The 10 Biggest Questions the Philadelphia Phillies Must Answer This Offseason

After the 2012 Philadelphia Phillies went 81-81, the 2013 season had three and only three possible outcomes.

And to borrow from Woody Hayes’ infamous dismissal of the forward pass, two of those outcomes would be bad.

From .500, the 2013 Phillies could only go over .500 (good), .500 again (not so good) or under .500 (bad).

In winning only 73 games, the 2013 Phillies overachieved in the worst sense—they were a good deal worse than anyone thought possible.

Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. thus enters the most difficult offseason of his tenure.

How he answers the following 10 questions will probably determine whether he retains his job after the 2014 season.

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Power Ranking Philadelphia Phillies’ Biggest Needs Heading into Free Agency

After the Philadelphia Phillies finished 81-81 in 2012, the signs of trouble around the team were plentiful and ominous. But there were still rationalizations and wishes lingering.

It does not take all that much, so goes the dreamer’s logic, to go from 81 wins to, say, 88 wins.

Phillies fans hoped that Roy Halladay and Ryan Howard could come back healthy in 2013. They crossed their fingers on the possibility that Ben Revere could steal 40 bases and score 100 runs.

While they were ruminating on those wishes, they never could have guessed that Cole Hamels would go 8-14 or that Jimmy Rollins would hit .252 and slug .348.

There will be no such dreaming about the 2014 Phillies after this past season’s group lost 89 times.

Very few 73-89 teams have lacked for roster holes. The Phillies are no exception.

 

 

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Philadelphia Phillies: State of Franchise at the Start of the 2013-14 Offseason

Entering the 2013-14 offseason, the Philadelphia Phillies are a team that should be in the middle of a gut and rebuild.

Unfortunately, Phillies management looks at Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins, Ryan Howard, Cliff Lee and Cole Hamels and think that since they’re all wearing the same numbers and playing the same positions that maybe it is still 2009.

For that reason, the Phillies are in the worst position the franchise has been in entering an offseason since 1996-97.

The 1996 Phillies team, like the 2013 version, boasted familiar faces doing sadly unfamiliar things.

And those fading stars, like Utley and company now, were victims of their own success.

Darren Daulton and Lenny Dykstra were the primary holdovers from the improbable 1993 National League champions. The pennant they won bought them time in Philadelphia in the form of (for the time) long, guaranteed contracts.

Daulton had actually landed his big-money deal before the pennant run, signing a four-year, $18.5 million contract extension before the 1993 season began. Certainly, the money the Phillies owed Daulton kept him in Philadelphia longer than his falling production and failing health justified.

Dykstra notoriously parlayed his 1993 playoff success into a now clearly absurd four-year contract extension that guaranteed him $24.9 million.

At the time that must have seemed like generational money for Dykstra. It wasn’t.

Come 1997, Daulton was playing out the string as a miscast right fielder. That was more than Dykstra could say: He was (unbeknownst to him) never to play another Major League Baseball game.

As you no doubt recall, the Phillies did not return to the playoffs until 2007.

They did not revive the dying franchise in free agency, either. They reloaded through the draft with players like Pat Burrell, Rollins, Utley and Hamels. By the time Howard was launching home runs off stadium facades throughout Major League Baseball, the Phillies were one of the best teams in the sport.

The Golden Era of Phillies baseball (2007-2011) is now indisputably past. Unfortunately, what is likely to follow is a repeat of the lost Phillies seasons through the remainder of the 1990’s that followed the fluke World Series appearance in 1993.

The Phillies, committed long-term at long dollars to too many heroes of the not-that-recent past, are going to try to fill in around their expensive burned-out supernovas with a modest signing here and a promoted-too-soon minor leaguer there.

What the Phillies should do is take several steps back as soon as possible.

That would mean parting with Hamels and Lee, the two Phillies who have the highest trade value. Even given their oversized contracts, both left-handers would fetch a good return in prospects from a team like the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, who had a lot less pitching than they thought they had in 2013.

