Cuban pitcher with plus fastball and at least 3 other pitches. He has a #2/#3 upside but will need a little bit of seasoning in the minors before getting to the majors. Deal is supposedly for more than $50 million with escalators that could make it worth other $60 million.
Regardless of buying or selling this is a great allocation of financial resources, and even if he is more of a #4 he should be worth to close to the value of the contract. This deal makes one of Kendrick, Lannan, Pettibone,Martin, Morgan, and Biddle expendable either at the deadline or in the off-season.
Details to come later.
Phuture Phillies 
I was really hoping for this to happen. Love it.
Does he start in AAA? Is he now one of the Phils’ top 5 prospects?
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Without seeing him he is probably has high as the #1 debate but more in the #4 range right behind Crawford. He is 26
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I think he’s #2
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i also think he is the shit
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I think #3. Ahead of the what is probably the rest of the top 10/11 in Crawford/Quinn/Joseph/Asche/Tocci/Morgan/Martin/Watson. I think Crawford is settling in at #4 behind MAG, and then it will be hard to decide between a couple flawed guys beyond that. Morgan could change my mind with a big August and a good performance in AFL if he goes there.
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I’d like to hear more about his secondary stuff (I’ve only read, from different places, that he throws a cutter, slider, curveball, splitter, changeup and forkball- wow that’s a lot of pitches but I’m sure some of it is guys calling the same pitch different names), but I think it’s fairly easy to make a case for him as #1.
Biddle’s upside is probably about the same as Gonzalez’ and obviously MAG has Jesse beat on proximity. Franco still seems like too much of a boom/bust type for me to even put him over Biddle, so I’m leaning towards thinking MAG is our new #1.
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So he plays the rest of the season out in the minors and hopefully ready to be part of the rotation next season.
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Heard on CSN philly(not sure how credible) that he will pitch 2-3 games in the minors and may be ready by mid-August for the majors.
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Sources say he will go to minors and come up mid august
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Everything I’ve read about him is that his fastball generally sits in the very low 90s. Is it movement that makes it a plus pitch? Which of his secondary pitches are considered above average?
This + Encarnacion should silence anybody who complains about the Phillies lack of activity on the international market.
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I’ve read that he sits low 90s but can touch 96 with the fastball.
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Well, I guess this will shut up the “Dave $$$ Montgomery chintzes on international signees” crowd for a while.
Eh, perhaps not.
Like this deal, and love the fact that it shows the Phillies are willing to spend to address their near-term need for major league ready young talent. I do wonder if it symbolizes something else, though, which is the end of the Cliff Lee era in Philly. I could see this as being the prelude to a trade that sends Lee elsewhere for a package including pre-arb major league starter and a couple of prospects.
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Buzzkill, I didn’t read it that way at all
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Given the reports that RAJ is listening on Lee offers and his scratch tomorrow, I thought the exact same thing.
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Lee is the only guy that can get us a guy who can bat 3rd and play rf.
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As by far the best pitcher on the market, and one the Phillies don’t have to trade for financial reasons, I could see them demanding something like: one serviceable young major league pitcher (think Happ circa 2010, or a proven eighth inning guy), one can’t-miss high proximity hitting prospect (think Middlebrooks), and two lower level prospects. I think the Phillies would have to be blown away to do it, but I think they might do it, and signing a young pitcher who can be ready in August/Sept makes a lot of sense if that’s the plan.
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Sorry, I should be clearer here: when I say two “lower level” prospects, I mean two guys at the lower levels of the minors, not throw ins. Think one guy who would make our top 10 and another guy who would be 10-15.
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I don’t think that’s enough. There is no need to move him. I don’t think you need a serviceable starter for the majors at this point. I think it’s 2 high end prospects and then 2 other guys, unless one of the prospects is a top 10 guy. For instance, if it’s the Red Sox and you can’t get Boagates or whatever his name is, I think you are looking 3 of Owens, Barnes, Bradley, Renaudo, and Cecchini and maybe a bullpen arm. You don’t need to trade Lee, make sure you get blown away with an offer.
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I swear I didn’t read this before my post below, but as you can see, I am pretty much in agreement as to the possible return for Lee. I do expect that many people will agree with Forrest that it isn’t enough.
I’m a bit conflicted myself. It would make the ream worse in the short run, for sure, though depending upon the headline prospect (presumably a corner outfielder given the Phillioes needs), maybe not a LOT worse. And it would help in the long term.
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I’m not sure they could get what I suggested, but I’m not sure I’d settle for less because they don’t have to move him and his value potentially goes up in the offseason (less $).
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Lee’s value is as high as it is ever going to be. He is an older pitcher. Discounting the fan favorite factor, it is foolhardy to hold on to a pitcher in his mid30’s, at that price. He is liable to fall off the ‘cliff’ at any time.
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If the Phillies got a JA Happ type pitcher, will Middlebrooks and 2 low minors prospects for Cliff Lee this week I would vomit all over myself and then go cower in the corner for the next 3 days.
If they trade Lee, it has to be only a scenario in which they are blown away, otherwise why do it? Call me crazy but I hold out for xander bogaerts until the last second and then MAYBE take a few of the other guys mentioned below from the red sox. in my mind there has to be an elite prospect and then a few other top 100 types in return or why do it.
I cant say whether any team will give that up but that’s what im holding out for. the ja happ, will Middlebrooks return is giving me the shakes right now just thinking about it
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First of all, it wouldn’t literally be Middlebrooks. Not a good fit. And I think you’re letting his 2013 season unduly color your opinion of him.
If the Sox were the trade partner, the guy you would reasonably want to get as the headliner would be Bradley. (And even there I may be optimistic.) Depending on the rest of the deal, I think I’d be okay with that. Nobody trades Bogaerts level prospects for a guy like Lee. When they get traded, which is infrequently, they get traded for players who are young stars with years of control at a below market price. Guys like Stanton.
Now, I get your point – you’re not saying the Sox would or should send more, just that you’re not doing the trade without more if you’re the Phillies. Which is an opinion I can respect, especially given my long standing reluctance to trade Lee. But Bradley could fill the corner outfield hole for years to come. Depending upon the rest of the deal, I might do it.
If Brentz is the headline guy, I’d pass.
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The only thing that makes them overpay is how competitive the AL East is. A player like lee could propel them to winning the division. I very much doubt we get Bogaerts but Bradley could be an option.
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But that why a guy like Bradley is even in the conversation. Bradley, another guy in their top 10, and a couple lesser prospects, would ALREADY be a HUGE overpay. There’s overpays and there’s crazy, and the Boston FO is not crazy.
There is no chance, none, zip, zero, that they get Bogaerts. We may even be kidding ourselves about Bradley.
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On Other sites, Red Sox fans think Bradley is a ridiculous overpay for Lee. They want to give Renaudo and Cechinni.
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I’m not surprised. Cechinni I actually like a lot, but of course it’s a lousy fit.
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I’d trade Kendrick to them for Brentz as a headliner…
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Your snark and lack of intellectual consistency are a little stunning. What you’ve demonstrated is that you simply support whatever approach Phillies management takes. You realize that this is totally 180 degrees from what you supported previously. To be consistent, you should be the one decrying this signing as paying too much for a Latin American, money that could have better been spent on over-30 declining FA. This level of spending in LA should alarm you, since you were perfectly fine with not signing any Cubans or Japanese and being small spenders in LA over the years. I love the signing. This is the path I have advocated from day 1, along with signing more of the primo 16 and 17 year olds from LA. So, RAJ and management partially come over to my side and you see that as grounds to gloat and rub muck in my face? What a hypocrite you are. Spending today doesn’t in any way prove that the Phillies didn’t spend cheaply in the past in LA, nor that this allocation of resources was anything other than stupid.
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Save your breathe a-town. Those guys fail to grasp the big strategic pictures for the most part. More then likely the cigar-magnate from Amherst told the partners he was going to pony up the $60M when he saw the Sox moving in on him, and the majority partners could dump their own matching approriate amount back in to capital to keep everything legal from accounting standpoint.
There is no cap hit on international monies, so naturally the FO team of Monty/Giles and Ruben, will go along with it..
Next Friday, the 9th, I see inking Encarnacion. And that will be the last big signing.
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The limited partnership doesn’t work like that….FWIW.
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FWIW…..JM is a silent partner, in the partnership.
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Exactly…he has zero say on anything and he legally cannot volunteer money like that. He can’t buy out any of the others either without everyone agreeing. Monty runs the team with zero say from the others. They are basically non-voting stockholders.
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Allentown,
+1. The Phillies finally do what we have been begging them to do for years and years…the whole time being told by the “Warden Norton posse” that it wasn’t required or necessary and the Phils approach was just fine, that we were just whiners and complainers. Now they go waaaaaay out of the box to do exactly what we have long demanded…which I applaud them for…but somehow that also gets spun into “I told you so?” Intellectual dishonesty on display at it’s finest.
Anyway, great signing. He may not work out, but it only cost them money. Not draft picks and prospects. I really hope this move works out for them so it doesn’t send them back into guy shy mode. Even if it doesn’t work out, I hope the Phillies still see it as the right move…which it was.
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Um, perhaps I’m mistaken, but it appears this comment directed at me? I’m sorry, but I haven’t even taken note of your opinion on the matter of Latin American spending.
As far as intellectual consistency … I don’t think I’ve ever thought hard enough about it to form a consistent position, and I don’t think I’ve every, even once, written anything advocating against spending more in Latin America. My consistent position on these matters, such as it is, has always been: it isn’t my money. I have a hard time getting upset about the Phillies spending too much on free agents (even when it seems to run counter to good sense) because it’s not like they’re being cheap. I’m in favor of them spending more everywhere, on good players rather than bad ones, so they can field a team that will entertain me when I watch them for free via an MLB.tv password I cadged from a friend. If they wanted to spend a billion dollars to reanimate the cryogenically frozen corpse of Ted Williams, pump him full of youth-restoring synthetic hormones, a stick him in left field, I would be just fine with that. If they presented an exploding cigar to Raul Castro, landed a liberation force, and signed every Cuban under 30 to a lucrative long-term contract, I would be fine with that too. I’m also happy with this signing, because it seems like it will make the team better in the near future. What’s so inconsistent about that?
My joke, such as it was, referred to another poster who we all know by his telltale use of the “$$$.” (He’s like Zorro, but off his meds.) As for you, it seems like you think we have a disagreement. We don’t. I’m pretty sure every serious follower of the Phillies farm system would like to see them sign more international talent. Having a strong opinion in favor of that is like having a strong opinion in favor of pizza, or sunny days.
