Jim Thome Signs with Philadelphia Phillies: Can He Replace Ryan Howard?

Jim Thome is no first-base savior for the Philadelphia Phillies. He last played the position in 2007. He hasn’t been a regular there since his last stint with the Phillies in 2005.

Nonetheless, Thome agreed to a one-year, $1.25 million deal with the Phillies Friday. That move sets up Philadelphia with a very good pinch-hitting slugger; Thome’s 40 home runs in 664 plate appearances the past two years ably demonstrate that Thome can still do that.

But Phillies manager Charlie Manuel might ask a bit more of his long-time friend and sometime protege. With Ryan Howard out for an indeterminate period after tearing his Achilles’ tendon, Thome could be a candidate to make some starts at first base early in the year.

Read on for a thorough examination of the viability of that idea.

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MLB Predictions 2011: Who’ll Be Left Standing in League Championship Series?

The 2011 Philadelphia Phillies have had a rough spring so far, losing closer Brad Lidge and second baseman Chase Utley for indeterminate periods.

Luis Castillo could not even lock down the starting second-base job, which will now fall to Wilson Valdez for Friday’s season opener.

Still and all, the majority of those in the baseball pundit world view Philadelphia as favorites to reach the postseason, at which point some of their deficiencies become non-issues and their greatest strength—the starting rotation to end all starting rotations—becomes an even more critical advantage. Many still view them as the best team in the National League.

The Atlanta Braves might have something to say about that.

They enter the season in much better health, with a lineup as deep as Philadelphia’s at this point and with a far superior bullpen.

Atlanta’s farm system stands ready to provide further reinforcements throughout the year. The Phillies’ blue-chip prospects are all multiple years away from being impact players at the big-league level.

Like Philadelphia, Atlanta has a strong rotation, though its strength is more in its depth than in sheer top-tier talent. Adding Dan Uggla to the offensive core of Jason Heyward, Brian McCann and Chipper Jones was an inspired stroke for GM Frank Wren.

This team has to be the favorite over the long season to win the NL East.

Can Philadelphia win the Wild Card? Sure. They have to be the favorites, in fact. But a lot could go awry: Three of the vaunted top four in the rotation are on the wrong side of 31. Lidge has been fading for a long time, injured or otherwise. Utley may be back before Memorial Day or after Labor Day.

Organizational depth offers little immediate help, and they don’t have the payroll flexibility to fill any critical need that may arise over the balance of the season via trades for bigger names.

For argument’s sake, though, let’s say the Phils reach the second week of October.

That makes the NL playoff picture relatively clear: The Braves and Phillies, as the two best and most playoff-ready squads in the NL, will meet in the NLCS.

Now, then, let’s see about the AL. This is a bit trickier, because as ruthlessly efficient as the Red Sox and Twins look this year, neither is composed with postseason success as a top priority the way Philadelphia’s is.

Both teams play in divisions at least as tough as Philly’s. Overall, it is harder to build around starting pitchers in the hitter-friendly American League than in the NL, so both Boston and Minnesota have built instead around offense and will have the inside tracks toward their division titles.

Once they get there, though, they could run into trouble.

The Oakland Athletics, lurkers in baseball’s tall weeds, have a much better run-prevention profile than either of those teams, and the upside risk in Gio Gonzalez and Brett Anderson is huge.

Though I expect the Yankees or Rays to gobble up the Wild Card, the most interesting would-be match for Boston this side of Atlanta might well be Chicago, a team newly suited to threaten the Twins but not yet ready to beat them. 

For the sake of argument, let’s put the Twins, Red Sox, Athletics and Rays in the playoffs on the junior circuit side of the bracket. Minnesota and Tampa would be a fine series, but unless Wade Davis or Jeremy Hellickson morphs into a co-ace alongside David Price, Minnesota will win.

Oakland can give Boston trouble, but sooner or later, the Red Sox’s bullpen and offensive advantages would be too much.

To review, then, I see Boston, Minnesota, Atlanta and Philadelphia playing for the respective pennants in each league this season. Those picks are pretty bland, but realistically, why go out on a limb?

Could the Colorado Rockies—led by Ubaldo Jimenez, Jorge de la Rosa and Jhoulys Chacin—unseat one of the teams on the NL side?

Of course.

Colorado is a sleeper in league with the White Sox, and if fully healthy, either team could sneak all the way to the World Series.

Still, if anyone out there is making their annual friendly entertainment-only wagers on which combatants reach their LCS, be smart and bet on the proven entities involved.

These teams are favorites for a reason.

