Projecting Whether These Philadelphia Phillies Can Make the Hall of Fame

On present form, none of the current Phillies should be considered for honors of any kind. But Hall of Fame consideration is based on a player’s entire career.

Therefore, more focus is put on the bright light the player generated in his prime rather than the dark shadows cast by the last years of decline. That is why a floundering team like the 2013 Phillies could boast a player or two who could end up making a speech in Cooperstown somewhere down the line.

Before we get to those guys, though, we might as well rule out the pretenders.

Chase Utley is a lot of fun to watch when he is healthy, and his peak years were dominating, as David Schoenfield detailed at length for ESPN.com last summer.

As of this writing, though, Utley has not reached 1,400 career hits. Getting to 2,000 hits would be huge for his Hall of Fame case, but that probably means he needs to play at least four more seasons, i.e., until he is 38.

Schoenfield answered the question of Utley’s Hall of Fame candidacy fairly and accurately like this: “Can Utley build a case for the Hall of Fame around a six-year peak as one of the best players in baseball? Probably not, although many players have been elected on lesser credentials.”

Ryan Howard‘s Hall of Fame chances most likely went up in smoke when he went down with that torn Achilles tendon at the end of the 2011 National League Division Series.

At the end of the 2011 regular season, Howard had 286 home runs and 864 runs batted in. He was about to turn 32. It would have taken four or five more seasons of 30 or more home runs to even get him in the conversation.

Instead, he hit 30 home runs total in the last two seasons. He is out.

You don’t think of Michael Young as a Phillie, with good reason. Still, he’s on the roster so he is in this analysis. Sadly for Young, there is not that much to talk about.

He is a career .300 hitter as of this writing, but with each passing at-bat, that lofty average is in danger of slipping into the .290s. He has over 2,350 hits and 1,000 runs batted in.

The trouble for Young will be his 185 career home runs. Hall of Fame third basemen are power hitters. Young is a first-ballot Hall of Very Good player, but that’s it.

As Gary Matthews might put it, for me, the only Phillies hitter with a good chance to make the Hall of Fame is Jimmy Rollins.

Rollins already has a World Series ring and a National League Most Valuable Player award. If he retired tomorrow, he would do so with more than 2,100 hits, 400 stolen bases, 800 runs batted in and just shy of 200 home runs.

Derek Jeter has skewed offensive statistics from the shortstop position, but Rollins compares very favorably with many shortstops who are already in the Hall. Specifically, it feels like if Ozzie Smith and his 28 home runs earned a bust, Rollins’ stats (and his four Gold Gloves) ought to make it.

Rollins should have two or three more productive years before any real decline takes place. And he is already on record with his hope to be a compiler. Rollins is going to the Hall of Fame someday.

As for the pitchers, there are only three worth discussing. The only way Jonathan Papelbon is getting into the Hall of Fame is with a paid ticket.

Cole Hamels is putting together a solid career, but when a pitcher is 29 years old and still has not amassed 100 wins, well, it is just too hard to anticipate the next 100 wins coming fast enough to put him in a Hall of Fame discussion.

This is especially so since Hamels’ wins all came with a team that won five division titles and, until this season, contended or finished at least .500 every year. With the tailspin the Phillies are in and given the length of Hamels’ hitch in Philadelphia, he might not reach 150 wins, much less 200.

Cliff Lee has a similar problem. Lee is 35 years old and has 134 wins. It just seems doubtful that he will pitch long enough to merit Hall of Fame consideration.

The last pitcher to consider here is Roy Halladay, whose case is complicated by his relatively low win total (204 to date) but bolstered significantly by the decade he spent battling long odds on subpar Toronto Blue Jays teams.

If Halladay can conjure up 20-30 more victories before his shoulder runs out of pitches, he would be a virtual lock. He just might have a good enough resume now though.

Too bad for the Phillies he will almost certainly go to Cooperstown as a Blue Jay.

It is somehow fitting that the greatest era of Phillies baseball is likely to produce only one Hall of Famer the team can truly call its own.

The stars of that run (Howard and Utley specifically) and the team itself did not stay great enough long enough to have it turn out any other way.