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My post was aimed primarily at Christopher, but since your joke was the first posting in that vein, I attached my comment to it. I’m glad we don’t have a disagreement. If you haven’t read my views on international and draft spending, then you missed the big contretempts of about a week ago. I apologize for appearing to single you out and intimating that your views are other than they really are.
You say “I’m pretty sure every serious follower of the Phillies farm system would like to see them sign more international talent. Having a strong opinion in favor of that is like having a strong opinion in favor of pizza, or sunny days.” Apparently, that is not true. To some posters, it was wrong to expect and criticize the Phillies for not being at least league average spenders on international talent, or for failure to sign all of their non-protected top 10 draft picks. Phillies management is not to be criticized. Now that the Phillies have actually signed a big Cuban deal, these posters feel they have official permission to view such signings as the greatest thing since sliced bread.
I understand that some fans need to feel optimistic and dislike any criticism of management and owners. They rail at the national media and bloggers who have been saying our farm is below average. They feel that this or that blogger rights what he rights from some visceral hatred of all things PHillies. Their fandom seems to depend on perpetual optimism about everything Phillies and they take a dim view of more realistic fans. Well, if our realism annoys them, their Polyanna attitude also annoys realists.
Facts are facts and the PHillies have been among the lowest spenders on the draft and international, have surrendered above average primo draft picks to sign FA, have gotten few draft picks back, and do not lead the parade in signing their draft picks. The optimistic fan chooses to ignore the facts and resents being reminded of them. Not important, our farm is good enough and better than the critics say, the big league Phillies will still surprise the world and reach the playoffs, this ownership and management have done great by us and we owe total loyalty to them — they have a plan, if they don’t spend more on amateur talent, there must be nobody else worth signing, or the draftee was stubborn, or foolish, or just has the world’s greatest love for his school, or has a bad advisor. Every year there is a different excuse, because management can do no wrong and our owners are all charitable saints.
You would think on a website devoted 98% to the farm that people would agree that the Phillies should do their utmost to stock the farm and nurture the talent. You would think that such fans would always be pushing management to do better on talent acquisition and development. You would be wrong. There are those Stepford fans who just want to believe that the Phillies world is the best of all possible worlds and any past mistakes are ancient history, never to be repeated.
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If the Phillies had injected an extra $50m or whatever the guaranteed portion of Gonzalez’ deal is into Latin America spending over the past decade I would be pretty sure that Carlos Ruiz would not be the only starting position player who was a latin america signee by the club.
I wonder if you add up all the latin america signings for the past 10 years if they even total half of Gonzalez’s deal.
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new top 5
1.Gonzalez
2.Franco
3.Biddle
4.Quinn
5.Crawford
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i saw somewhere that gonzalez could be ready to pitch in the majors in september.
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I’d love more details, but I currently see no way to be unhappy with this move. I think it makes a statement that the Phillies will be trying to build up next year and not bottom ou,t and it suddenly makes it seem like they have some solid peices to build around for 2015 and beyond (Hamels, Brown, Gonzalez, Franco, Asche, Morgan, Biddle, Dugan)
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Can’t wait to see Nobody and Allentown’s reactions.
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Haha couldn’t agree more!
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If he busts they will say the money spent was foolishly and they should have spent it on better prospects.
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No, Chris, because we understand about the acquisition of amateur talent. You win on some and you lose on some, but if you have decent scouts, as we do, then on net this is the best place to spend your money. So, win or lose on this particular guy, this is the route the Phillies needed to take. Developing talent is a numbers game. The more guys with a real chance whom you sign, the greater number of major league players you will produce. So… you spend to the max allowed on the draft and on international bonuses. You exploit the loophole that lets guys 23 and older escape the bonus pool limits. You claw for every advantage, including as many decent $100K draft guys and $50K international guys as your scouts can find who have a chance. Then you develop them as best you can. You never, never say the $$millions I spent on this particular guy were wasted. You look at your total yield from your total spend and judge your scouting/development staff based on comparing the WAR value of your signees during their years of team control to the sum of bonuses and salary you paid them. You’ll have some big wins to go with some big losses. It is the net that is important and to get that big net, you need lots of lottery tickets. That’s why our low spend in years past and the failure to sign this year’s 5 and 6 round picks were so harmful. A strong minor league system leads to a strong major league team and in the end saves $ that you can spend on star FA or stars acquired in trade from teams that need to salary dump. Creating home-grown stars is the biggest game changer going in baseball, but even growing your own bench, bullpenners, and the average to slightly below average guys that every team has, saves you the money you’d otherwise waste on the Youngs, Adams, Nixes, and Lannans of this world. Guys like this are totally fungible and a good organization with a good farm seldom has to pay much above MLB minimum to fill these slots on its MLB roster.
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If you have good scouts and sign 20 guys at 1 million a guy, and hit on one, who is a star you have done a great job, he is under team control and plays at a cheap salary, where a star like a lee cost you 25 per year. Thats why chris, there failure in the latin market, was so stupid. if they had spent the money like other teams. they might not have had to over spend for a pence. and so on.
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roccom….spilt milk. It will hurt them for a few more years, but things should eventually even out under this current CBA.
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I already posted in the General Discussion thread that I am very happy with this signing. This is exactly the sort of move the Phillies should make with their large revenue stream to exploit a loophole in the allocations for acquiring amateur talent.
I do not think this makes any of the guys whom Matt lists in the lead expendable. Halladay won’t be back next year and an MLB team needs 7 major-league ready starters to make it through a season. Morgan has lost a lot of time this year. He and Biddle should spend at least most of 2014 in AAA. Martin should be in the pen, either AAA or Philadelphia. Kendrick, Lannan, and Pettibone should each spend a lot of 2014 in the Phillies rotation. it won’t kill Pettibone to get a little time at AAA and be the first relief starter to get the call.
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I think if halladay shows that he’s healthy, I think he’ll come back on a team friendly deal. He has made it pretty clear that he only wants to pitch for the phillies.
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Anonymous VOR,
I don’t know much, but I do know this. Your reaction would have been the same regardless of whether the Phillies signed him or the Red Sox signed him.
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You are wrong about that. If Boston would have signed him, I would have gone out of my way to avoid reading what your reaction would have been. I am actually happy that the organization did something to make you happy.
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Maybe Free_aec is finally happy after this move
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Why should this shut anyone up, it is the first time they have ever spent like this on an international free agent. As Phillies fans we all should be happy, but it does not change the fact they have not done something like this at any point in their past so criticizing them previously was not unwarranted..
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That’s how I interpret it. RAJ finally agrees with me, at least partially. This was a part of the talent acquisition game where the Phillies were notably absent and really needed to start playing in order to become competitive again.
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Add Catchman22, Roccom to that list along with all the other critics of the Phillies FO. Nice move but we need to keep up getting the team younger.
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This is a good move. I am NOT a crazy critic of the entire organization, but am very critical of Amaro’s stewardship on the whole. And the organization is not cheap. All of that said, I would love it Amaro turned things around. Nothing would make me happier.
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Catch, I still think you are blaming the wrong party as Amaro is working within the ownerships guidelines. Actually I agree with Larry M in that Amaro has made a few mistakes but they were big ones.
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I agree that his mistakes have been big but I hotly dispute that he is a puppet of management. I think he has a ton of autonomy – the current Phillies are really his team.
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Well, let’s explore how much autonomy you think he has had these past several seasons.
Was he free to replace Manuel with a manager of his own choosing?
Did he freely choose to extend Howard early, or did ownership want to do this to keep a fan favorite?
Was he free to spend more on the draft and international amateur talent, while remaining within the same overall organizational budget, even if this meant busting slot in the early rounds and spending more on LA bonuses that Selig recommended?
Was he free to seek any talent of his choosing from any team when he traded Lee, or did Gillick pick Seattle guys that he and his advisors remembered and wanted?
Is he free to set the 25-man roster, or does he need to provide Manuel the players he wants?
Does he or Manuel choose the major league coaches?
Can he send a young talent like Brown to the bigs and insist that Manuel play him every day?
Did he choose to bring back Ed Wade or was that decision made higher up the line?
Is RAJ allowed to pull the plug on a season at the time of his choosing, or do the higher ups need to bless such a deal?
Could he decide to trade Utley or must ownership bless this?
How much can he deviate from the decisions made at the Fall management meeting to respond to problems/opportunities which arise during the year?
Can he go to ownership when a really great opportunity to win arises, like keeping Lee, while adding Halladay and get a one-year budget over-run of $5 mill?
If he wanted to fire Wolever or Jordan, does he have the authority to do that (not that I want to fire either gentleman)?
My answers to these questions tell me that RAJ’s autonomy is not all that great. What are your answers?
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Then he is just a puppet, is that what your saying???
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He is the tactician charged with carrying out the strategy that management/ownership set at the Fall meetings. He has freedom to act under seriously constraining rules. He does not outrank Manuel. They may be equals, but I don’t think RAJ has the authority to replace him. I see RAJ having less authority/influence than Gillick had as GM and about the same as Thomas and Wade. Thomas was experienced enough that he really chafed under the constraints. Many of the rules that RAJ has had to follow are simply Monty’s reiteration of Selig’s suggestions. Others are PR-driven. Others are the result of an inflexible organization that appears unable to make budget changes mid-year, even when the case to do so is strong. I think Gillick still has as much influence as RAJ has and that he has Monty’s ear. Not counting Giles as his own GM, we’ve had 3 GMs under this management team and they seem to all follow the Phillies Way pretty much to a T. I’m sure that’s not coincidence. The one unchanged over all those years is the ownership group and Bill Giles. Monty does not get to be managing partner without Giles giving his blessing as he steps aside. I say this as a guy who thinks RAJ is very smart, has a lot of varied baseball background, is a very creative tactician, and deserves to remain as GM.
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The Phillies have described their management as a team. I think that is correct. RAJ is not the big cheese directing all. That is partly because he is a relatively inexperienced GM and partly because that is how ownership prefers to operate. They didn’t like Thomas. He was a good baseball man with experience and strong views on how to build a system. They replaced him with Wade, who was basically a non-baseball PR guy, who could be counted on to keep an eye on how ownership looked in the media and not buck ownership’s wishes. Gillick was a brief exception. There were experienced guys out there who could have replaced him. The owners didn’t need to choose a novice who was steeped in the Phillies Way. Change is not what was being sought when RAJ was hired or when Wade was returned to the organization. Wade has also become a very competent tactician and technician on the contractual/business side.