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MLB Winter Meetings: The 10 Most Ridiculous Rumors We Heard Last Week

Every season, the MLB Winter Meetings give rise to dozens of fascinating rumors about blockbuster trades or surprising free-agent signings. Some come to fruition, but the majority of them leave us wondering who on earth ever thought such a thing would actually happen.

Trade rumors sometimes spring fully formed from the heads of sportswriters. At other times, teams make cursory inquiries on players they have no real intention of acquiring, and writers misunderstand.

One way or another, though, we always hear a fair number of crazy rumors during the week-long swap meet. Read on for the 10 most outrageous rumored moves of the Winter Meetings.

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Philadelphia Phillies Sign Cliff Lee: Where Does Philly Rotation Rank All-Time?

The Philadelphia Phillies’ starting rotation is much too good to be compared to their contemporaries. After signing Cliff Lee to a five-year contract, the Phillies have four starting hurlers as good or better than the rest of the league’s aces. We need a more historical, less comparative context in which to measure their greatness.

How good is this corps, which now features Roy Halladay, Lee, Cole Hamels and Roy Oswalt? All four are among the top 20 pitchers of the past three seasons, according to Wins Above Replacement. Halladay and Lee are the two best pitchers in the game over that stretch. Their prospective dominance far out-strips that of any rotation in the past decade, so we need to go farther back.

Where do the Phillies fall all-time? How do they stack up against the best rotations ever? Who comes in atop the list? Read on for the top five starting rotations in baseball history.

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NLCS 2010: 10 Reasons Roy Halladay Will Be NLCS MVP

With the Philadelphia Phillies and San Francisco Giants ready to get the 2010 NLCS underway Saturday night, the Phillies are the heavy favorites. San Francisco beat a fiercer first-round foe than did Charlie Manuel’s club, but the Phillies are a full-fledged National League dynasty. They will attempt to reach their third straight World Series this fall, after already having claimed their fourth straight division title.

This year’s team may have the best shot at winning it all—even though they actually did win it all in 2008. The 2010 Phillies have balance unlike those before them, with a three-headed monster atop their starting rotation that looks to be unmatched by any team still standing.

The ace of that staff, of course, is right-hander Roy Halladay. Halladay no-hit Cincinnati in the first round, but that tells only a part of the story of his historic debut season in the National League.

That campaign has also seen him throw a perfect game (against Florida in May), win a league-high 21 games (finishing nine of them and shutting out the opponent four times, also NL bests), top 250 innings and set new career high-water marks for strikeouts and walks per nine frames–all at the age of 33. If he was not a Hall of Fame pitcher to begin this season, he may be a Cooperstown shoo-in now.

Assuming (and it seems a safe assumption) that Halladay will get a chance to make two starts in the NLCS, the Phillies ought to win, and Halladay (in his very first opportunity to earn a postseason award) has a very real chance to be NLCS MVP. Here are 10 reasons Doc will be crowned king of the NLCS.

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Roy Halladay Playoff No-Hitter: Five Reasons It’s More Impressive Than Larsen’s

Baseball traditionalists never cede the high ground. From the supremacy of Babe Ruth to the joy of day baseball, there are many who just refuse to acknowledge the times when the modern game evolves far beyond the reaches of “Baseball’s Golden Age.”

Such entrenchment is nearly always myopic, and nowhere more so than in the recent insistence that Don Larsen, who threw a perfect game in the 1956 World Series, performed a greater feat than Roy Halladay, who threw the second-ever no-hitter in playoff history Wednesday.

Sure, Larsen managed to avoid walking anyone and, therefore, has claim to the only perfect game ever in October. But Halladay had to overcome much more to reach this summit, and given the different contexts in which the two attained their triumphs, Halladay did better. Here are five reasons why Doc reigns supreme in the comparison of playoff no-no’s.

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2010 MLB Trade Rumors: Could Chicago’s Ted Lilly Be Philadelphia-Bound?

The Philadelphia Phillies have made a mid-rotation starting pitcher their top trade deadline priority, according to a tweet by ESPN’s Buster Olney .

The two-time defending National League champions, who find themselves two and a half games back and in third place in the NL East division, will look to supplement a rotation that already includes the dominant Roy Halladay and a pair of strong left-handed hurlers, in the ageless Jamie Moyer and 2008 World Series MVP Cole Hamels.

In order to do so, general manager Ruben Amaro would do well to place a call to Chicago Cubs GM Jim Hendry. While Philadelphia is an eager buyer as the July 31 trade deadline looms, Chicago finds itself eight and a half games out in the NL Central, and will look to move some soon-to-be free agents.

Among those players is Cubs left-handed ace Ted Lilly, 34. who has posted an impressive WHIP of 1.14 in his three-plus seasons on the North Side.

