Phillies’ Prospects to Watch in Spring Training as Clearwater Welcomes Club Back

Because the Phillies strip-mined their minor league system chasing titles from 2009-2011, the “prospect” cupboard is pretty bare.

As explained by ESPN.com’s Keith Law in his recent ranking of the Phillies’ Top 10 prospects:

“Years of trades, surrendered draft picks and refusal to go give signing bonuses that exceed MLB‘s recommendations have taken their toll on a system that doesn’t look like it’ll spit out an average every-day position player until at least 2015….”

Yikes.

So the emphasis needs to turn to young players that Phillies fans have already seen in uniform.

It is hard to think of a more exciting young player on the Phillies roster than Darin Ruf.

Law was, to put it mildly, circumspect about Ruf‘s ability to produce at the game’s highest level. “Darin Ruf could do a little damage as a bench/platoon guy against left-handed bats, although I don’t think he’s a regular,” Law opined.

But the anecdotal evidence has Phillies fans dreaming of a modern-day Greg Luzinski.

Ruf teed off on Eastern League pitching at AA Reading on his way to winning the league’s Most Valuable Player award. Ruf then had the proverbial cup of coffee with the big club in September, hitting three home runs in 33 at-bats.

He finished his whirlwind 2012 by tearing up winter ball in Venezuela, per David Murphy of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Phillies’ fans are breathlessly awaiting Ruf‘s spring training at-bats to see whether he can still drive mistakes.

Phillippe Aumont went from laboring at AA Reading to making 18 somewhat unexpected appearances with the big club toward the end of the 2012 season.

Aumont made 18 appearances for the Phillies in 2012, even saving two games along the way. His 3.68 earned run average and 1.295 walks and hits per innings pitched were reasonably competent.

But Aumont walked nine batters in his 14.2 innings, muting some of the effect of his 14 strikeouts in that same amount of work.

The Phillies, and particularly Ruben Amaro Jr. (who still hears about the Cliff Lee trade that brought Aumont to Philadelphia), would love to see Aumont blossom into a late-inning force in 2013.

Domonic Brown has been wearing the “prospect” label now for what seems like half a decade. He is 25 years old. He only played 56 games for the Phillies last season. Is he still a “prospect”?

But for Brown’s prior status as an up-and-coming player, his .236 lifetime batting average in 147 games would probably have earned his release.

You do not need Keith Law’s acumen (significant though it is) to see that this is an aging Phillies team that will rely far more on resurgences from Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Roy Halladay in 2013 than it ever will on seeing breakout years from the likes of Ruf, Aumont and Brown.

But those three players are the “potential” guys in camp from whom the most can be expected, or at least hoped for.

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

Philadelphia Phillies’ Two Biggest Missed Opportunities This Offseason

The Philadelphia Phillies’ failure to sign B.J. Upton and Dan Haren in free agency may ultimately doom their 2013 playoff hopes.

It is not only that the Phillies will be without the benefits of those players’ services. It is that their division rivals, the Atlanta Braves and the Washington Nationals, ended up with them.

Upton would have provided the Phillies with both a credible right-handed power threat and above-average defense in center field.

For the past decade, Philadelphia has had center field manned by excellent defensive players who could also hit. First Aaron Rowand and then Shane Victorino provided serious production from a position where good defenders who contribute offensively have traditionally been scarce.

The Phillies did plug the gaping hole Victorino left in center field by acquiring Ben Revere. This was not an altogether insufficient move. Revere is a terrific defensive outfielder with more than enough foot speed to play center field at Citizens Bank Park. And he projects to steal plenty of bases, too.

Unfortunately, his next major league home run will be his first, and as of this writing the Phillies are still not exactly sure where Revere should hit in the order.

Revere is a prototypical lead-off hitter. but Jimmy Rollins—who has led off for Philadelphia since before they began winning those five straight division titles—has resisted moving down in the order for anyone. Revere could end up hitting second or eighth as a result.

Acquiring B.J. Upton would have defused this issue. Upton would have slotted nicely into any number of slots in the lineup, from second to fifth to sixth on occasion.