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Puppet is a strong word. I assure you that a senior VP of a corporation is a quite powerful person who makes a lot of important decisions every day. He is also a person who does nothing that the CEO disagrees with and follows and implements the goals/objectives/policy of the CEO and Directors, which is a redundant thing to add. To have a boss is not to be a puppet, especially for a manager. Still, there are strong, experienced VPs who are on a relatively short leash and don’t have the temperament to tug too strongly at their leash and their are younger, newer, more timid VPs who are a lot less bold and independent working within basically the same corporate framework. There are strong General Managers and weak ones in all sports. Gillick was a relatively strong GM. Wade was not and neither is RAJ. Maybe some day as he gains experience, RAJ will be a strong GM. He has shown a desire to tug at the leash and color outside the lines. I think the temperament is there for him to be a strong GM if the owners allow this over time. They seem to have given Gillick more freedom than they gave Wade and Gillick got us a WS. Maybe they will decide in time that a stronger GM is the right course and that in-season flexibility, even on budget, is a wise thing.
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Many provoking questions. He would have autonomy in decisions not requiring financial considerations. However, are there any? I guess player movement thru the year due to injury/DL situations.
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My question for you is how do you know the answers to all these questions? Some of them seem obvious, but honestly, I don’t know whether or not it was his free choice to extend Howard when he did or to buy or sell at the deadline. Seems like it would have been his final decision as to which prospects he took in return for Lee. Are you saying that none of these things were his decision or that he was opposed to these things?
Do you think he’s done a good job considering the constraints placed on him?
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I think he has done a very good job and has been very creative in getting us some really good players, while staying within his budget and rules. He is a very intelligent man. I think it quite likely that RAJ did not pick the prospects we got back. It was a trade with a team that Gillick and his guys are very familiar with. RAJ was brand new at the time and was working the Halladay end of the deal. He needed to dump salary fast. Either Monty gave the dumping part of the job to somebody else or RAJ passed it off. As you’ll recall, the big criticism at the time was that Lee was dumped for what seemed like not comparable value and the Phillies contacted very few teams in trying to trade him. Some in media implied that Seattle was the only team contacted.
It is too limited a view of his authority to say he can only act on things without financial implications. I think he is quite free as long as he respects PR boundaries, stays within the budget, and follows Selig’s suggestions. I think the whole Halladay deal was his idea and taking back $6 mill from Toronto on what was a pretty good contract to begin with and dumping Lee to save $ was his creative way of being able to acquire Halladay within the constraints he had. Same on the Oswalt and Pence trades, although I have some doubt that he really wanted to make a major trade at all when he dealt for Pence. I think Manuel had started enough of a media fire that owners said PR required he act and he found Pence and made the $ work.
I concede that we can’t know for certain who has how much authority within the Phillies organization, but if you follow the actions of multiple GMs under this ownership group, there are some very consistent patterns of behavior.
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I think Amaro’s behavior seems consistent with that of an executive who is given a budget, and autonomy to make personnel and policy decisions within that budget, with the caveat that major long-term salary commitments (Halladay, Hamels, Howard) are subject to ownership approval. I think it’s entirely possible that, in the case of Halladay/Lee, ownership said: you can have one of them, but not both, and he made the trade as a consequence. But none of what you’re describing sounds out of the ordinary. Your description of Amaro sounds like an upper-level manager in a large organization who answers to bosses. There’s not a GM in baseball who operates with total autonomy. Maybe Billy Beane, because he’s a celebrity genius and he consistently fields great teams on a small budget? But look at guys like Brian Cashman of the Yankees, who has to deal with Randy Levine and the Steinbrenner sons, or Sandy Alderson of the Mets, who has basically told Jeff Wilpon that he’s leaving if his family doesn’t commit more to payroll next year. In comparison to situations like that, I think Amaro has a pretty comfortable situation.
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I largely agree, although I don’t think most GMs are required to follow Selig’s spending suggestions on amateur talent. I do think Gillick had greater autonomy that RAJ or Wade, or at least was more able to convince ownership to see things his way.
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The signing of Gonzalez demonstrates a change in the team’s thinking. Traditional free agency is an increasingly difficult arena for success because teams are locking up their players long before they reach that point. The market is saturated with mediocrity and teams willing to pay fistfuls of cash for aging players. In late June, GM Ruben Amaro Jr. was asked why the team was not active on the international market, which has yielded talent such as Yu Darvish, Yeonis Cespedes and Yasiel Puig. “We looked at them and had interesting conversations with their people,” Amaro said. “But (other teams) decided it was worth the risk to go and throw big-time money at guys. You hope those things work out.” Gonzalez’s money dwarfs the $42 million for Puig, paid by the Los Angeles Dodgers. Gonzalez was not subject to Major League Baseball’s new rules for international bonuses because he is older than 23 and played professionally in Cuba.
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This does represent a major policy change for the Phillies. It may be the TV contract that both requires this and makes it more financially palatable to ownership. It may also be a sense of desperation that the team is sliding downhill and something different must be done. As many others have said, it is becoming harder and harder to build/rebuild through FA. I think last winter was something of a shock to management/ownership as has been the team’s performance this season. I think they were engaging in some wishful thinking, but I think they expected better than we’ve seen this year. It is hard to get your mind around. You go from 102 wins to last year’s bad season and it is easy to call it a fluke. Then it happens again. Then you start to realize that some changes are necessary.
Gonzales is a financially reasonable gamble, as is spending on younger amateur talent. Lots of studies have said there is no more efficient way to spend your $. All of this money for amateur talent young and old is really a very small fraction of what baseball spends in total. Selig has been off on a rather foolish crusade, because it is the one he has a chance of winning, even though winning it will have negligible impact on overall baseball finances. Maybe more within the Phillies organization are starting to come to this conclusion. Maybe as our attendance starts to fall, the price of blind loyalty to Selig has become clearer.
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You are correct that this doesn’t appear to be one of the shrewder cost/benefit Cuban signings, but you have to start somewhere and it still makes sense on its own, assuming Gonzales passes his physical.
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You make me laugh. Amaro has a tremendous amount of control and influence over these decisions – as much or more than other GMs in MLB. More importantly, and by far most relevant, Amaro has a tremendous amount of control and influence over selecting, trading, signing and developing players – he is the guy who is responsible for Delmon Young, he is the man who disassociates walk with production, he is the one who jumped all over the Howard signing, this is HIS team – what on earth are you talking about?
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Catch, should I bring out the “Warden Norton” references as you don’t seem to want to at least listen to the arguments posed by Allentown1? Unfortunately, you seem to have your mind made up and no further discussion will change that. We agree to disagree and that is all.
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What? I listened, but I just disagreed. I haven’t read a cogent argument yet as to why: (a) the team did not screw up in allowing things to get to to this point; and (b) Amaro is not primarily to blame for this mess. The only argument I saw was that, yes, things were screwed up, but it’s not primarily Amaro’s fault because he is a puppet for upper management, the same management that has approved having the team spend up against the salary cap – but the rationale for why it was not primarily Amaro’s fault were completely unconvincing (except perhaps in restricting international signings and not going over Seligs former slotting suggestions – those restrictions may have been thrust upon Ruben). I don’t underStand why there are so many apologists for Amaro.
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Catch, I seriously doubt you really listened or looked at the history of the Giles/Montgomery group and had your mind already made up as I said before. Sigh, as he shakes his head in wonder at Catchman22’s response.
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Ah, yes $$$$ is to blame. Good God this is such nonsense. Hello Free AEC.
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I am not sure who you are directing the question to but I will give you my answers. I would say no to all of the above except the last three items mentioned, bringing Ed Wade back and until Friday the international spending issue(big step forward). RAJ is creative in solving problems(Phillies tried for A. Cabrera of Cleveland for 3B) and has freedom to work within his limits subject to approval by “the team”. RAJ was one of the forces behind hiring Joe Jordan and bringing Ed Wade back. Ever since both were hired our drafts and international signings have been markedly better and moving in the right direction(Still can be better though); this is no coincidence. In short, RAJ is not a puppet but lacks the power that Pat Gillick had to make any move he wanted.
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Awesome signing as long as it doesn’t mean that Lee is gone.
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Lee being gone could be good or bad, depending upon whom we get for him. Let’s say we get Bogaerts. That would be a plus. A package like we got last time we traded him would be a minus. I think Lee still has at least another good year in him, but there is a lot of wear on the arm so counting on him being very good through the end of his contract not a good bet.
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Very true…depends on what they get and if its a salary dump or not. Lets just say Rube’s track record on that topic isn’t the greatest so I’m not optimistic.
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There was a pressing need for a salary dump to pay for Halladay the first time that Lee was traded. There seems no need for that today.
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as I recall, that need came directly after the a 3 year $27M contract was givin to Bam Bam, leaving him to recieve the same amount as Cliff’s contract year amount. off topic but I’m not comfortable pretending it was a Lee of Halladay decision.
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Actually Blanton’s contract was signed after Lee was dealt.
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Though his contract was signed after Lee was traded, the Phillies gave Blanton his qualifying offer before Lee was traded, so they were locked in to a Salary for Blanton, even without the contract.
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I would think it will definitely make Lee expendable, they should have been listening on him anyway, as Keith Law said yesterday, “you don’t rebuild halfway”
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Like the Red Sox didn’t do last year?
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+1
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Exactly, the great teams do rebuild and reload in stride. What a stupid comment by Law – this isn’t the NBA.
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Completely different situations, also, I don’t think Cherington even considered the Sox would be more than mediocre this year, they had some guys underperform last year in the rotation that have bounced back. This Phillies team isn’t having a bad year because a bunch of guys are underperforming, they just lack the necessary talent to be more than mediocre. This is a rebuild not a retool situation, look at the differences in farm systems, that Sox system is filled with a ton more depth and guys who could potentially be above average or average regulars. Trading Lee would be a positive step in starting the process of building the next core here.
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Say goodbye to Cliff Lee. He has already been scratched.
I don’t see moving Lee as a bad move. They don’t need to get stuck paying Lee that last 37.5 million at that age. They should have learned with the Halladay situation.
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Moving Lee for an impact bat wouldn’t be a bad move. The question is, is that deal out there?
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I think its a good signing, the problem with the Phils is they have too much money tied up in older players. What they should do his trade Lee and get some young right handed hitters who are major league ready and an arm
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“This deal makes one of Kendrick, Lannan, Pettibone,Martin, Morgan, and Biddle expendable either at the deadline or in the off-season.”