The Phillies will point to their coming television contract negotiation and their flagging attendance as reasons for their apparent plan to stay their disastrous course in the face of incontrovertible evidence that what they are doing is not working.

Unlike the Phillies of the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, though, the current franchise cannot build a new stadium to turn things around quickly.

Could Howard, Utley and Rollins all bounce back in 2014? Could Hamels stop losing two of every three decisions? Maybe.

Unfortunately for Phillies fans, that is the franchise’s only hope for the near—and even further away—future.

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Philadelphia Phillies’ Free Agency Shopping List

The Philadelphia Phillies are going to have to continue their free-spending ways of recent years if they are to have any chance to climb back into contention in the National League Eastern Division.

It is difficult to believe how a team that already has over $110 million committed to six players could have so many holes in its roster.

Actually, you can read that sentence the other way just as easily—of course a team with over $110 million committed to six players has a ton of holes in the roster.

Unless the Phillies’ target payroll is over $300 million (it’s not), then the unavoidable consequence of paying diminishing players like Ryan Howard, Jonathan Papelbon and, to a lesser extent, Chase Utley eight-figure contracts is the need to fill other roster spots on the cheap.

That is how you end up with Cody Asche rushed to the Majors to play third base and stuck with perpetually underachieving John Mayberry Jr. in the outfield too often. They may struggle, but they will do so without further straining an already creaky Phillies budget.

The trouble with this strategy, of course, is that when Howard misses half a season, Cole Hamels loses twice as often as he wins and Jimmy Rollins starts to decline rapidly, there is no one on the roster capable of making up for their meager production.

Quick aside: legitimate kudos to Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. for resisting the temptation to overspend on two of last winter’s biggest free agent busts.

The Washington Nationals spent $13 million in 2013 to watch Dan Haren win only 10 games with an earned run average closer to five than four.

Compared to B.J. Upton, though, Haren looks like a fantastic signing.

As ESPN.com’s Jayson Stark recently laid out, the Atlanta Braves have Upton for four more years at very long money. That must be terrifying for Braves fans given these facts:

A .184 batting average, the second-lowest average in the entire sport among players with at least 400 plate appearances (beating out only his own teammate, that .181-hitting Dan Uggla) … a .289 slugging percentage…0 for the entire season (0-for-28, 18 strikeouts) with runners on third base …hitting .157/.227/.222 against left-handed pitching … a mind-boggling .108 batting average (10-for-93, with 42 strikeouts) with runners in scoring position.

Can you even imagine what the calls for Amaro‘s head would sound like if the Phillies’ current center fielder was Upton instead of Ben Revere?

The Phillies’ biggest roster hole, unfortunately, is at first base. With Howard set to receive another $25 million in 2014, expect the Phillies to fake it until they make it with a platoon of Howard and inexpensive labor Darin Ruf at that power position.

The biggest name on the free-agent market is Robinson Cano. Do not count on Cano ending up in Philadelphia, as he Buster Olney reported that he’s looking for a massive contract.

It probably does not matter anyway, since the Phillies re-signed Utley to hold down second base for two more seasons.

The Phillies can probably survive another season with Asche, Rollins, Utley and Howard/Ruf in the infield. They will not survive another season with Mayberry Jr. and Ruf figuring prominently in the outfield.

With Hunter Pence off the market, the right field free-agent list took a hit. But the Phillies could significantly upgrade this position with a player like Corey Hart, Michael Morse or Nelson Cruz.

All three of them have injury issues (and Cruz has that PED question hanging over him), but the Phillies might need to chance it with one of them given their abject need for an offensive boost.

In the starting rotation, the Phillies have two aces and three lesser cards.

Hamels and Cliff Lee would lead 90 percent of the rotations in Major League Baseball. As the Phillies proved in 2013, though, those two cannot do anything about what happens on the days they do not pitch.

The Phillies will have to do a lot better than what the possible end of Roy Halladay’s career offered in 2013 as a third starter.