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Philadelphia Phillies: Starting Roy Halladay Too Soon a Mistake, Win or Lose

What the Philadelphia Phillies are doing Sunday in starting Roy Halladay against the Arizona Diamondbacks is a classic symptom of a diseased franchise.

Halladay is returning to the major leagues for the first time in almost four months, per Jim Salisbury of CSNPhilly.com.

His last start for the Phillies was also at home and also on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon.

The result, of course, was less than sunny.

Halladay was torched by the Hapless Miami Marlins for nine earned runs after getting only seven outs.

After watching Halladay throw behind Marlins hitters—not on purpose, but because his shoulder would not let him place the ball with anything resembling accuracy—the Phillies finally accepted reality and shut him down.

Halladay was set for a rehab start at Double-A Reading Sunday. Those Reading Fightin Phils fans who bought tickets for the clash with the New Hampshire Fisher Cats are going to be plenty disappointed.

Last night’s 18-inning loss to the Diamondbacks didn’t just cost the Phillies a game in the standings—they burned Sunday’s originally scheduled starter, Tyler Cloyd, in the process. The Phillies cannot be faulted for that untimely turn of events. They had to try to win the game, and using Cloyd for extended innings in that situation was the right decision.

What they can be faulted for, though, is not having another pitcher in Reading or Triple-A Lehigh Valley who they could bring up to take this start.

Just four days ago, David Murphy of the Philadelphia Daily News headed a blog post with “Roy Halladay doesn’t look ready to to face major league hitters.”

Commenting on Halladay’s start this week pitching for Class A Lakewood, Murphy noted that “Halladay was adequate enough to to hold a Class A lineup to two runs in six innings.”

However, Murphy also saw that Halladay “went through a few stretches where he appeared to suffer variations of the same problems that plagued him throughout April and May, when he allowed 33 runs in 34 1/3 innings over seven starts.”

Oh boy.

And now, not even a week later, Halladay and his iffy shoulder are going to take on an Arizona Diamondbacks team that knocked a healthy Ethan Martin out of the game in two-thirds of an inning last night.

At present, there are no quotes available from Halladay about his feelings on the decision to expedite his return.

One can easily imagine that Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. and manager Ryne Sandberg asked Halladay if he could go, and he told them yes.

He told Amaro and Charlie Manuel he could go against the Marlins in May, too.

There is no good reason—not one—to start Halladay against the Diamondbacks today if he is not 100 percent healed and competent to face major league hitters.

The Phillies are hopelessly out of playoff contention and are playing out the string.

The best-case scenario is that Halladay pitches well and wins the game. That would be nice, sure, but it would not mean much in the big picture.

The worst-case scenario, of course, is that Halladay gets bombed again and comes off the mound citing discomfort in the process. Or worse.

However it turns out, though, this is a foolish decision by a franchise that lately cannot get out of its own way.

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Philadelphia Phillies: 5 Veterans Who Submarined 2013 Season

If success has a thousand fathers, failure has at least five.

Except for perhaps Domonic Brown and Cliff Lee, the 2013 Phillies have a roster full of players who must bear some degree of responsibility for the fact that Philadelphia currently trails the awful New York Mets in the National League East.

But I don’t have the time to prepare a slideshow documenting every organizational and on-field failing of this franchise in 2013. And I seriously doubt you would much want to read it.

Instead, I’ll single out the worst offenders and let the others suffer their shame in isolated silence.

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Philadelphia Phillies: 5 Players Trying to Save Their Jobs for 2014

It is sad to see what injuries, suspensions and ineptitude in the front office did to the 2013 Philadelphia Phillies.

Proving the old adage that firing one manager is easier than firing 25 players, Charlie Manuel was forced to walk the plank late last week.

Typically savvy move by the Phillies front office, thinking that the news of Manuel’s firing would be buried by a slow news cycle on an August Friday afternoon. Wrong again: it wasn’t.

A quick look at the Phillies’ schedule shows that they have almost nothing to play for.