Don’t see how this would make guys like Martin, morgan or Biddle expendable. Young pitching with cost certainty (especially lefties) are some of the most valuable commodities in the game. You don’t trade a prospect because you added another. With pitchers, we’ve all heard that out of every 3 you have, one won’t pan out and one will get hurt. I could see them letting Lannan go, he’s been nothing special. Honestly, if anybody else is expendable, it might be Doc, depending on how he performs when he comes back and what the price is.
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Agree about Doc. IMO he is the pitcher at the top of the “expendable” list, not Lee.
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I am really excited about this signing. Since this is not the Phillies’ style to pay big money for players like this, they must of really liked what they saw. I also trust the Phillies’ scouts and have believed that if the front office would allow them to spend the money like some other teams, they would have a top farm system.
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very happy with this signing. Sign more international free agents!
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This is a great signing. It’s essentially what we paid Joe Blanton, just for 3 more years (Blanton was 28 when he came here I believe) We won’t and should not move Lee unless Boston offers up the Bogartis and Bradley and a high A prospect. We have no incentive to trade one of the best pitchers in the game. And you’re always in contention (theoretically) when Lee and Hamels are on the team. I agree that a mid August call up date could allow us to move Pettibone, or Lannan or Kendrick (whose trade value will never be higher than it is right now, ever). If we could pick up a bat and a 7th inning RHP, I think it’d be worth exploring a trade for one of those guys. Lannan then Pettibone then Kendrick would be my order of preference.
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There’s no way the Red Sox would trade Bogarts or Bradley for a 35 year old starting pitcher making $25+ million.
I think they could get Webster at least and maybe Matt Barnes as well. Throw in Michael Young and maybe we get Brentz as well.
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I just don’t think the Phillies could settle for a non top hitting prospect.
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Maybe they could pry Cecchini away and create some enviable depth at 3B.
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I don’t disagree. But if you’re contending in 2014, and make no mistake, with the new TV contract on the line, there’s no way they don’t overpay to contend in 2014, you have to have Lee on the team. So the only way you’re going to flip Lee for prospects is to trade for 2014 major league ready, hence the Bogarts and Bradley requirement. You’re losing your No 1A pitcher, but you’ve filled 2 glaring holes. Then you can have the flexibility to let Oakland and San Fran engage in a bidding war for hometown hero J-Roll.
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Another Aumont , Ethan Martin that would be exciting
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I think you are right but , come one this is a phillies sight so atleast pretend like you want us to win , Aces who got the boot from mlbtraderumors
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If the Phils eat $10-15 million of Lee’s salary each year, then the return could be Profar, Taveras or Bogaerts.
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Time to sell high on kendrick, no way you give him an extension now. Lannan can go so pettibone can keep his spot in the rotation. He will learn more in the majors than in AAA . Halladay will be back this year for one last shot, if the team is still in it.
This could be the injection the team needs to carry the second half. Would certainly trade M. Young too, nothing left for Ache to do in the minors. Charlie will news to manage anothet left handed bat.
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John do you think that was behind the phillies thinking, That is kid is better than paying kenricks 10 or 12 million. I am in shock they spent that much on a cuban ,
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roccom…thought you said LA Dodgers were going to sign him…told you on Tuesday Ruben may surprise you, with a little help from the guys up top.
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If the plan is to replace Kendrick, while flipping Kendrick for prospects, then that is a very smart move. They are going to pay Kendrick more per year, than this guy.
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Good for phillies . Im excited . Its time to do some rebuilding while we keep life long phillies and stay competitive
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A good signing. I think he might make an appearance in Philly in September. As for the possible trade of Lee I am ambivalent. He should get you a return along the lines of what we gave up to get Pence 2 years ago. Perhaps a little more. His consistency would be missed though. If you trade Lee you might as well clean house completely and that means Utley and Rollins could be on the move. Stay tuned.
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Id say keep utley if he is willing to take a deal that works for team and player if not . I will still be a fan of his . But will cheer for the prospect he brings even louder . Id say sell it all for quality young guys and be good in 2015 . Ill buy a hat or two to help out the owners while they donf sell out
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Lee shouldn’t get as much as Pence in trade. Pence was team controllable for two more years. Cliff Lee makes 25 million a year and is in his mid30’s.
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While there is some truth to this, the pure accounting method of trade evaluation does not necessarily work when dealing with large market teams, and Lee simply is a lot better than Pence.
That said, the Pence deal was a massive overpay, so probably not a good guide to what we’ll get for Lee.
Here’s what I think is the BEST we’ll get (far from guaranteed) IF a deal happens (I’m les sure that it will than some people seem to be):
(1) A major league ready player in the 15 to 50 range of the national prospect rankings, probably a position player prospect;
(2) A good, not great, prospect in A ball, probably a pitcher
(3) A mediocre major league ready or even major league pitcher, a back end starter or reliever;
(4) MAYBE a lottery ticket type player in the lower minors.
Think the equivalent of Franco, .Watson, Pettibone, Lino.
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I wouldnt do that deal. franco is not according to scouts a top 50 prospect, watson isnt a given, pettibone is a 4 or 5, and lino is low level prospect. in any lee trade I want a top prospect, not a bad farm systems top prospect, but a top 25 propects and a top pitching propect who project to be a lee in 3 yrars or close. Your trade is like the players we gave cleveland for lee. and you see how that worked out.
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Carrasco is possibly equivalent to Pettibone, (Carrasco was on his way down prospect rankings when they moved him, and Pettibone is already performing at the big league level), and Knapp’s standing was probably not unlike Watson. But there a was no one close to Franco in the Lee deal. Donald and Marson are like Hernandez and Rupp. Franco + Lino > Donald + Marson. By a lot, IMO.
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Not at that time. Marson was a top 100 guy, back then.
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Really? If that’s the case, then I stand corrected. I don’t remember him ever being that high.
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Lou Marson:
Prospect Ratings by Baseball America:
Pre-2009: Rated #66 Prospect
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I checked BA archives for both 2008 and 2009 (trade was in 2009), and Marson was nowhere to be found. Carrasco was 54 in 2008 and 52 in 2009.
Marson was never thought of that highly as a prospect.
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I stand corrected, missed him at 66.
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Yeah, I believe he may have even been as high as #50, on MLB.com
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I can’t see comparing Marson to Franco, BA rankings be damned. Marson’s ranking was attached to his positional value and a decent hit tool. Franco has flat-out raked and forced people to pay attention to him. Franco has way more value than Marson ever did IMO.
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Marson raked in AA, too, AND he was closer to the majors, AND he was a catcher. He had just as much, if not more value than Franco.
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I wouldn’t say he raked … he OPS’d .849, but that was more tied to a high BB rate (OBP .433) than on his power (.416 SLG, .102 ISO). He was definitely a very good prospect … I just think that the consistent power Franco has demonstrated makes him far more valuable than Marson ever was.
Marson had a higher floor, but I don’t think he had the ceiling that Franco has.
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First of all, you can’t necessarily judge that deal on how it came out. It looked a lot better at the time. Trading for prospects is always risky.
Secondly, I think you can make a strong case that Halladay at the time was a more valuable property. Yeah, he had only one year of control, but (a) he was younger, (b) he was a bit better, (c) the Phillies apparently thought they could sign him to an extension, correctly as it turned out, and the extension was below market value. (In fact, did they have permission to discuss an extension before the trade? As I recall, it came right after the trade.)
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In fact, I’d use the Halladay trade, and the three Lee trades, as evidence that we’re not going to get the haul some people are hoping for if Lee is traded.
It would be ironic if the best return for the much traded Lee would be when he had arguably the least trade value.
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I don’t like to replay trades in hindsight, but I believe Toronto got a good “haul” for Halladay. The Phillies gave up three (3) top 100 players for Halladay. Darnell, D’arnaud and Michael Taylor was huge at the time. It just didn’t turn out as good for Toronto, because of injuries.
Now, due to Lee being older than Halladay was then, I would not expect near that kind of package for Lee.
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Larry – there’s just as many examples of teams getting much bigger hauls than the prior Lee and Halladay examples, e.g. Sabathia, Greinke to name a few. Oakland has been getting great returns for their free-agent-to-be starters for decades now.
Regardless, I’d contend that it would be very, very difficult to obtain a worthwhile package for Lee which leads me to think that the best move is to keep him, at least beyond next week’s deadline.
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In light of your second paragraph, I don’t think we’re disagreeing much, but a quibble regarding your first paragraph: I think we tend to view these trades through the lens of how the prospects turned out.
The biggest difference between the Lee deals and Halladay deal on the one hand, and the deals you mention on the other hand, wasn’t so much the perceived value of the prospects at the time of the deal, but the value of the prospects as they turned out. It’s always a crap shoot. Segura for example, while a good prospect at the time of the deal, has exceeded expectations in the majors.
It’s interesting that you mention Oakland I agree they have been successful in such deals, but that is to a large extent a function of two factors: one, they tend to trade their pitchers at their peak of value. I love Lee but he is past that point. Two, they are just really good at talent evaluation. It’s not like they have been getting elite prospects in exchange for their pitchers. The get good prospects who tend to over perform their perceived value.
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“. . . wasn’t so much the perceived value of the prospects at the time of the deal, but the value of the prospects as they turned out”
Agree – and this leads me to contend that its still premature to rate the Halladay deal. Should d’Arnaud develop into an all-star can we still say that Toronto failed to get a good return? That the Jays then traded him (and Syndergaard) as part of the Dickey deal stands as yet another example of a team getting an exceptional return for a high-profile pitcher.
I’m a bit torn on Lee though. As mentioned above and in spite of my comments which may give the appearance of a contrary opinion, I think you’re right that we don’t get an exceptional return for Lee. Yet still, how much does Lee have left in the tank? It’s quite possible that we begin to see a drop off in the next year or two so perhaps trading him now makes most sense. For me, there’s so many variables to consider. Will the Phils agree to assume some of his salary in order to fetch a better return? This is a big one. Is there a team desperate enough to unload top talent for Lee’s services? This is a big one too. The Cards are out and despite the many scenarios described above I’d also count the Sox out. Considering the remaining contenders – many of which do not have an immediate need (Tigers, Cards), typically don’t trade for high-salary players (Rays, A’s, Pirates), are division rivals (Braves, Nats) or don’t have the prospects to facilitate a deal. At the end, rumors or not, there aren’t a whole lot of true trade partners out there regardless of the rumors.
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Franco is now in most top 50s despite the scout’s questions about the swing.