Matt Garza has been linked to the Phillies in the past, but I do not see Amaro, Jr. taking a chance on Garza missing more time with injury while banking tens of millions of the Phillies’ free agent dollars.

My vote here continues to be for Ervin Santana. His performance in Kansas City this season suggests that he has rediscovered the form that made him so dominant in Anaheim a few years back.

The Phillies should also look to bring in one of the myriad former closers on the market for relatively short money on a one- or two-year deal and try to get lucky. 

If the Phillies conclude the winter with one more legitimate outfielder and one more credible starting pitcher, they should be better than they were in 2013.

Then again, it would be hard to get too much worse. 

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When Can We Realistically Expect the Phillies to Contend for a Title Again?

The answer to when the Phillies will contend again is entirely dependent on how the team’s ownership will respond to the dry rot that consumed the last two seasons.

There are basically two ways this can go.

The first and less likely path would be to put the checkbook away for the foreseeable future and hope that the $110 million already promised to six players (Ryan Howard, Cole Hamels, Cliff Lee, Chase Utley, Jonathan Papelbon and Jimmy Rollins) will pay bigger dividends in a new year.

The primary problem with this strategy is that the Phillies already tried it in 2012 and 2013 with minimal success.

If the Phillies were my client (wouldn’t that be a sweet gig) I would advise them not to repeat their dismal recent history by exclusively trying to fill the gaping holes around their old, expensive pieces with young, cheap ones.

Look at the Phillies roster. Beyond the aforementioned six players, who are all almost certainly coming back, one of the highest-paid Phillies might never pitch again:

The next guy after him will make $7 million next season whether his elbow allows him to pitch or not. And Carlos Ruiz may in fact be back in Philadelphia next year, but the Phillies will probably not need to pay him $5 million to convince him to stay.

The point here is that the Phillies roster, as currently constructed, is a stark dichotomy of haves and have-nots.

Domonic Brown, Darin Ruf, Cody Asche and Ben Revere will essentially make meal money for the 2014 Phillies; barring a big free agent signing or two, all four of them factor prominently in next season’s plans.

As stated above, though, that plan of new-found frugality is just not working.

So the Phillies are going to have go the way of the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers and other similarly situated clubs and try to spend their way out of this quagmire of mediocrity.

This is especially so since, even with a terrific Fan Appreciation Day crowd of 44,398, the Phillies barely sneaked past three million in attendance in 2013.

That is no disgrace, but it is more than half a million shy of 2012’s attendance and more than 650,000 fewer than came through the gates in 2011 (attendance links per baseball-reference.com.)

While the attendance figures dwindle, the Phillies are coincidentally trying to leverage competing networks’ interest in their television rights which are up for bidding starting with the 2016 season.

Thus, now is not the time for an overhaul. Television rights to a rebuilding club do not project to have the same lustre as would the same rights to a winning team.

Ideally, of course, the Phillies would do things the way the St. Louis Cardinals, Atlanta Braves, Pittsburgh Pirates (yeah, I said it) and other fiscally prudent teams have: by consistently drafting good players and developing them into, at worst, competent major league players and, at best, All-Stars.

It’s a little late for that, though. The Phillies allegedly strip-mined their farm system in the trades that brought back players like Hunter Pence, Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay.

But they have not exactly been haunted by any of the players who left town in any of those deals, which suggests that except maybe for Jarred Cosart none of those prospects were much use anyway.

And except for Brown, the only thing the Phillies have developed the past few years is a tendency to implode.

Given the foregoing, then, you can realistically expect the Phillies to make some aggressive trades and expensive free-agent signings this offseason.

Neither the Braves nor the Washington Nationals have the look of a dynastic force, and with two wild cards in play now you don’t even have to be all that good to get into the playoffs.

Which, as the the 2011 Cardinals can attest, is really all you need to do. 

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Fan Appreciation Day at Citizens Bank Park Feels More Like “Closing Time”

“Closing time/Open all the doors and let you out into the world.”