Upton piles up three things: home runs, stolen bases and strikeouts (1,020 of them in 3,568 at-bats). His .256 career batting average compiled over seven seasons suggests that he is what he is and that potential is no longer a real consideration.

Just know that the Phillies would have lived with the empty at-bats from Upton given what the good at-bats could bring.

In 2013, the Revere acquisition will rise and fall on whether Rollins, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard have one last healthy, productive campaign in them collectively. Revere can be counted on to score runs but he should not be expected to create them.

It is fair to ask why it says here that the Phillies missed an opportunity by seeing Dan Haren go to the Washington Nationals.

The Phillies are already paying over $20 million apiece to Cole Hamels, Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay in 2013. At some point, the spending on starting pitchers had to stop, right?

Maybe. But Dan Haren on a one-year contract for $13 million is a very wise upside investment from a Nationals team that, like the Phillies, already has excellent starting pitching.

Stephen Strasburg, Jordan Zimmerman and Gio Gonzalez led the Nationals to the playoffs far more than Bryce Harper and Jayson Werth did.

Adding Haren to that staff puts the Nationals in position to run well above average starting pitching at the opposition four out of five nights.

Maybe Haren is not what he used to be, coming off a subpar season that saw his ERA lurch over four for the first time since 2010.

Then again, in 2011, Haren won 16 games.

Regardless, the Upton and Haren acquisitions starkly underline the fundamental difference between the Phillies and their division rivals in Atlanta and Washington.

The Phillies had already committed eight-figure salaries to seven players before free agents began signing after the 2012 season ended. The Phillies are stuck hoping that Utley, Howard, Halladay and others are still good enough to yield a return on the money they will be paid.

Comparatively, the teams the Phillies figure to chase in 2013 have money and time in their corner. The Nationals (Harper, Strasburg, Ian Desmond) and the Braves (Freddie Freeman, Jason Heyward, Craig Kimbrel) have a lot of young, inexpensive talent on the roster.

So, the Braves can commit $75 million to B.J. Upton and hope that his attitude and his production will not dip now that he has been paid.

And the Nationals can gamble $13 million on Haren. If it does not work out, well, the team they had without him won the division last year.

At some level, the real missed opportunities for the Phillies came well before the 2012 offseason.

When they had the opportunities NOT to sign Howard to his $125 million extension, NOT to sign Lee to his $120 million deal, NOT to give Utley $15 million for 2013, they chose otherwise.

This offseason, those long-ago choices left the Phillies unable or unwilling to sign two premier free agents who ended up elsewhere in the National League East.

The Phillies likely feel no regret now.

But it may be coming.

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

Scouting Report on Each Phillies Pitcher, Catcher Heading into Spring Training

It seems not so long ago that the Philadelphia Phillies were defending their National League East title with the “Four Aces” serving as the keystone of the team.

But while Cole Hamels and Cliff Lee continue to be widely recognized as aces, Roy Oswalt is long gone and Roy Halladay may or may not still have the stuff to lead a rotation.

Given the Phillies’ ongoing concerns on offense—the Delmon Young signing was not indicative of great confidence in the power department—it is apparent that unless the team pitches and catches it well in 2013, drastic roster changes are likely.

As with so much Phillies news these days, the team’s forecast for pitchers and catchers is varied.

Begin Slideshow

Philadelphia Phillies, Boston Red Sox Share Alarming Similarities, Shortcomings

The Philadelphia Phillies share many characteristics with the Boston Red Sox entering 2013. That is not a compliment.

The Red Sox won the World Series in 2007; the Phillies did so in 2008. In those years, the two franchises were widely admired for their organizational savvy and the game toughness of their star players.

But Pat Gillick and Theo Epstein are long gone. So are Manny Ramirez, Kevin Youkilis, Jayson Werth and Shane Victorino, among others.

Now, in 2013, both franchises are cautionary tales for what happens when you spend too much money in the wrong places, as well as how quickly the franchises competing with you can flip the script.

