to upstate New York.

But I digress.

Does This Spring Training Storyline Matter, Round 1

And it's time to play every baseball fan's fifth-favorite spring training related game (behind Will This Guy Help My Fantasy Team?, Is The Rookie I Never Heard Of Hitting .545 This Spring For Real, Oh Crap What's A-Rod Going To Say Next? and Whatever Happened To Jayson Stark's Epic 'Stache?), Does This Spring Training Storyline Actually Matter? Let's begin!

Storyline: The Braves Just Signed Ervin Santana
Does It Matter?: Yes
Why?: Because three-fifths of the Braves' proposed starting rotation came down with injuries this spring, and it's kind of hard to compete with a two man rotation. With two of their top five starters hoping to get a group rate discount on Tommy John surgery, the Braves went out and got the best pitcher left on the market because otherwise this season - which is one of the last seasons in which guys like Heyward, Simmons, and Freeman will be dirt-cheap - would have gone down the toilet. For the rest of us, it means we can stop hearing "Is the compensation pick hurting Santana's chance of signing?" The answer was, and always will be, yes.

If You Gaze Too Deeply Into the Phillies...

A few years back, it was fashionable to suggest that the Phillies - flush with cash, riding a wave of success, sitting on top of a major market - were positioned to become the Yankees of the NL. Now, with the signing of star Japanese pitcher Masahiro Tanaka (24-0 counts as a "star", yes), the Yankees have completed their metamorphosis into the Phillies of the NL.

Chooch Redux

Yesterday, the Phillies re-signed catcher Carlos "Chooch" Ruiz, who had been a free agent, to a three year deal.

The details of the deal are unimportant. The money is good (3 years, $26M, with a club option for the 4th), but  not great. There is a decent chance that averaged over the life of the contract, it won't be a ridiculous overpay. There is also a decent chance that Ruiz, as a catcher in his mid-30s, will either fall off a cliff, performance-wise, or get hurt. 

Hi, Hi, Byrdie

So here's why Marlon Byrd to the Phillies for 2 years and $16M (plus an option year) is a bad signing.

It's not the money. I mean, sure, to you and me $8M a year is a lot of money, but the going rate for decent outfielders, which Byrd might or might not be (depending on whether you view his 2013 season as an outlier or a harbinger of a new skill set), is a little higher than that. So, assuming you're going to get decent production - say a .270 batting average and 25 homers and solid defense - that money's defensible. And it's not like he's blocking anyone. Darrin Ruf's not an everyday guy and plays defense like an Ent. John Mayberry's out the door. The best outfield prospects in the minors are years away, or are not actual prospects. So, since you've got to stick somebody out there, you might as well pay market rate.