By great planning or dumb luck, the Philadelphia Phillies had Cliff Lee set to take the ball for Fan Appreciation Day (Sep. 22), otherwise known as the last home game of the 2013 season.

Lee is the Phillies’ best pitcher and, based on his last outing, probably one of the five or six best hitters on the team as it is presently constituted.

The Phillies were also set to take the field in glorious, first-day-of-fall weather with bright blue skies and temperatures just creeping up toward 70 degrees without ever getting there. The Phillies could not have drawn up the setting for Fan Appreciation Day any better.

They even got the local sports stage to themselves, since the Philadelphia Eagles, who normally steal fall Sundays from the Phils, already played (and lost) earlier in the week.

It is difficult to imagine a more stark contrast in fan experience from what Phillies fans were treated to at Citizens Bank Park the night before.

After granting deposed manager Charlie Manuel one last hurrah (albeit in absentia), the locals were treated to five-plus innings of Tyler Cloyd getting touched up (again) followed by a long rain delay and then the game mercifully being called:

So for the second consecutive season, the Phillies will be closing Citizens Bank Park in September, at least a week or two earlier than anyone hoped. And for the first time since 2002, they will bring the curtain down on a losing season.

“Closing time/Time for you to go out to the places you will be from.”

When the Phillies re-signed Chase Utley, they confirmed that there is no full roster purge in the offing. Lee, Utley, Ryan Howard, Cole Hamels and Jimmy Rollins are all likely to be back, as is Jonathan Papelbon. Domonic Brown made the All-Star team on the back of a great month, so he’ll be back.

But it is hard to imagine Roy Halladay returning, because the Phillies will probably want him to take a deep pay cut and some other team is likely to pay him more.

John Mayberry Jr. is eligible for arbitration, but the Phillies would be wise to let him and his .226 average go. Same with Kevin Frandsen (.230.) And Erik Kratz will almost certainly be asked to take his turkey bacon and leave.

The Phillies pitching staff is such a mess that only John Lannan seems an obvious candidate not to return.

The Phillies will probably have more pitchers in camp than most college football teams dress on game day, hoping that some of their underachieving arms (Jeremy Horst, Justin De Fratus, Phillippe Aumont) might have “found something” in the offseason.

The only real certainty for the Phillies right now is that the glorious 2007-2011 era of five straight National League Eastern Division titles, two pennants and a World Series crown is finished.

Maybe the Phillies can redirect some of the money they wasted this season on Halladay and Michael Young (about $25 million) into the free-agent market and give their fanbase a reason or two to renew their season ticket plans.

But to contend next year, the 2014 Phillies will have to overcome the awful truth of their relatively rapid descent from being the only team to win more than 100 games in 2011 to being a sub-.500 club now.

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

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Why Philadelphia Phillies Fans Should Expect Big Changes This Offseason

Philadelphia Phillies fans should expect big changes this offseason, because the National League East’s overall mediocrity demands them.

The Atlanta Braves are going to win the NL East with well over 90 wins—they have an outside shot at 100—but the Braves have a few of the disconcerting hallmarks of past “good teams” that have crashed and burned in the playoffs.

Above all, the Braves’ terrible propensity to strike out portends trouble in the postseason. Right now the Braves are second in the National League in team batting strikeouts, behind only the lowly New York Mets.

As the 2012 Washington Nationals (third in NL team batting strikeouts in 2012) found out, all the easy runs that come against bad teams in the regular season are nowhere to be found in October.

So when the Nationals could only scratch out 10 runs in the first four games of their 2012 NLDS with the St. Louis Cardinals, they left the door ajar. Every Phillies fan knows what the Cardinals do when that happens.

Maybe the Braves will win the World Series, but with the Phillies already eliminated from playoff contention, their focus has to be on 2014 and beyond.

Neither the Mets nor the Miami Marlins project to be in positions to contend for the NL East crown in 2014. Though the Nationals are making a nice run to the finish line in 2013, it is very likely going to be too little too late for them.