Lilly will become a free agent after 2010, at the close of a four-year, $40-million contract that has seen him strike out 3.21 batters for each one he has walked. Despite off-season shoulder surgery that sidelined him until late April and poor run support that has allowed him to win just twice in eight decisions this year, Lilly remains an effective starter.

Whether because his shoulder ailment yet lingers or because he simply hasn’t yet rebuilt full strength, Lilly’s velocity is down this year. That has mitigated his numbers somewhat, including key indicators like swinging strike percentage (7.6, down from 9.6 in 2009).

Still, Lilly has stellar command and occasionally dominant stuff. Just two weeks ago, White Sox pinch-hitter Juan Pierre broke up a no-hit bid for the southpaw in the ninth inning. Moreover, under the tutelage of fellow finesse lefty and fly-ball specialist Jamie Moyer, Lilly could discover even more magic.

A rotation featuring Lilly, Hamels and Moyer would admittedly be a bit more left-handed than is strictly optimal, and the looming return of left-handed J.A. Happ could make it dangerously so. Presumably, however, the Phils could reinstate Happ as a reliever, where he first pitched in 2009 before emerging as Rookie of the Year runner-up in the senior circuit.

On the Cubs side, trading Lilly makes sense even if they must eat some of the money left on his deal. All of that will be paid out by the end of October, and if the team can get a solid piece in return—24 year-old Double-A first baseman Matthew Rizzotti would make a good target—then it will have been worth parting ways with the man who has done more to make the team competitive during the past half-decade than perhaps any other.

The deal is an unlikely one, but both teams could sell it to their fans with relative ease, and it could provide Charlie Manuel with the extra pitching option he needs to guide his squad to a fourth straight division title.

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Placido Polanco Philly-Bound: What It Does For Phils (and Everyone Else)

It has been nearly half a decade since Placido Polanco donned the red Philadelphia Phillies pinstripes, but he will soon do it again, according to an

While a fairly innocuous signing in and of itself, this move could have major implications in a number of disparate ways. Polanco will reportedly receive roughly $18 million over three years, with a fourth-year option, and will move to third base for Philadelphia after winning two Gold Gloves in the last three seasons at second base.

The signing marks the end of the Phillies’ pursuits (if indeed they had ever begun) of free-agent third basemen Mark DeRosa and Chone Figgins. For DeRosa, Philadelphia had seemed the most apparent destination, and it would now seem that he will return to the St. Louis Cardinals, for whom he played in the second half of 2009. Figgins, meanwhile, has no dearth of suitors, and should find the market for his services relatively unaffected by Polanco’s pact with Philadelphia.

Unaffected, that is, except insofar as this deal says something surprising about the free-agent market this off-season. If the reported terms are accurate, Polanco’s deal (which he would sign at age 34, and which could carry him nearly to his fortieth birthday) signifies a turnaround from the highly conservative spending patterns of last winter, because it exceeds what this reporter (or most others who watched Polanco have his worst offensive season since 2005, and second-worst ever, in 2009) thought Polanco would have any chance to command on the open market.

Given that kind of inflation, DeRosa, Figgins and other mid-level free agents can demand more than they otherwise might. Second basemen benefit especially, because the market at that position got a notch less deep when Polanco signed on as a third baseman instead.

It is true that Polanco, who rarely strikes out, is a .303 career hitter with doubles power, and his two Gold Gloves no doubt led the Phillies to value him highly as a potential third baseman, especially because he has experience at the position. Still, for a player who appears to be trending predictably downward at age 35, the price they paid for Polanco is somewhat steep.

One more inexplicable assertion made in the mlb.com story should raise alarms in the minds of Phillies fans. According to the article, Polanco “could bat between lead-off hitter Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley at the top of the Phillies lineup.” Firstly, this is a dangerous statement, because it makes clear the Phils’ intent to keep Rollins (and his .296 OBP last season) in the top slot in their order.

Just as important, however, it clearly implies that Philadelphia intends to move center fielder Shane Victorino down in the order. Victorino, who posted a .358 OBP and slugged .445 least year, is a much better fit in the lead-off spot than in Rollins. Rollins now profiles more like a sixth or seventh hitter than a lead-off man, and if the Phillies don’t make that adjustment, they will not get to reap the benefits of one of the most talented offenses in recent memory.

Ultimately, the move still makes sense for Philadelphia, at least until they decide where to bat each player in their lineup. Polanco is a steady, solid second hitter with a well-established track record of offensive and defensive success. It does, however, tell us all some things about the way this winter will unfold, things we might not have expected to be true.

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