For the Phillies, the outsized contracts given to Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Roy Halladay have all become unsound investments with the passage of time.

The Red Sox know the feeling, carrying John Lackey at $16 million for 2013 and only by a huge stroke of luck having rid themselves of the albatross contracts they gave Carl Crawford, Adrian Gonzalez and Josh Beckett toward the end of the 2012 season.

But dumping those three players did not solve all of the Red Sox’s problems, and the issues the Red Sox carry into the season mirror those of the Phillies in a number of areas.

Both teams currently have premium power positions manned by major question marks.

The Phillies recently signed Delmon Young to alleviate their power shortfall in the outfield, but they still project to start the season with Darin Ruf (37 major league at-bats) or John Mayberry Jr. (.254 career batting average) starting in left field.

Meanwhile, the Red Sox as presently constituted do not have a major league first baseman on the roster. They did recently sign Mike Napoli to a one-year contract, but he has never played more than 70 games at first base and was recently diagnosed with avascular necrosis in his hips, per boston.com.

Elsewhere on the diamond, the Red Sox are looking for a resurgence from former All-Star Jacoby Ellsbury (74 games played in 2012) the way the Phillies are hoping against hope that Howard (71 games played in 2012) and Utley (83 games played in 2012) can resemble their formerly dominant selves.

Both starting rotations come back with comparable concerns. In Jon Lester and Cliff Lee, the Red Sox and Phillies respectively have healthy aces returning from subpar and sub-.500 seasons. In Lackey and Halladay, the Red Sox and Phillies respectively have wounded aces returning with much to prove but perhaps too few bullets left.

Above all, the Phillies and the Red Sox share the ultimate discomforting similarity: a view from beneath the best teams in their division.

The Red Sox finished dead last in the American League East in 2012; they were the proverbial “sucker at the table.” And it does not project to get much easier as the New York Yankees, Tampa Rays and Baltimore Orioles are coming off 90+ win seasons and the division’s fourth-place team (the Toronto Blue Jays) just added Jose Reyes, Josh Johnson and R.A. Dickey.

The Phillies were marginally better at third place in the National League East in 2012, but their incredible climb back to the top might actually be harder than the one the Red Sox face.

At least the Red Sox can count on the division’s best teams serially beating up on one another and perhaps deflating the number of wins they will need to contend for a playoff spot.

The Phillies, meanwhile, are the middle team of a five-team division with two great teams (Washington Nationals, Atlanta Braves) and two bad teams (New York Mets, the about-to-be-historically-bad Miami Marlins.) The Nationals will have a full season of Stephen Strasburg to go with the addition of Dan Haren; the Braves will have full seasons of B.J. and Justin Upton, per the New York Times.

With the Nationals and the Braves liberally feeding on the bottom of the division and taking their shares of their series with the Phillies, it will be all the Phillies can do to find enough wins to pull either Washington or Atlanta back.

So the Red Sox and Phillies, second and third in 2012 payroll respectively, enter 2013 with more debits than credits both in the books and on the diamond.

Both teams will need handfuls of things to break right for them to have any realistic chance of contending in 2013.

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

Philadelphia Phillies: Delmon Young Signing Shows Phils’ Fear of Closing Window

Delmon Young has been a Phillie for a very short time, and per Ruben Amaro Jr., already Young is being penned in as the Phillies‘ starting right fielder in 2013 (h/t hardballtalk.nbcsports.com).

Young hit .267 with 18 home runs and 74 runs batted in for the Detroit Tigers in 2012. Young is a right-handed hitter, he is only 27 years old and he’s coming off ankle surgery.

For all of those reasons, and because Young is kind of a jerk, a guy who once drove in 112 runs in a single season and was the American League Championship Series Most Valuable Player in 2012 took the Phillies’ low-ball offer of one year with a $750,000.00 base salary.

Incentives could push the deal’s value to $3.5 million, per mlb.com.

For weeks, Phillies fans were hearing that the Phillies were interested in signing right-handed outfielder Cody Ross, who instead went to the Arizona Diamondbacks for three years and $26 million.