They have 20 divisional games left; the Atlanta Braves have rendered all of them meaningless. And if you are the sort who is yearning to watch the Phillies and San Diego Padres slug it out in September, you’re in luck because good seats are still available, cheap.

Motivation to keep watching this smoldering crater of a baseball team is hard to find, but there are a number of players on this team worth keeping tabs on.

Unlike so many Phillies who have clearly checked out (I’m looking at you, JRoll), the following players are still giving maximum effort in an attempt to secure employment with the Phillies in 2014.

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Philadelphia Phillies: 5 Players Who Will Not Be Back in 2014

The Philadelphia Phillies cannot even make a columnist’s job easy these days.

This assignment, picking players who will not be back on the Phillies roster in 2014, would have been a snap two weeks ago.

Then Laynce Nix, one of the obvious candidates, got zipped by the club on August 6.

Adding insult to injury, the Phillies sloughed off more dead weight by releasing Delmon Young on Wednesday, per Matt Gelb of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

This assignment began to feel like one of those games of eight ball where a better player agrees to spot you two balls, then immediately after the break spots you the two balls you had sitting on pocket edges.

Fortunately, the Phillies are so bereft of talent and mired in mediocrity that other candidates do in fact abound.

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Philadelphia Phillies: 5 Post-Deadline Moves Phinished Phils Could Still Make

One of the suggestions sportswriters get is to function as something other than a calendar or a standings list.

Presumably, readers are savvy enough to know what today’s date is and where their favorite teams reside in the current standings. Don’t duplicate effort, so goes the advice.

Well, pitch that, because the Phillies‘ present condition is atrocious enough to demand a taking of inventory.

The Phillies, not even a full week into August, are:

• 16.5 games out of first place in National League East
• 11 games under .500
• 10.5 games out of a wild card spot, the value of which is diluted since there are two of them

Give them this, though: Based on run differential, their record should be much, much worse than it is.

The Phillies have a run differential of negative 88 runs. As of this writing, it is the second-worst run differential in all of Major League Baseball, ahead of only the woeful Houston Astros.

The Good Ship Phillies hung around the .500 buoy for half a season, hit a rock and sank like a stone.

Woe be to you, if you have tickets to watch this moribund, overpriced, non-achieving side for the next 51 games.

Who wants to talk possible post-deadline trades? Don’t all jump up at once.

For the uninitiated, the rules governing post-deadline trades are set forth really well by Jay Jaffe of Sports Illustrated here.

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Grading Philadelphia Phillies’ Trade Deadline Performance a Real No-Brainer

The Philadelphia Phillies have loudly announced through their silence and inactivity at the trade deadline that they are a franchise without a plan.

Or a brain.

General manager Ruben Amaro, Jr., soon to be known as “lame duck GM Ruben Amaro, Jr.,” did as good a job at the just-passed deadline as you did.

You did nothing to make the Phillies better, and neither did he. Of course, it is not your job to improve the Phillies’ roster for either this season or future seasons.

For now, at least, it is his job. His inexcusable inaction at the trade deadline, though, suggests that it may not be his job all that much longer.

The prevailing belief about the Phillies’ failure to move even one expensive veteran player for younger, cheaper help is that the Phillies wanted too much for the players other teams had interest in.

Calling out the Phillies as the primary loser of the trade deadline, ESPN.com’s Jayson Stark indicated that other general managers were put off by Amaro, Jr.’s insistence for premium return on players like Cliff Lee. 

Worse still, Amaro, Jr. steadfastly maintained that the Phillies would not pay any of Lee’s exorbitant contract to make a deal happen.

Lee had more than enough value to return the types of prospects Amaro, Jr. allegedly wanted (Xander Bogaerts from the Boston Red Sox for example), but not if the team getting Lee would be on the hook for upwards of $75 million in the next three seasons.

Amaro, Jr. wanted the best of both worlds in a Lee deal, and thus came away with no deal at all.

All right, so maybe holding on to Lee was a good idea. 

But there is no reason or excuse for Michael Young or Carlos Ruiz to still be playing in Philadelphia.

Young and Ruiz are middle-aged players with playoff experience who were attractive to teams in contention. 