Ideally you would be looking at a guy who is slightly more of a sure thing than Franco and a bit closer to major league ready. But you would have to sacrifice upside for that. A major league ready player with Franco’s upside and without the questions about the swing is not going to be traded for Lee, or for any possibly available player other than Stanton.
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That’s a good return, if they do not eat any salary. I wouldn’t mind Jackie Bradley and Brentz.
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I’d talk with St. Louis and be willing to eat enough money to make it happen.
Carlos Martinez-RHP(AAA/MLB), James Ramsey-OF(AA), Cory Jones-RHP(A)
Martinez regarded in the 15-30 range most places. He was probably rushed too quickly to the majors this season. Fellow SP prospect Michael Wacha probably has gone ahead him in their system/minds.
James Ramsey was their 1st round pick(They had 5 first round picks counting supplemental picks for FA losses) out of FSU last year. He doesn’t show up with much national attention in rankings, but looks to be a good hitter to me. He was sent to High-A after being drafted and only managed a .648 OPS. He started off this year back at High-A (1.038 OPS) and before the month was over was promoted to AA where he’s got a .817 OPS to go with 13 HR’s in 68 games. He’s mainly played CF.
Cory Jones was their 5th round pick out of JC last year. He’s currently in Low-A where he’s sporting a 1.58 ERA and a 7.3 K/9 over 9 starts.
Martinez is effectively replaced by Cliff Lee for the next several years. They don’t have to worry about losing Kolten Wong who is likely to play 2B for them next season. There OF is pretty crowded and will be adding Oscar Tavares so the Phillies get in on their 1st round pick from last year who may only be a good 2014 away from making the majors. Jones is a wildcard as they have a lot of pitchers in their organization regarded higher and he could easily flame-out.
Like how last year Cody Buckell was getting a lot of hype as a Rangers pitching prospect and poof he’s been brutal this year 20+ ERA ended up in XST and DL/clear your head/whatever
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If they trade Lee they have to eat some money, it can’t be a salary dump where they settle for a lesser package. If they eat half the money the package will be monumentally better. I think it gets you Bradley, the package I’d look for is Swihart, Bradley, Barnes, and Cechinni, which would seem reasonable if you eat a lot of money, I might even throw in Bastardo as a sweetener for a team that could use bullpen help. Your system jumps up 10-15 spots with that trade.
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That’s 3 of their top 4 prospects and 4 of their top 8 (per Sickles). IMO not happening. Bradley as I said may be possible, but if you get one of the other 3 guys with him (and maybe a couple lesser prospects= out of their top 10) you would be doing pretty darn well.
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If you eat a significant portion of the contract Lee becomes even more valuable, also adding Bastardo would be another way to increase the return. The deal has to be headlined by Bradley, then I want three of Barnes, Swihart, Workman, Ranaudo, Marrero, and Cechinni.
Red Sox get: Lee with Phillies picking up 35 million, M.Young, and Bastardo
Phillies get: Bradley, Swihart, Ranaudo, Workman, and Marerro
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If this were a lesser organization than the Red Sox, then … well, teams do stupid things all the time. The Sox really don’t – they make mistakes, but not THIS kind of mistake. They value their prospects too much.
I agree that the Phillies should kick in money and maybe Young and Bastadaro, but that just increases the chance of getting Bradley as the headliner, and maybe, maybe ONE of those other guys as well. MAYBE. I think I’m still being too optimistic. You don’t get three of them, let alone 4 or 5.
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I think you may be underestimating Lee’s value especially if you eat half his money, I don’t think my proposal was heavily favored to one side or the other, the Sox would get to keep their best position prospect and hitting prospect. For the package I proposed the Phillies would need to get one of their top five and four of their top fifteen for it to be a fair deal. One thing to consider, the Sox have a glut on their 40 man, trading guys like Ranaudo and Workman wouldn’t be a terrible thing for their organization. It would get two advanced guys with lower ceilings off their 40 man.
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Nice to see a Bastardo reference. Been saying this for weeks; aside from MYoung, Bastardo is most likely to be traded
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Seems like this signing paves the way Lee or Halladay gone after this season. I guess I like the old guys. I am very concerned that Phillies paid that much for a #3 upside starter. Benefit of #3 starter prospects is that they are cheap. Paying market rate (as the Phillies are doing for most of their players) is quite expensive. Even if Gonzalez performs as a #3 starter (Joe Blanton) he is being paid nearly $10M per guaranteed for 6 years. There is no way I’d give that contract to Joe Blanton even when he was pitching well. Gonzalez better have an upside of something much better than Blanton.
It is always good to see talent added to roster but I’d much rather Phillies overpaid for Soler than for this guy. Soler has All Star upside and even with high risk his contract would not be as much of an issue ($4M for platoon RF?).. As situtated, Soler would cost only $4M per year or what he’d earn through arbitration. At age 20, he’d be signed/controlled thru age 29 for undermarket if he is a starter.
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I don’t think you really know since you have no way of knowing where he projects. Sort of have to wait and see. If he locked up a young pitcher who is a quality starter or better 3/4 at lowest being quality without having to give up an asset, it could be a solid move.
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Joe Blanton is a #4/#5 starter. Going rate for a #3 starter is ~$12million per year (see Edwin Jackson, Ervin Santana, Kyle Lohse, and others)
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I think that is right, which tells me that his ceiling better be higher than a #3, because the risk is not insignificant. Put another way, since they are already paying him about as much (in the scheme of things) as an established #3, given that he is not established and carries risk, he really should have a higher upside than that.
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he seems like he would have been a first round pick even if it was a few years ago , his advanced age and stuff makes him the best phillles prospect at the moment , and atleast worth what the dodgers paid for ryu , or a little more , and I think this guy has allstar upside , he will be unhittable for a year or two and then come back to earth as a great number 3 on a club with a one and two who are hard to separate
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I think it close to a sure thing that Halladay won’t be back.
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IF this means that we will become a serious player in the Cuban market where several have come on well to MLB, it’s about time. That is as much or more a baseball pro developing country as Dominican Republic…except that Cuban players must escape to the US to play pro ball here. As a hotbed of baseball, Cuban players often don’t have to play many seasons in the minors before they are tried at the MLB. They seem more advanced, the good ones.
Now, let’s find and sign a power righty bat to play RF…….(Encarnacion supposedly is fielding “challenged,” and will probably end up in LF.)
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here is a youtube video of him pitching in mexico recently http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py566m8xD6M
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serious downward plane , lots of ground balls in is future
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Seems odd that his first step is forward. Maybe some coaching up can put an 1-2 mph more on that fastball.
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Nice. It looks like there is a lot of movement on his pitches. Hopefully he is able to control that.
Where can I get on of those radar guns that play mariachi music?
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I trust Sal Agostinelli.
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Absolutely. He’s by far the best guy in the Phils organization.
This is a huge signing. The Phillies have done SO many things backwards, but this, this is what they need to be doing to be a competitive team in Baseball. So exciting.
Trading Lee? There’s been a number of implausible trade scenarios bandied about and they’ve been derided, but to be honest, that’s what it’s going to take or we’ll just sit tight and let one of the best pitchers in baseball continue being a Phillie. We have the money to keep him and a TV deal coming up to consider so the only way we make a trade is if someone overpays.
Utley won’t be traded. A. we get a supplemental pick for him and B. he’s one of the 3 most popular Phillies of all time. You don’t trade guys like that unless you’re absolutely cash strapped because the fan base will blow a gasket. Oh, and he’s still a hell of a ballplayer and we wouldn’t get value for him.
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You shop Lee around and try to get a bidding war going. He’s by far the best SP potentially available. There’s no requirement to trade Lee. He doesn’t “have to” be dumped. I’m sure money is a factor, but something to keep in mind is that next year every team will be getting approximately a $25-$26m increase in the National MLB tv deals that are increasing in value. Cliff Lee is making $25M next season.
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I wouldn’t trade Utley. Give him the qualifying offer and if he accepts, great. If he declines, take the 1st round pick. With the TV deal looming, I might sign him to an extension. He is not worth the multiyear deal as a player, but he is worth it as a fan drawing card.
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Yes, Sal’s input gives us all a greater degree of comfort – he’s superb.
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Franco with 2 bombs, Dugan with 1 last night
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The evaluation of his upside at MLBtrade rumours was a less less positive than the above (upside of a 3). Still, there is literally no downside to this move, especially given (a) the state of the FA market next year and (likely) in years to come, and (b) the team;s current salary structure. If he is a 3,it’s a bargain, and even if he’s not, probably not a huge overpay.
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And he brings some youth to an aging team.
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youth and though he’s 26, not a lot of mileage on that arm
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That’s true as well. Cuba has a much shorter season and you often see Cuban pitchers pitching well through their mid and late 30s. Less wear and tear on their arms.
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I’d happily take him as a good #3 starter. The Phillies whole forward strategy depends on Hamels being a #1 and Biddle being at least a #3. A legit #1, followed by two legit #3s, and Pettibone/Martin/Morgan fighting it out for the last two spots isn’t a bad rotation for the years immediately following the expiration of Lee’s contract.
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I’m not sure how we can be confident one way or the other. From the very high level reports I have seen in the past hour or two, I don’t see any mention of his secondaries as an out pitch. Slight concern there. How many innings can he pitch next season and will he be on an innings limit? Slight concern there also. Certainly excited about the signing, even if reservedly so, but there’s simply too little information available about Miguel for me to be ecstatic.
I’m also not convinced that this signing signals anything about the expend-ability of our starting pitchers, save for perhaps Kendrick. The pitchers in the minors are non-factors and Pettibone shouldn’t be anything more than your no. 5. Lannan is at risk to be non-tendered. We needed a starter for next year and we got one. I’m not sure the move makes anyone expendable though
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Offers for Lee are coming in fast and furious.
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Olney says some teams had elbow questions about MAG. I doubt the Phils would spend this kind of money if it was anything serious, however. They’re not the Sixers:
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Probably teams who were still going to give him $5m-$10M less in guaranteed money, but have sour grapes and are like “Well he did have his elbow cleaned out.”
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Well, we just don’t know yet and neither do the Phillies, for certain. That’s why the deal is contingent on him getting his visa, coming to Philly, and taking a proper physical. Our scouts can judge what they see of his stuff, but no way they can proper evaluate the current state of his elbow until they get an MRI and/or CAT. If the elbow is a problem, the Phillies either won’t sign him or will give him fewer $ than have been announced.
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Mike Adams?