Ross’ 2012 slash line of .267/22/81 is not much different from Young’s 2012 slash line of .267/18/74. And Ross is four years older. Is Ross really $25 million better than Young at this stage of their careers?

The clear and fair knock on Young is that he supposedly cannot play right field (or perhaps any position) adequately, and thus he is best suited for the American League.

But the 2008 Phillies won the World Series with a decomposing Pat Burrell chipping home runs into the short porch in left field. The 1993 Phillies won a pennant with Pete Incaviglia and Wes Chamberlain staggering around the AstroTurf at Veterans Stadium. None of them were ever confused with Garry Maddox in the outfield.

It didn’t matter, because they all hit.

Above all else, though, Young’s addition to the roster tells you that Amaro has seen all he needs to see out of John Mayberry Jr. and Domonic Brown—and not enough from Darin Ruf.

Amaro Jr. has concluded that none of them can hit in the middle of the lineup for a Phillies team that is trying to make one last playoff push with the core of the teams that won the National League in 2008 and 2009.

Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins and Cole Hamels have been with the Phillies through mostly thick and not much thin. But last season’s 81-81 season, marred by extended absences from Howard and Utley, could be seen as either a temporary setback or the beginning of a trend.

Amaro has seven players on the 2013 roster guaranteed to each make eight figures’ worth of the Phillies’ money in 2013 (Roy Halladay, Hamels, Howard, Cliff Lee, Jonathan Papelbon, Rollins, Utley.) Michael Young is also going to make $16 million in 2013, but $10 million of that is coming from the Texas Rangers.

Every one of those players but Hamels is over 30 years of age.

If the 2013 team does not make the playoffs, significant changes are likely in the very near future. For that matter, if the team falls out of the 2013 race early, the likes of Halladay, Utley and Young (all of whom have contracts that will end after 2013) could be dealt to contenders.

And that means this is no time to be relying on “maybes” and “could-bes” in the outfield.

John Mayberry Jr. is 29 years old. He is a lifetime .254 hitter with a career on-base percentage of .313.

Domonic Brown is still a young player at 25 years of age. But his numbers are worse than Mayberry Jr.’s (.236 lifetime average, .315 career on-base percentage) and he is another left-handed hitter in a lineup loaded with them.

If either Mayberry Jr. or Brown had “it,” it stands to reason the Phillies would have seen it by now.

Fans clamor for 2012 minor league sensation Darin Ruf, who was his league’s Most Valuable Player at Double-A Reading in the Eastern League.

Ruf had a nice stint with the Phillies in September last year. But that is all it was: 12 games and 37 at-bats on a team playing out the string of a dead season.

To project Ruf as a No. 5 hitter on a team with a win-now-or-else imperative based on 37 at-bats would leap over “optimistic” and land on “foolish.”

Maybe Ruf can be a productive major league hitter, maybe he can’t. If Ruf was starting the season in Miami, or even with the New York Mets, plugging him into the starting lineup from the jump would make a ton of sense.

Not in Philadelphia, though. Not in 2013. Not with a team whose shelf life gets shorter with each passing day.

So the Phillies spent on Delmon Young’s 2013 season approximately what a single Cole Hamels start will cost in 2013. For that money, they secured a right-handed power bat who is not a “maybe” or a “could be.”

Young is a proven right-handed hitter at the major league level.

The Phillies could not afford to go into 2013 without one of them.

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

Philadelphia Phillies’ 5 Most Expendable Players

“Most expendable” here does not mean “worst.”

If it did, this would be a slideshow about John Lannan, Laynce Nix, Freddy Galvis, Erik Kratz and one of the many middle relievers who struggled for the Phillies so much in 2012.

Instead, “most expendable” in this context is closer to its dictionary meaning. Per merriam-webster.com, “more easily or economically replaced than rescued, salvaged, or protected.”

The Phillies certainly, by that definition, have some expendable players on the roster.