According to Jon Heyman of cbssports.com, the New York Yankees made legitimate inquiries on both players, including an offer for Young, and were more or less turned down flat by Amaro, Jr.

And that is how, as Stark put it: “Shockingly, after an eight-game cliff-dive…they still managed to stagger to the deadline tape without GM Ruben Amaro Jr. pulling off a single deal.”

So Amaro, Jr. and the Phillies (and their fans) pick up in August where their abysmal July left them off.

Twelve and a half games out of first place in the National League East division.

Nine games out of a wild card berth, with three teams ahead of them.

Hey, at least Phillies fans will get to watch Ruiz try to add to his 2013 total of one home run for the next two months.

Ruben Amaro, Jr.’s trade deadline performance, in school terms, does not even merit an “F.” Only a grade of “incomplete” fits.

Because failure implies effort.

 

 

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Philadelphia Phillies: State of the Franchise at the 2013 Season’s 100-Game Mark

The Philadelphia Phillies are not managed by Bill Parcells, but they are the living embodiment of one of the former National Football League coach’s most famous truisms.

“You are what your record says you are” is a phrase tough guy wannabes and other unpleasant people like to throw around with great self-satisfaction to point up the shortcomings of everyone but them.

I really dislike people who break this old chestnut out every time somebody else makes a mistake or three. Which, I guess, makes it all the more galling that I am applying it to the 2013 Phillies.

It really fits, though.

Until Matt Harvey abused the Phillies on Sunday afternoon, the Phillies were an even 49-49 on the season.

In 2012, the Phillies went 81-81.

You do not need to be a mathematics major to see that the Phillies played 260 games in a bit more than a season and a half and won exactly half of them.

The Phillies’ record, then, says they are a .500 franchise. And you know what?

So does their roster.

The Phillies have about half of an outfield.

Domonic Brown is set to be a fixture in left field. Ben Revere has shown flashes of exciting promise, but his .324 lifetime on-base percentage does not suggest he will ever be more than an adequate leadoff man.

Delmon Young has hit decently and fielded pretty poorly, i.e., he is exactly what he was advertised to be.

The Phillies have about half of an infield.

Jimmy Rollins is having a pretty nondescript campaign by his standards. Chase Utley has been resurgent when he has played. And there ends the good news in the infield.

Ryan Howard is featured in every “worst contract in baseball history” piece the blogosphere can pump out. Michael Young is at the top of every “first Phillie likely to be traded” list (H/T Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports).

The Phillies have about half of a starting rotation.

Cliff Lee is an All-Star and shows no signs of slowing down. Cole Hamels has been a hot mess for most of 2013, but it is probably too soon to say he cannot regain ace form in 2014 and beyond.

As an aside, though, the Parcells quote absolutely applies to Hamels this season. His earned run average is over four and he is 4-12. His WHIP this season is a full tenth higher than his career average in that statistical category. He is what he is right now.

After Lee and Hamels, the Phillies have a whole lot of “meh” at the back end of the rotation. Kyle Kendrick is trying as hard as he can, but he will never be confused with an ace.

Jonathan Pettibone, John Lannan and the others pitching on days four and five are only placeholders until better options come along.

The only places you cannot say the Phillies have half a roster are in the bullpen and on the bench.

Because in those areas, the Phillies have much, much less than glass-half-full situations.

The Mike Adams signing can fairly be called a loss. As such, the Phillies are back to handing the ball to the likes of Jake Diekman, Justin De Fratus and Antonio Bastardo in the late innings, hoping none of them burst into flames trying to get the game to the suddenly iffy Jonathan Papelbon.

And you can’t make me talk about the Phillies’ bench options (beyond Kevin Frandsen, who has been really good) so I won’t.

Besides, if you want to watch the Phillies’ bench, based on the team’s injury problems you can just watch the game from the first inning on—John Mayberry, Jr. and Darin Ruf would be, at best, bench players for most contending teams.

Despite all of the foregoing, the Phillies continue to cling desperately to their .500 record and their dwindling hopes of stealing a playoff spot in an underwhelming National League.