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Wilton Lopez.
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Right – and though we’ll never know for certain, perhaps Ryan Madson as well
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You may be right … as an aside re: Madson — there was a lot of outrage when the Phillies signed Papelbon so quickly, giving up a draft pick, but there was a very lucrative contract that Madson was very close to signing before that happened. Could you imagine the disaster if the Phils had locked up Madson for that long-term deal? They’d be in a far worse position than they are in right now.
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Imagine if they’d just signed Joe Nathan a week later instead…like the Rangers ended up doing. That would have been just horrible.
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Of course Nathan would have been a great choice. But he was recovering from arm issues at the time. Phillies overpaid (but it’s just money), did not know when the CBA was going to be approved (and lost a draft pick), but got the best reliever available without any prior injury history. Given how pitiful Phillies other recent bullpen acquisitions and minor league callups have been, getting a known quality guy was understandable.
Like this year, I was happy with the Adams signing, Uehara was my preference but he is more of a fly ball pitcher. But both had injury issues over the offseason so both were risks. Until injured, Adams was excellent, not sure if Phillies should have known he was an additional injury risk.
My under the radar guy was Joel Peralta but TB signed him quickly.
Of course, they could have had Wilton Lopez if they approved that rumored trade. At least he is not on the DL.
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Think there will be an innings limit on his arm next season? I know he hasn’t pitched much during the last two years.
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reactions to the deal:
•Gonzalez is a high-risk signing in more ways than one, reports ESPN’s Buster Olney. (Twitter links.) Olney says that other teams saw “elbow questions” with Gonzalez to go along with his long layoff from pitching (in addition to the regular uncertainties with international signings). The perception around the league, according to Olney (more Twitter links), is that the Phillies must have seen this information more positively than most.
no wonder the dodger back off, and the redsox let him go. Does anyone on here really trust the phillies doctors??? how many screw ups did they have.
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Yes, there is no reason to believe that the Phillies doctors can’t adequate evaluate his elbow. The Phillies have certainly had disasters on the medical front, but a lot of that were cases like Garcia, where the team relied upon the other team’s medical records and our doctors never did an independent evaluation. They can do only so much looking at a pile of medical records, rather than an actual person and arm. I think some of the bad rap that the doctors get is the result of less than totally forthcoming press releases from the Phillies. We don’t know what the doctors told the Phillies. In the case of the medical condition of players already under contract to the Phillies, there were incentives for the team to color the doctors’ findings when reporting to the media. Here there isn’t. If they get the medical report and decide they don’t want that arm at that price, they can just walk away.
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Im not saying Puig is a superstar, but the same things were said about him when he was signed. If not worse.
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Not a big Buster Olney guy – think he tends to be more splash than substance. All of a sudden teams that were reported to be hot on the trail all along now we hear they *weren’t really interested*. Anyway the Phils have added some sp pitching depth, now will they be able to add everywhere else – esp. if you consider, as I do, ‘everywhere else’ has been the real problem the last three years.
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I used to really dislike Buster. BUT He has made more than concerted effort to understand how the game is evolving, not just sabermetrically but how teams are running their FO. Ill take what Buster says, over say a Heyman or a Morosi says ten times over.
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+1
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Meant +1 for BobDE, not a big Buster Olney fan and I hope he is very wrong here.
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What do you guys think his path will be, will he slowly move up the system making one start at each level, (GCL,Lakewood,Reading,LHV) or will he start right away in LHV?
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maybe he’ll start at reading and quickly get promoted to LV if he pitches well.
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They’ll probably send him to the Clearwater facilities first so he’ll debut there either in GCL or Clearwater and then probably move up to Reading/LHV. Probably similar to what they did with Zambrano.
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more on gonzalez.
http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/blog/eye-on-baseball/22904822/report-phillies-sign-cuban-righty-miguel-alfredo-gonzalez-for-50m
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Buster Olney @Buster_ESPN 4m
I haven’t heard from anyone ripping the Phillies for signing Gonzalez. They just wonder, in an open-ended way, what the Phillies see…
Buster Olney @Buster_ESPN 7m
PHI clearly felt more comfortable with some of the questions (elbow, recent inactivity) than other teams, based on their winning bid.
Buster Olney @Buster_ESPN 8m
After hearing from folks with other teams, it’s clear that PHI signing of Miguel Alfredo Gonzalez viewed as very high risk; elbow questions.
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Money really isnt the issue with new contact approching – Acquired talent is. The Phillies simply did what any organization who was slipping and has picked over farm system – they signed a big arm who cost them nothing in terms of draft picks or players. The only risk is a financial one.
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Before the phillies moved into cbp they went out and signed thome and traded for millwood. It’s not a surprise that with another huge inflow of cash on the horizon that the phils would make a move like this. I can’t see them dumping star players for minor league prospects at this time. I could see them making some small moves with vets like m. young and chooch but don’t see a lee trade.
Prediction: Brian Mcann starting catcher for phillies in 2014!
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If that happens the Phillies will not see a RH pitcher the whole year
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Just want to wade in quickly int he little back and forth Catch and Allentown are having.
My sympathies are more with Catch here, mainly for lack of evidence supporting allentown’s speculations. (Though I’d side with allentown on a couple of minor points where there DOES seem to be some evidence of ownership constraints). As a rule, it seems to me that, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the default assumption should be that the man is responsible for his own actions.
I’ll admit being further swayed by three things. Admit may not be the right word, because I think I’m appropriately swayed. One is the dumb things he says, constantly. Some people want to give him a pass on that, assuming that he isn’t serious. But some of the worst things he has said have been reflected in personal moves. Which gets me to issue #2 – his talent judgment with regard to position players just doesn’t appear to be very good. The final issue is the direction of the team. This encompasses the unknowable to some extent – we don’t know what he could have done – but to allow certain situations to fester, i.e., the right field situation (even if he thought Brown would be the right fielder, that just transfers the problem to left field). But more than any one position, there just doesn’t seem to be much resembling a plan or vision for the team going forward.
Yes, he’s made some decent deals but he’s made some horrible deals. IMO the balance is a little against him there, but even if you disagree, his deal making is not really a strong point in his favor. The only real positive that you can point to are some of his hires. But IMO that isn’t nearly enough, especially given that he seems to be the guy making (bad) decisions at the major league level.
It just seems to me at this point that the burden of proof is on Amaro’s defenders – a burden they haven’t met.
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I find some of the responses to catch just bizarre. The notion that we should infer from certain economic decisions that the partnership has thr responsibility for specific personnel decisions is not just misguided, but borderline crazy..The same thing came up in the weird criticisms about the non-signing of the top ten picks – arguments completely divorced from any logic, at all. The notion that, because you disagree with certain aspects of the ownership’s decision making process, that, by definition, anything bad that the organization does MUST be related to that core issue. I referred to it as flat earth thinking, but really it’s much worse than that. Flat earthers at least have a kind of logic, even if it is ultimately based upon some pretty strange assumptions. The arguments about the ownership group are much worse. It’s like blaming Giles for the recent bad weather. It’s THAT illogical.
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Really the worst is the wholly invented idea that “he has to get Manuel the players he wants,” putting the blame on Manuel for the personnel decisions. To call this crazy talk would be to massively understate the case.
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I don’t understand why you find this idea to be crazy talk, other than it disagrees with your conception of how the Phillies operate. There has been a long trend across all pro and college sports of the manager/coach outranking the GM/Athletic Director, who on paper is the nominal boss. This has been driven in large measure by the duties of the GM becoming more business-oriented, complex, and contractual, but also by coaches/managers flexing their muscle as the star of management. It is also driven by a lot of GMs not really being baseball people. Clearly Ed Wade was not a baseball guy at all and undoubtedly was not the boss in any real world sense of the word of either Bowa or Manuel. As a newbie GM, even with a baseball background, it is highly doubtful that he got the GM job as Manuel’s superior. In some sports, but really not baseball, it has become common for the head coach to get a title indicating that he is in charge of the whole non-business, sport-related shebang and the GM/Personnel Director is to do his bidding. Baseball hasn’t publicly presented this formalized management model, but veteran managers, who become the face of the team as players come and go, do have that sort of clout.
If you have a hard time imagining RAJ in this role, just think of Ed Wade and Larry Bowa. Do you really think Ed Wade sat in his office, decided what the team needed, made a deal, and told Larry ‘I knew the biggest thing you needed was a veteran 3B, so here he is’? No, Bowa decided what he needed, likely spoke directly to the Managing Partner as well as Wade, and said ‘I need a RH OF” and Wade was dispatched to acquire one. For the off-season deals, for the most part, the organization as a whole decided the direction at the Fall meetings. The GM executed the agreed strategy. RAJ showed more initiative than that with the Halladay deal.
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The short answer is that (a) there is no evidence, none, zero, zip nil that supports your theory, (b) the pattern that you allege is almost entirely absent in baseball (and I would argue the trend is in the other direction – the very few examples you can cite are mostly in the past). Analogies with college sports are BEYOND silly for reasons which should be abundantly obvious.
Analogies with pro football at least pass the laugh test, but see above – no evidence, and not the dominant model in baseball by ANY means.
Now, I’m not even going to get into the arguments on the OTHER side, which are substantial, and would start with quotes from Amaro about talent evaluation. But it would be pointless to do so. It would be like asking, say, Mitt Romeny to cite evidence against the proposition that he sexually abused his kids – I’m sure there’s plenty. But you don’t ask someone to refute arguments that are entirely made up and without evidence.
Let me say it plainly. Believing arguments that are entirely made up and supported by zero evidence is entirely irrational. Entirely.
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LarryM…do not take any offense to this, but apparently you have few experiences in the management arena. What allentown refers to is not isolated to the ‘basbeall’ workplace. It is synonymous with all organizations that has senior skilled specialized personnel and junior management or vice versa. In MBA/Org Devel programs it is regularly addressed.
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Romus,
You shoudl listen to yourself. I’m not saying that the pattern that allentown has invented out of whole cloth is literally something that couldn’t happen, but rather something that IS SUPPORTED BY NO EVIDENCE AT ALL. And if incidently contracdicted by substantial evidence, as well.
Let me go to my earlier Romney comment. You’re response is the precise equivalent of someone “supporting” the claim that Romeny molested his children but saying “no offense, but I don’t think you have much experience with the dynamic of child abuse. The pattern of abuse in the Romney family is a common one among families where child abuse is present.”
Allentown’s “argument” is precisely equivalent.