This season should prove conclusively that the Nationals made a mistake in sitting Stephen Strasburg for the 2012 playoffs.

No playoff berth is ever a given, and despite their forward-thinking choice to sit their best starter for the playoffs, the Nationals are still often hostages of Strasburg‘s elbow and Bryce Harper’s hip.

Even if you want to concede the 2014 NL East to the Braves, then, there should be opportunities for the Phillies to accumulate enough wins to make the race close and in so doing get into the annual wild-card derby.

As presently constructed, the Phillies cannot possibly believe they will make a playoff run in 2014. The 2013 Phillies have been irrelevant since mid-August.

But after the 2013 season, the contracts of Roy Halladay and Carlos Ruiz will have concluded, freeing up $25 million in salary.

Assuming third baseman Cody Asche returns, the Phillies will be paying their third baseman something near the league minimum rather than the $5 million they paid for five months of Michael Young.

The Phillies can reasonably expect to fill at least two of the gaping holes in their roster—maybe even three—with that sort of cash on hand.

They are also unlikely to cry poor and refuse to spend this offseason, given the television-rights windfall they are about to fall into.

Chase Utley’s recent contract extension means that the Phillies are out of the Robinson Cano bidding, but there are other worthy players likely heading to free agency this winter.

Right-hander Ervin Santana has rediscovered his form after a spotty 2012. Santana’s 9-9 record with the suddenly contending Kansas City Royals is misleading; his 3.23 earned run average and 1.14 WHIP are not.

Santana would slot in nicely between the Cliff Lee and Cole Hamels in the Phillies rotation.

And while Darin Ruf has acquitted himself nicely in the outfield, the Phillies may consider an upgrade there with players like Shin-Soo Choo, Hunter Pence and Nelson Cruz on the market.

Besides, the Phillies might need Ruf to play first base against left-handers while $25 million platoon player Ryan Howard sits.

Ultimately, Phillies fans should expect big changes this offseason, because the .500 finish of the 2012 Phillies concealed the major flaws in the team that 2013 exposed.

An unproductive offseason would threaten the Phillies in the standings, but it would do worse things to them where it hurts more.

At the gate.

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“Hamels, Lee, Then Turn and Flee” a New Take on Old Rhyme for Phillies Fans

Like so many great lines, “Spahn and Sain and pray for rain” is actually a misquote.

Millions of people misquote “Casablanca” every day when they say “play it again, Sam.” Humphrey Bogart’s character Rick Blaine never says those words, though he comes close.

Similarly, “Spahn and Sain and pray for rain” is a convenient revision of Gerald V. Hern‘s poem.

Hern was writing about the dearth of reliable pitching options after Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain on the 1948 Boston Braves.

Now, 65 years later, the 2013 Philadelphia Phillies are putting a new spin on that old line.

As the season winds down, Cole Hamels and Cliff Lee make two of every five days of Phillies baseball worth watching.

The other three days? We need a rainout.

Especially since August 16, 2013, also known as “Black Friday 2013” or “The Day Charlie Manuel Was Fired,” Hamels and Lee are the lone bright spots on the dark death march the Phillies will remain on until the season mercifully ends in Atlanta.

Take a look at the team’s game log via ESPN. Or, for a more explicit presentation, check out the game logs for Hamels and Lee. From August 17 forward, Hamels and Lee have started 11 games between them.

The Phillies are 10-1 in those games. They are 4-9 when Roy Halladay, Ethan Martin, Tyler Cloyd or Kyle Kendrick starts. Tossed in among the wreckage of those 13 games were Martin’s exit after two outs and Cloyd making the inept San Diego Padres look like the 1927 Yankees.

Before you toss out the “small sample size!” cry, the season numbers bear this analysis out.

Hamels and Lee are on their way to posting elite seasons based on all those peripheral numbers that wins and losses cannot account for. In Hamels and Lee, the Phillies have two pitchers in the National League top 10 in Wins Above Replacement as per ESPN. They are both likely to top 200 strikeouts this season.