As last year showed, though, .500 becomes less of an accomplishment and more of a burden with each game that falls off the schedule.

The primary bit of good news for the Phillies going forward is what promises to be a wild shedding of salary soon after the season ends on September 29 in Atlanta.

Roy Halladay, Chase Utley, Michael Young and Carlos Ruiz will all fall off the books, freeing up about $46 million ($10 million of Young’s salary in 2013 is being eaten by the Texas Rangers.)

If the Phillies decide to sell Papelbon before the trade deadline, that would be another $13 million saved next season.

So in truth, the future for the Phillies looks quite a bit brighter than the present. For one thing, the National League East is not exactly populated with dominant teams in the way of the 1927 New York Yankees or the Big Red Machine. 

Brown, Revere, Lee and Hamels are a reasonably solid core to build around, prospects like Maikel Franco and Jesse Biddle are in the pipeline and the team should have a lot of money to spend next winter.

Getting to that promised time, though, might feel interminable as the 2013 team trudges toward another Even Steven season likely to end without a playoff run.

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Philadelphia Phillies: Pros and Cons of Dealing Cliff Lee Before Trade Deadline

Know this straight away: In my opinion, the Phillies should not trade Cliff Lee. Not this season, not next season and preferably not ever.

But there is little use in going over the pros and cons of trading the likes of Michael Young, Carlos Ruiz or even Jonathan Papelbon.

Young is a subpar defensive third baseman who hits for a decent average but little power. Substitute defensive prowess for an ability to stay healthy, and Young is basically doing a Placido Polanco impression.

If anyone wants to give the Phillies a useful major league-ready bullpen arm or a solid prospect for Young, Ruben Amaro Jr. should fax the paperwork to the other club while he has that opposing general manager on the line.

That goes double for Carlos Ruiz. Everyone loves Chooch. His contributions to the greatest era in Phillies baseball from 2007-2011 will never be forgotten. 

For that matter, his yeoman efforts to drag an injury-riddled club to a .500 finish last season—his greatest statistical season by far—were remarkable to watch.

Too bad it seems now to have been a lot of mirage and little real water.

So if Ruiz has to go to a contender, well, goodbyes are hard but they are usually unavoidable.

As for Papelbon, that signing was a mistake when it happened. Didn’t Ruben read Moneyball? You know what usually wins the game when you have a lead going into the ninth inning? The fact that you have the lead going into the ninth inning.

All three of these players are expendable now. Papelbon, particularly, is a Corvette parked outside of a modest apartment complex.

The idea of trading Chase Utley is intriguing, but until an offer commensurate with his value appears, the Phillies will probably cling to Utley like a drowning man hanging onto a splintering piece of driftwood.

Not one of the aforementioned players would bring the haul that Cliff Lee is likely to bring back to the Phillies if they deal him. As such, the pros and cons of trading Lee are the weightiest of any current member of the Phillies.

Per my disclaimer up front, to my mind, there are two pros and more cons to trading Lee.

The pros are very simple:

1. The chance to restock the farm system in a meaningful way via prospects coming back in the deal
2. The clearing of at least $50 million from the books.

The cons, though, are really significant.

The biggest downside to trading Lee would be that with him goes any pretense of contending in either 2013 or 2014.

The Phillies are a .500 club right now instead of a real contender for at least a Wild Card largely because their franchise first baseman hit like a fourth outfielder, their bullpen is an atrocity, and Utley missed a month.

But even if the Phillies’ quest to return to the postseason dies young this season, the thought of bringing back a core of Lee, Cole Hamels, Domonic Brown and Ben Revere is suddenly very attractive.

How many other teams can say they have their center fielder, their power bat, and two aces in the rotation in place?

As for the money, a lot of people might look at Lee’s $25 million per year contract and gasp that it is too much. If anything, though, Lee is a little bit underpaid.

If Lee were to hit the free-agent market this winter, his .625 career winning percentage and the supporting peripherals would probably get him that money for at least four more years.

Finally, there is that bit about needing to sell tickets.