Begin Slideshow

Philadelphia Phillies: What Every Fan Needs to Know About the 2013 Team

More than anything, what fans need to know about the 2013 Philadelphia Phillies is that, for the first time in six years, they enter the season as decided underdogs in their own division.

Bovada.lv did the honors recently by releasing its World Series futures. The Philadelphia Phillies are not a darling of the book entering 2013.

The good news is that, per Bovada, the Phillies, at 16/1, have an equal chance to win the World Series as their division rivals, the Atlanta Braves (who unlike the Phillies made the playoffs last season).

The bad news is that Bovada presently projects the Washington Nationals as the National League East’s most likely World Series winner at 9/1.

In a related story, the Phillies will need a number of unlikely occurrences to happen simultaneously to have a reasonable hope of making the playoffs.

It was more fun for Phillies fans to watch the team open the season as defending National League East champion for five years running.

On and on the good times went.

The good times, though, are over.

Coming in 2013 are, at best, nervous nights, as the Phillies try to push a roster that is both too old and too young at the same time across the line to a playoff berth—most likely as a wild card.

At worst, the Washington Nationals and Atlanta Braves (winners of 98 and 94 games, respectively) will continue to drive the Phillies down the standings like a stray nail into a board as they did in 2012.

As indicated above, the Phillies have an odd blend of established veterans (some nearing or in the downside of their careers) and young, untested players. The team will need both of those contingents to produce at good to great levels 

For the veterans, Roy Halladay will have to bounce back from a pretty poor 2012.

Fresh off winning the National League Cy Young Award in 2010 and finishing runner-up in that voting in 2011, Doc posted this line in 2012: 11-8, 4.49 ERA, a half-dozen starts missed and a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 3.67, his worst since 2007.

New third baseman Michael Young is 36 years of age (one year older than Halladay) and coming off a poor season with the Texas Rangers in 2012.

Young hit .277 (with only eight home runs) on a playoff team in a hitters’ park surrounded by offensive superstars (Josh Hamilton, Adrian Beltre, Ian Kinsler). Texas was eager enough to move Young that the Rangers are paying $10 million of Young’s $16 million salary in 2013.

Halladay and Young will both have to come closer to their career averages than last year’s forgettable stat lines if the Phillies are to have a reasonable chance to thrive in 2013.

Ultimately, though, if the Phillies cannot get fully healthy, productive seasons from Howard and Utley, all the RBI doubles Young can muster will never be enough.

As far as the younger players go, the outfield that boasted Victorino, Hunter Pence and Juan Pierre to begin the 2012 season is gone.

And the Phillies are relying heavily on three young, unproven players to put up numbers in their places.

The Phillies gave up Vance Worley and highly regarded pitching prospect Trevor May to pry Revere from the Minnesota Twins. Revere will start in center field for the Phillies in 2013.

Manuel needs to figure out what to do with a player like Revere—74 career stolen bases, zero career home runs—in a lineup already a bit starved for the long ball.

Darin Ruf is likely to start the season in a platoon in left field. That is a significant jump in level of play for a guy who spent most of 2012 at Double-A Reading.

Finally, there is Domonic Brown. The Phillies are, by necessity, likely to give Brown one last chance to show that he can hit major league pitching and be an effective player at the highest level.

The addition of Mike Adams to the bullpen will take a lot of the onus off the less-reliable relief pitchers behind him, which should keep the Phillies from blowing as many late leads as they did in 2012.

The known quantities are Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels, Jimmy Rollins and Jonathan Papelbon.  All of them did their jobs well in 2012; despite that, the Phillies only won half of their games.

For the 2013 Phillies to reverse the trend and get back to the playoffs, the unknown quantities will have do much more than they did last season.

But maybe don’t bet on it.

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

Philadelphia Phillies: Handicapping Odds of Prospects Making Opening Day Roster

The only way to make sense of which of the Phillies‘ prospects should make the Opening Day roster is to work backwards.