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No, it is not and you haven’t come close to making that case. What I proposed here is not contradicted by substantial evidence. Nor have you listed any evidence whatsoever.
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You’re still not getting it. There is no evidence, NONE that Romeny did not molest his kids. I still don’t beleive that he did. Precisely equivalent.
I have said repeatedly that I refuse to play the silly game of trying to “prove” that your made up out of whole cloth scenario is untrue. It’s a mug’s game and I won’t play it. But you make a bizarre argument that is unsupported by evidence, you can’t expect your opponent to “prove” you wrong. Burden of proof is on you.
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Quotes from RAJ about talent evaluation is your evidence? Really? GMs also talk about talent evaluation of draft picks. We know for certain that they weren’t the guy making the pick. Newsflash — managers are trained to talk to the media and practice doing so. They are briefed by others in the organization. As a mid-level manager, I was sent off to a course to learn how to properly answer media questions, in the very, very low probability case that I would have to briefly be the face of the company in the unlikely event of a serious industrial accident. Businesses are that thorough in their media planning.
You say you have evidence, but just won’t bother to present it. That is the fallback position of the guy with no evidence to present. You say I am making up my argument, which means it is speculation. Well, your argument and position are also speculation. NOne of us can know for sure what goes on behind the closed doors of the Phillies organization. We can only go by the pattern of behavior that is revealed to the world over the years. Actions rather than the explanations or spin surrounding those actions.
You have your view, I have mine. Both are speculation. I don’t insult you by calling your opinion crazy talk. I expect the same reasoned arguments from you. You may not believe this, but people actually are allowed to disagree with you. I’ve been civil in my discourse, but have had just about enough of your name-calling.
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You’ve lost all respect for you that I once had. Every bit.
The simple fact is that,EVEN WHEN CHALLENGED, you can’t present even a shred of evidence in support of your bizarre fantasy. You’re talking about MY lack of evidence. What a twisted joke. When someone invents an improbable and bizarre fantasy, unsupported by a shred of evidence, THAT person has the burden of proof. The person disagreeing with them doesn’t have to prove the opposite.
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What is bizarre? That Manuel has a lot of clout in the organization. That RAJ has bosses? That RAJ is not Manuel’s boss with the authority to fire him. You engage very freely in insults, but come up totally short on even the specifics of what you find to be bizarre. I’ve dealt with buffoons and bullies before. Am I supposed to be cowed by your lack of civility? You think that is how to get respect for your opinions? Unless you are fifteen years old or a drunken frat boy, it only makes you look small. If you really are a lawyer, then your preferred mode of discourse really is pathetic.
“EVEN WHEN CHALLENGED”? Challenged on what, specifically? And no, when two people voice opinions and the other one resorts to language like ‘fantasy, crazy talk, bizarre and twisted joke’ then the burden of proof falls on that intemperate individual. But if you care to remove yourself from the sphere of invective and state a specific objection, I will try to address it.
I am not the first poster to have substantial problem with your posting behavior. Frankly, I think the mod should intervene.
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Challenged to provide any evidence, at all, in support of your assertions.
That is a specific, civil objection that I have made at least a dozen times, as has catch, as have others, that you have not even tried to address.
And I’m talking specifically about your repeated, repeated allegations about Manuel’s control of personnel decisions. I disagree with other parts of your argument, but it’s that core part of your argument that I have the biggest problem with. Because the “constrained by resources” argument, while somewhat true, goes only so far. Especially given the size of the payroll over the past few years. It’s abundantly clear that, within those constraints, horrible personnel decisions have been made. Time after time. You want to absolve Amaro of responsibility for those actions. Well, you need EVIDENCE to do that. Evidence which you don’t have.
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This is my impression/opinion versus yours and since neither of us in the Phillies’ offices, there can be no hard proof, so it is disingenuous of you to demand it. You are now again playing the game and changing the argument. This started with a list of questions which I asked to get a view on people’s opinion of how much authority RAJ actually has. I never mentioned thar RAJ didn’t pick the Youngs and that Manuel chose them. That is your total made up strawman. I do think RAJ was given a list of positions on the 25-man to fill over the winter and a limited pile of money to fill them. The pile of $$ seems to have been extremely small, since each guy signed was a reach. This is the prime example of why I am trying to pin you down to specific statements that you object to, since you are now arguing against yourself. I get that you really, really, really dislike RAJ. I realize that as a vocal RAJ supporter I’m a lightning rod for your venom. But go back, re-read, and you will see how illogical you have been.
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This really crystallizes for me a number of our disagreements, but I’m ALREADY neglecting responsibilities, so I’ll be mercifully brief.
(1) We’re not on equal footing regarding beliefs about the workings of the FO. I’m assuming that the FO works (a) as most FOs do, as (b) the Phillies claim that it does, and (c) along the lines of the ostensible chain of command. You’re assuming deviation from that. In the absence of compelling evidence, it is reasonable to assume the former, You bear the burden of proof.
(2) My lack of specifics about Manuel reflects YOUR lack of specifics. You keep claiming a role for him in personnel decisions, without committing yourself to specific examples. How am I, how is anyone, supposed to argue against that with specifics?
(3) Another example of you just ignoring arguments you don’t like. You repeat your argument about financial constraints this past off season. Actually, in this case I am inclined to agree that there is circumstantial evidence – not conclusive, but good evidence – that you are correct. But my counter to that was to say “yes, but those resources were used very poorly.” Rather than try to defend those decisions (which frankly you can at least make an argument in defense of all but one of them, though ultimately I don’t buy it), you just repeat the original argument, which I had already provisionally conceded.
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I have never said that Manuel controls personnel decisions. I have said that he deliberately forced RAJ’s hand on the Pence trade with his constant harping to the media that he needed a RH hitting starting OF. One time he made this comment was right after, I believe it was Jayson Stark, had pointed out the tidbit that at that point in time, Mayberry had the highest post-All Star game SLG in the league and was hitting up a storm. A reporter asked Manuel about Mayberry, and Manuel simply repeated “I need a RH hitting OF”. This was at a time when the 2011 Phillies were on pace to win 100 games and the trade was a severe case of gilding the lily, but the Phillies are a very PR conscious organization and Manuel got his way. Just as Bowa publicly tweaked Wade and got away with multiple times, Manuel has publicly tweaked RAJ multiple times and gotten away with it. That is not something someone can achieve in dealing with their boss, but then Wade and Manuel never were the bosses of Bowa or Manuel.
You mention the Howard extension. If that were something unique to RAJ, then you’d have a point, but it isn’t. It is exactly the thing the Phillies did with Burrell and Abreu after the Phillies had a PR blowup. Burrell didn’t need to be extended and certainly as a kid not out of arb, certainly didn’t deserve the no-trade clause he got in that deal.
The Phillies underspend on the draft and international amateur talent is of long standing, well pre-dating RAJ. Again, it seems to be the Phillies Way, not the RAJ way that he introduced. You pooh pooh it, but the Phillies have been in the forefront of fighting amateur bonuses since Giles acquired the team. The new owners immediately abandoned the guts of the Latin American operation and allowed the farm to fall into ruin. When Drew was drafted, Giles was quoted as saying they picked him “for the good of baseball”. Giles inserted himself into the actual contract negotiations with Drew, blowing any chance the GM and scouting director had to work something out. This is all well documented if you bother to check it out or have followed the Phillies long enough to remember.
The Phillies draft spending has always miraculously mirrored Selig’s suggested spending for the first 10 rounds and the Phillies have never busted slot for a first rounder, supplemental rounder, or their initital pick in the draft. They were consistently among the bottom third in international spending on bonuses. BA publishes total bonus payments annually and averaged over the prior 5 years. The Phillies were consistently bottom 5 in the last 5 years prior to the new rules. They have not spent their total initial allocation in either of the two drafts under the new rules. This is a very consistent pattern. The Phillies have not had a single Japanese or Cuban signing prior to Gonzales.
So what is and isn’t RAJ responsible and how much authority does he actually have. I stated above that I thought he had about average authority for an MLB GM, with the exception that he is not allowed to make his own allocation between spending on the major league budget and amateur bonuses. This is hardly a bizarre or novel conclusion, as it has been the case for Thomas and Wade, prior to RAJ. Gillick does seem to have had a longer leash.
So, we ask, how has RAJ differed from the other GMs who preceded him and served the same owners? I don’t see a difference on the draft. The international front was the same until the new rules kicked in. The big change is that RAJ is the first Phillies GM to sign a Cuban talent. That’s a difference, but it is a positive difference.
How do RAJ’s FA signings differ from his predecessors. The Phillies have had a penchant for over-paying middle relievers, even going so far as to lose their first and second round draft picks in the same draft for a run-of-the-mill closer and basically a LOOGY. That was under Wade. They have always seemed to add ‘names’ to juice the fans over the winter and sell tickets. Most of the names have been faded. This seemed to begin with Tartabull, but Gillick had his Eaton and Jenkins and Wade had David Bell and his relievers. All of these guys were over-hyped like mad to market tickets.
RAJ does seem to stand out from his predecessors in boldly making successful big trades for solid pitchers and having those deals be strongly in his favor. Even the great Gillick completely whiffed on Garcia. RAJ hit on Halladay and Oswalt. The Phillies had also hit on the Blanton and Lee trades, not that Blanton is great shakes and his re-upping was an error, but he was a key pitcher the year he was acquired. RAJ swooped in and did the big FA signing on Lee. The only comparable example prior to that is Thome. I think RAJ’s big deals show a lot of budget creativity. The Pence deal did also, although I hate that totally unnecessary trade with a purple passion.
You say that Monty never gets involved in other than financial decisions, but we know that isn’t true. I don’t know how long you’ve followed the Phillies, but I vividly remember the teary Pat Gillick, when he salary dumped Abreu and Lidle, as just about his first order of business as GM, after failing to dump Burrell, because Pat invoked his FNTC. A veteran GM does not have tears in his eyes because he has traded a player he wanted to trade, a guy whom he didn’t even have any connection with. No, that order to cut salary instantly came from the top. Just as last year’s order to get under the salary cap came from ownership. Those just aren’t things that a GM decides to do. They don’t say “Gee, I just woke up this morning and decided to trade off some of my starting players, because I really don’t want to spend all the $ I’ve been allowed to spend, because winning really just isn’t my thing, I’m all about the $”. Interestingly, Gillick is listed as the Senior Advisor to Montgomery as well as to Amaro. Giles is still listed as the chairman, but not CEO or General Partner, which is Montgomery. So, of all the owners, Giles remains second in authority, only to Monty. The other owners aren’t mentioned at all.