After those two, you have to scroll down the Phillies roster all the way to Kyle Kendrick with his 10-12 record, his earned run average closer to five than four and his six losses in seven decisions to find the Phillies’ third-best starting pitcher.

That is not a drop-off, that is a free fall.

Enjoy Hamels and Lee now, because there will be no October baseball in Philadelphia in 2013.

Which means that either or both of them might look to be dealt in the offseason or, if the 2014 Phillies are flailing in July, next summer.

Until then, savor the spectacular quality Hamels and Lee bring to the mound when they pitch.

And feel free not to watch the Phillies when they don’t.

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The 6 Biggest Regrets and Missed Opportunities of Phillies’ 2013 Season

Though expensively constructed, the 2013 Philadelphia Phillies came apart like a cheap suit.

It is hard to believe now, but in March and even into April there were Phillies fans who fervently believed that the aging heart of the 2008 world champions had one last playoff run in them.

Now we know that the Phillies are aged, not aging, And the thought of a playoff run seems as far away as it did in desolate Phillies days like the late 1990s.

Where did it all go wrong?

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Philadelphia Phillies: Full Scouting Report on Each September Call-Up

The Philadelphia Phillies‘ press release setting forth their September call-ups was so understated and so uninspiring that it reminded me of the late, great David Foster Wallace’s summary of tepid applause at a tennis match.

“The applause of a tiny crowd is so small and sad and tattered-sounding that it’d almost be better if people didn’t clap at all,” Wallace wrote in “The String Theory,” published in Esquire.

That, sadly, is the sort of malaise the list of the Phillies’ September call-ups is likely to inspire in the team’s fans.

No one was clamoring to see more of Phillippe Aumont, but the omission of Maikel Franco and his 31 minor league home runs (per Matt Gelb of The Philadelphia Inquirer) was a real disappointment.

Four of the September call-ups are, for better or worse, familiar faces. 

Freddy Galvis is back up—in fact, he started at shortstop last night. As the press release recounted, Galvis “hit .245 with three home runs and 25 RBI in 62 games for Lehigh Valley this season.” His 0-for-4 performance last night dropped his career average to .215.

Unfortunately, Galvis is probably the best player the Phillies called up.

Right-handed starting pitcher Tyler Cloyd is back after compiling a record of 5-9 with an earned run average just under five at Triple-A Lehigh Valley. In 13 major league starts, Cloyd has served up 12 home runs.

Right-handed relief pitcher Luis Garcia was also called up. I cannot improve upon the way the press release explained the stark difference between Garcia at Triple-A and Garcia in the major leagues, so I won’t: “Garcia has retired all 12 batters he has faced at Lehigh Valley since being sent down on August 25. The 26-year-old has a 5.59 ERA in 19.1 innings for the Phillies this year.”

Left-handed relief pitcher Joe Savery is back in the majors again. It is true that Savery “has a 1.38 ERA in 13.0 innings for the Phillies this season,” per the press release.

It is also true that, despite his gaudy statistics, Savery did not pitch in Philadelphia from July 13 until last night, when he promptly yielded an earned run in less than an inning of work.

The last two September call-ups, unlike the four already mentioned, are primed to make major league debuts.

Left-handed relief pitcher Mauricio Robles earned his ticket to the big leagues (for a month, anyway) with 64 minor league innings (at Double-A Reading and Triple-A Lehigh Valley) and an ERA under two.

The most intriguing new Phillie is catcher Cameron Rupp, who faced long odds coming into this season as far as being the minor league catcher the Phillies would be calling up in September was concerned.

Rupp began 2013 firmly planted behind catching prospects Tommy Joseph and Sebastian Valle. But Joseph had a nightmare of a season and is presently shut down due to a concussion he sustained in May. Valle responded to that opportunity by hitting .203 at Double-A Reading.

In summary, then, the Phillies called up a journeyman right-handed starter, a utility infielder who cannot hit major league pitching, three relief pitchers and a catcher who started the season behind Valle in Reading.

This September cannot end soon enough.

 

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