Per ESPN.com’s depth chart for the Phillies—as accurate a predictor as any—the Phillies have the following 24 players likely to be in uniform on April 1, 2013 at Turner Field against the Atlanta Braves:

Catcher: Erik Kratz, Humberto Quintero

First base: Ryan Howard

Second base: Chase Utley

Shortstop: Jimmy Rollins

Third Base: Michael Young

Utility Infielders: Kevin Frandsen, Freddy Galvis

Outfielders: Ben Revere, John Mayberry Jr., Darin Ruf, Domonic Brown, Laynce Nix

Starting Pitchers: Roy Halladay, Cole Hamels, Cliff Lee, Kyle Kendrick, John Lannan

Relief Pitchers: Jonathan Papelbon, Mike Adams, Antonio Bastardo, Michael Stutes, Jeremy Horst, B.J. Rosenberg

Carlos Ruiz will be back on the 25-man roster after serving his 25-game suspension for violating MLB‘s substance abuse policy. When Ruiz returns, either Kratz or Quintero is then likely to be shipped out.

Regardless, that leaves but one open spot for a “prospect” to fill.

Given the odd mix of expensive, established veterans (the entire infield, three-fifths of the starting rotation) and inexpensive question marks (Kratz, Ruf, Horst, Galvis) there is just not that much room left for prospects to make the Opening Day roster.

That is in large part because a number of those players, Ruf and Galvis being prime examples, have been rushed to the big leagues ahead of schedule because of injuries or need.

Galvis would not have played in Philadelphia in 2012 but for Utley’s inability to start the season.

Ruf is only likely to make the Opening Day roster because the Phillies lack a quality right-handed slugger and they are hoping Ruf can be that player the way a degenerate gambler hopes a scratch-off lottery ticket brings a big win.

Under different circumstances, both Galvis and Ruf would be starting the season in Lehigh Valley.

Beyond them, the Phillies do not have that many major league-ready prospects.

Tommy Joseph and Sebastian Valle are the two top catching prospects in the Phillies’ organization. But the Phillies have apparently decided that both are better off getting regular work in the minor leagues rather than caddying for Erik Kratz for a month.

Jonathan Pettibone split his 2012 time between Reading and Lehigh Valley and pitched quite well, but he is exceptionally unlikely to unseat any of the veterans in time for Opening Day.

There are plenty of mysteries surrounding the 2013 Phillies.

Can Ruf play left field? Can he hit major league pitching regularly?

Can the aging (old, really) infield play 600 games combined?

Does Roy Halladay have anything left?

However, there is not much mystery about prospects making the Opening Day roster for the 2013 Phillies.

They are in “what you see is what you get” mode until further notice.

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

Philadelphia Phillies: Missing Free-Agent Pieces Phils Could Still Land

At the MLB Free Agent Bar and Night Club, it is 1:50 a.m. The bartender rang the bell for last call 20 minutes ago, and the “ugly lights” just came up. For Ruben Amaro Jr. and the Philadelphia Phillies, there is still time to leave with someone…but the clock is ticking.

Most of the really prime targets have gone home with someone else.

Josh Hamilton took generational money to hit behind (or ahead of) Albert Pujols in Los Angeles. B.J. Upton got five years and $75 million from the Atlanta Braves to try to beat the Phillies 19 times a year. Nick Swisher is apparently content to play the rest of his career out of contention in Cleveland.

Zack Greinke got a contract from the loose-walleted Los Angeles Dodgers that beat even Cole Hamels’ epic free-agent deal. Anibal Sanchez somehow pried $80 million from the Detroit Tigers even though his career record is 48-51.

The big names, per this very handy cbssports.com free-agent tracker, have for the most part settled on partners.

So who’s left?

Michael Bourn is the biggest name unsigned, but he does not figure to fit in the Phillies’ plans after they traded for Ben Revere. Bourn and Revere in the same lineup would never work, as neither one hits for power.

The name the Phillies need to look at again is Delmon Young.

Young hit .267 with 18 home runs and 74 runs batted in for the Detroit Tigers in 2012. Young is a right-handed hitter; he is only 27 years old, and he’s coming off ankle surgery. He could be signed for short years and/or short money.