Even if the Phillies retain Lee at the expense of splurging in the free-agent market this offseason (doubtful), keeping Lee and Hamels for 2014 gives fans a subtle peace of mind about buying tickets to Phillies games.

Specifically, it means that fans can justify their ticket purchases by saying to themselves that they have a 40 percent chance of seeing an ace pitch every time they go to Citizens Bank Park.

Boar’s Head had a terrific campaign touting its delicatessen products a while back, and their tagline was perfect: “Compromise Elsewhere.”

That would be my message to the Phillies about trading Cliff Lee.

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Philadelphia Phillies Trade Deadline Strategy Blueprint: Pull Triggers Wisely

“Trade everybody!” the masses cry.

“Blow it up!” say the fantasy baseball aficionados who pull the plug on every season that does not find them in first place on June 1.

“Clean house!” bleat the disillusioned, disenfranchised Phillies fans who, after being absurdly spoiled by five straight division titles, a world championship and a pennant they found disappointing, want to win again—NOW.

Yeah, well, I hate to be the one to burst your bubble…but it doesn’t work that way.

This morning in my office one of my colleagues was insistent that the Phillies need to deal Jonathan Papelbon to the closer-starved Detroit Tigers for uber-prospect Nick Castellanos. “You put him right in at third base,” he said.

I don’t mean to pick on my colleague. To be fair to him, this is what passes for “analysis” on sports talk radio and in many media outlets. Find a team with a need, match it with something you have, pick out their best prospect and there’s your deal.

Again, it is just not that easy.

As I pointed out to my co-worker, the Tigers know what they have in Castellanos. They know he is a terrific young player with enormous upside who just happens to be stuck in an organization where Miguel Cabrera plays third base and Prince Fielder plays first base.

It is no coincidence that Castellanos has spent all of 2013 in the outfield.

Regardless, just saying “Papelbon for Castellanos straight up” is not a trading deadline strategy. It’s a pipe dream.

Because, as I reminded my colleague today, 30 other teams outside Philadelphia have a shot to trade for Castellanos (if he is even available), and at least 20 of them need him as badly as the Phillies do.

All of the foregoing is a somewhat protracted means of breaking Rule No. 1 of sports writing, which is not to bury the lede, which is this: the Phillies should only start trading off players at the deadline as a last resort.

And it is not because there is a great hope that the Phillies will sneak into the playoffs. As of this writing, it took them a spurt of five wins in seven games just to climb back to within two games of .500.

Rather, it is because, if we are being honest with ourselves, the pieces the Phillies have to trade are just not particularly apt to fetch the likes of Castellanos in a deadline deal.

Cliff Lee would probably bring the biggest haul. But there are still two more years, $50 million and a reachable $27.5 million vesting option for 2016 left on his deal.

Any team that trades for Lee is going to figure that sopping up all that cash is more than ample consideration and is thus unlikely to part with great prospects too.

To a lesser degree, that is the story with Papelbon, too. He is a “proven” closer, but his earned run average keeps creeping up, as does the number of blown saves.

Will some other team really absorb that contract (at least two more seasons at $13 million per) and come across with great young players? Come on.

Beyond those two, it gets really murky.

What is the value of 70 games of Chase Utley or Michael Young or Carlos Ruiz? The days of “Doyle Alexander for John Smoltz” are long gone in a savvier baseball era like today.

Will you really be all that happy if the Phillies trade local legend Utley for a “kinda maybe” prospect who ends up out of baseball in three seasons? Of course you won’t.

Ultimately, then, the Phillies should hold this group together as long as possible, up to hours before the deadline if the circumstances dictate.

Not because the team they have is great (it’s not) but because the haul they are in line to get in trade is even less valuable than a probably damned chase for the National League East crown—a division where 87 wins just might be enough.

Whether Utley and Young and Ruiz are traded or just not re-signed, their money comes off the books either way. It can (should) be spent on younger, better players in the offseason.

So unless a Castellanos, or a Mike Olt or a Jameson Taillon falls into the Phillies’ lap, the wisest course is probably just to see this season through with the team they have.

Patience, like baseball, is supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it.

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