For weeks, Phillies fans were hearing that the Phillies were interested in signing right-handed outfielder Cody Ross, who instead went to the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Here is the thing, though—Young might actually be a better player. Ross’ 2012 slash line of .267/22/81 is not much different from Young’s 2012 slash line of .267/18/74. And Ross is four years older.

The knock on Young is that he supposedly cannot play left field (or perhaps any position) adequately, and thus he is best suited for the American League.

But the 2008 Phillies won the World Series with a decomposing Pat Burrell chipping home runs into the short porch in left field. The 1993 Phillies won a pennant with Pete Incaviglia staggering around the AstroTurf at Veterans’ Stadium. Neither of them could catch a cold. It didn’t matter, because they hit.

Young could do something very similar for the Phillies in 2013.

The Phillies could also use one more starting pitcher. Everyone loves Hamels, Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay, but that leaves nearly 70 starts for the likes of Kyle Kendrick and John Lannan to cover.

Wouldn’t Shaun Marcum or Joe Saunders fit neatly in that No. 4 slot in the rotation?

And since Francisco Rodriguez, Jose Valverde, Matt Capps and Kyle Farnsworth are all still unsigned, it appears that the market for their specific services (late-inning pitchers with experience closing games) is glutted. The Phillies could definitely afford one of them on a one-year or even a two-year deal.

If the Phillies are really serious about winning in 2013, another wave of free-agent signings even this late in the process is in order.

Leaving the scene alone as the barkeep locks the door should not be an option.

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

Philadelphia Phillies: Can Aging 2013 Fightin’ Phils Beat the Odds, Win It All?

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, all right: It’s the time when sports books start posting World Series odds for the coming season.

Bovada.lv did the honors recently. A quick look at the table tells you what you probably already knew. The Philadelphia Phillies are not a darling of the book entering 2013.

The good news is that, per Bovada, the Philiies at 16/1 have an equal chance to win the World Series as a division rival, the Atlanta Braves (who unlike the Phillies made the playoffs last season), and in a somewhat gasp-worthy call, the defending World Series champion San Francisco Giants.

As an aside…what exactly do the Giants have to do to make anyone believe that they are good? Two world championships in three years and they are lumped in with the likes of the Braves and the Phillies. That is unconscionable. Along those same lines, the St. Louis Cardinals (one year removed from winning it all) are 25/1.

The bad news is that, per Bovada, there are eight teams with better odds to win the title—and three of them are in the National League.

The oddsmakers presently project the Washington Nationals as the National League East’s most likely World Series winner at 9/1. Incidentally, the National League East is the only division with three teams with odds better than 20/1 to win.

Both the Los Angeles Dodgers (17/2) and Cincinnati Reds (12/1) are also preferred to the Phillies.

The 16/1 odds on the Phillies are probably very fair and might even be optimistic. The Phillies enter the season with a lame-duck manager; Charlie Manuel is in the last year of his current contract, and Ryne Sandberg looms as a ready in-season replacement.

Additionally, in the event that the team starts poorly, the Phillies have big-name veterans with playoff pedigrees on expiring contracts (Roy Halladay, Chase Utley, Carlos Ruiz and Michael Young) who would likely draw interest from contending teams in midseason.

For that matter, players with expensive deals like Cliff Lee—who the Phillies placed on waivers in August—could be traded or even placed on waivers again if the Phillies look like a team in need of a full rebuild as the daylight starts fading in 2013. 

Oddsmakers are far from perfect. The Phillies were a favorite to beat the St. Louis Cardinals in the 2011 National League Division Series, and they were a heavy favorite to win Game 5 behind Roy Halladay. It did not work out that way.

Even last fall, the Detroit Tigers were “significant” favorites over the Giants to win the 2012 World Series. Hopefully you had the other side of that play.

But the 16/1 line against the Phillies winning the World Series suggests tempering expectations of a parade down Broad Street in 2013.

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

« Previous Page — Next Page »