You seem astounded that Manuel, rather than RAJ, has the bigger say in whom gets called up from the minors to fill an injury vacancy. That is really fairly standard throughout baseball. In the case of MM, Manuel wanted him and in fact played him in CF when he could have left him on the bench during this past series. RAJ has no great love for MM, he DFAed him. RAJ has sent Brown and Galvis to Manuel under the understanding that they would play regularly, and that didn’t happen. Clearly RAJ can’t dictate that his primo organization prospect be a starter on the big team.
You say that I don’t criticize anything that RAJ does. I certainly have, repeatedly. This series of posts was not the place to do that. If I had been expressing my own qualifiers in response to somebody who said that RAJ never made an error, then I wouldn’t address the good things that RAJ did in that exchange. That’s not the purpose of the exchange. One doesn’t give the full and balanced picture of a player or managers body of work, one addresses the points one disagrees with. I have frequently said that I hated the signings of both Youngs. Nobody detests the signing of the below-replacement-level anti-Semite physical attacker of an elderly Jew more than I. I also know that despite Monty’s claim that the owners had no qualms about busting the lux cap this winter and repeatedly in future in order to field a winner, that RAJ had a very small budget to work with. I think he should have just decided that the team would go with Ruf and Frandsen/Galvis instead of the Youngs. This was very unlikely to be a year in which the Phillies made post-season, whatever RAJ did with his budget. I do think the demand for one last hurrah along with an inadequate budget came from the owners and I do think that Manuel would have very publicly rebelled had he not had some ‘name’ vets added over the winter — he is not a manager to be content with going with Frandsen and Ruf. But no, I have certainly not been happy with the winter signings and I don’t view Adams as merely bad luck. Like Eaton and Garcia before him, he simply did not come to us in good health.
In any verdict on RAJ, one does have to credit him for the 102 win team. That’s a recent record for the Phillies. The post-season is a crap shoot, but that team plus Pence certainly should have gone farther in the post-season than it did. RAJ’s orders were to deliver a last hurrah with the old core, and the 2011 team was an excellent one. The 2012 team was also about as good as could be done under the lux cap with such an aging team. Injuries killed it. Not that a rash of injuries should not have been expected.
This year was a Hail Mary season. If you thought RAJ could/should have done something over the winter which would have gotten us to the post-season, then I think you were wearing very rosy glasses. I can sort of see writing off 2012 as an injury-riddled fluke, but if we took off our fan-colored red glasses, it was abundantly clear that this was a team on the slide, slammed up against spending constraints, and destined to bring in less revenue than the prior season.
2014 isn’t going to be pretty either.
I’ve relooked at my questions posted earlier in the thread. I’m happy with both the questions and what I suggested my answers to them are. If you want to argue factually on any one of them, I’m happy to do so, but I am done with the name-calling and your overblown language.
I also stand by my earlier statements on the 5th and 6th draft picks. You simply cannot afford not to sign them. We were unique in that. Excuses were made. I’ve heard a whole litany of excuses every year trying to explain away the Phillies less than maximal effort in the draft and international. It might have made the smallest piece of sense, when the big club was still flying high, now it doesn’t. You’ve taken things out of context, exaggerated, and made up out of whole cloth to declare as fact that I have said the Phillies low-balled Wetzler. I never said that. I said that he said there was a $ amount he said he would have signed for and that a blogger had suggested that he wasn’t offered slot. I never said that I accepted that as truth. I said it had as much validity as an after-the-draft comment from Wetzler that he felt before the draft that he would sign regardless of where he was drafted. That statement had no mention of $, which Wetzler did mention later, without giving his $ figure and it struck me as odd that he would have told the Phillies scout that he would sign for whatever $ he was offered at whatever position in the draft. That just isn’t real world. I also said that it was more than odd and a scouting failure that the only two guys as high as 6th rounders who weren’t protected picks not to sign were scouted by the same Phillies scout and cross-checker and that this was a performance issue. I’ve thought about that opinion and I am happy to stand by it. You can make all the excuses you want, and you can say it is of little impact as much as you want, but at the end of the day the fact remains: the Phillies were the only MLB team not to sign an unprotected pick as high as the 6th round and they committed that error twice.
You decry the Phillies past winter trade/FA season, but really, all of those problems are driven by the poor state of the farm. Not my opinion alone that it is weak, all of the rankers ranked us in the bottom third over the winter.
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allentown,
Lots of specifics here which I appreciate. As you might imagine, I disagree with much of it, and the parts I agree with aren’t really relevant to out dispute.
But I really DON’T have time to do it justice right now, sorry. It will have to wait for another time.
I will say this: the best, bend over backwards to be fair argument that you can make for Amaro, without un-evidenced speculation that his worst decisions (Pence, Howard, etc.) weren’t his call, is that he is a mediocre GM. I don’t buy even that, but even if I did, under current conditions (where a large payroll doesn’t give you the edge it once did), mediocre is not enough.
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Okay, one quick point – Howard. (a) Past FA mistakes by the organization are not evidence that Amaro’s hands were tied. Not just weak evidence, no evidence at all. (b) The Howard contract was an order of magnitude worse than any other contract his predecessors negotiated.
Obviously I disagree with many other of your points. But just to lend some perspective to the debate, I feel strongly that the Howard contract by itself is a reason why he has no business being the general manager for a major league team. Not just because of it’s negative effects, but because it’s badness (on several levels, not the least of which was the timing) is indicative of a lack of a lack of the basic skills that a GM needs to succeed in the modern game.
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And even here (I’ll forget the insults, Mr. Pot/kettle), you make two factual assertions which, at the same time, are debatable (and I’m almost conceding too much here; the burden of prove is on you, the guy claiming that the nominal subordinate has the power), and, even if true, insufficient to support your arguments.
Does Amaro have the authority to fire Manuel? I don’t know. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t. Haven’t seen any evidence of the former. But assume you are right – so what? It matters only if Manuel is the guy calling the personnel shots. And there is no evidence that he is. None.
Does Manuel have a “lot of clout in the organization?” Well, of course some of that is a matter of definition. Again evidence is lacking. But even assuming a “lot of clout,” there’s a huge amount of distance between that and what you are asserting. At the end of that day, can he override or force Amaro’s personnel decisions? No evidence of that, none at all.
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I have not said that he can over-ride RAJ’s decisions on which trades to make and the trade specifics. There is plenty of evidence that his public statements led to the Pence deal and that he picks whom he wants from the Phillies farm when a replacement player is needed.
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And I’m sorry for the tone too, but I don’t know how else to express it. I don’t think this os one of those “well reasonable people an differ” issues. What you’re doing is starting with antipathy to the owners, related mainly to financial decision making, and then just assuming the worst about every aspect of management by ownership without evidence. The first part is fair enough – I even agree to some extent, though I think you take it too far. But that IS something reasonable people can disagree with.
But the second step, while it is a pretty common human failing. is something that I think shouldn’t be left unanswered.
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You express it in a logical, reasoned fashion as a civil human being. I have not assumed the worst of every aspect of decision making. I go by the evidence before me. I don’t even know what is ‘worse’ about the field manager, rather than the GM, having greater authority in player decisions. There is nothing that inherently makes one approach right and the other wrong. Certainly Bowa, for all his flaws as a manager, knew a heck of a lot more about baseball and player evaluation than the businessman Ed Wade ever did.
The days of scouts becoming GMs is largely past. SOme modern GMs have used statistical analysis to substitute for the scouting tools they lack, while others are simply people with management or administrative or legal skills.
Do you really think that in all this time since the Giles group bought the Phillies that we have not seen a long, long series of organizational actions which count as evidence to the views of ownership? If so, I think you are awfully naïve to conflate the actions of the front men for the decisions of the guys who are actually in charge.
I see nothing nefarious about team owners making decisions. They’re the boss and it’s their money. The Phillies owners like to be seen as not playing a decision making role, but that doesn’t make that true. It would be very, very strange owner behavior, bordering on unique, to leave all the decision making for your $.5 billion dollar business in the hands of a newbie GM, like RAJ, or really to delegate all that power to any other person on this Earth. But believe what you wish to believe and assign bad motives to anyone who doesn’t share your view. Bluster and insults do not strengthen your argument.
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By the way, two can play the ‘I can’t think of any other way to express it’ game. If that’s the only way you are able to debate, I guess that’s how we’ll have to do it.
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And my objection to the ownership actions over the past decade has zilch to do with financial decision making. It has to do with placing loyalty to Selig’s crusades above doing whatever is necessary to build a winning Phillies team. Going back farther into the Giles era, I certainly objected to the owners’ decision making when they responded to bad contracts by allowing the team to decline and then let spending and revenue chase each other down the drain in a losing pattern, which was interrupted only by Rendell gifting them with a new stadium. Since then, I have said many times, if you bothered to read rather than insult, that I have no problem with the Phillies overall level of spending. I have a big problem with how that spending is partitioned and with the team’s strategic vision or lack thereof. No 5-year plan? Really? Any manager of anything bigger than a sandwich shop would be mortified to admit to this in public.
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See, this is just such a bizzare conflation of different unrelated issues, for example talking about the support of Selig in one breath (something that is on the ownership) to the lack of five year plans (which is on the GM), that I don’t even know where to start. And it’s not even that I think you’re far wrong about the specifics, it’s the completely unsupported assumption that all of this has to do with the ownership.
Or , at least DIRECTLY to do with the ownership. Indirectly, I’d place plenty of blame on the ownership for a series of disastrous general manager hires. But instead of making that fair point, you create, out of whole cloth, with no evidence at all, this bizarre and convoluted narrative that they REAL power in terms of making personnel decisions is in the hands of the manager.
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Again, we may disagree, but my conclusion is hardly bizarre. To take a fairly undebatable situation, which belies your assertion that the field manager having a big say in personnel decisions in a fading thing of the past, I’ll just point to Andy Reid.
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Is this really how you lawyer? Do you think a constant stream of insults adds any weight to your argument? You’ve lost all your respect in me? You’ve presented yourself as one who is totally undeserving of respect or civility. When challenged to clean up your language, you just pile it on. You really should be banned.
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I see evidence that the owners have made decisions about finances and the management has made decisions about personnel. And my “management” I don’t mean “the manager” per se, You keep talking about a pattern, but you don’t cite any specifics, except for rhetorical questions to which my answer would be the opposite of what you assume (e.g., regarding the Bowa/Wade dynamic). Partly because you leave out the fact that the general manager does not act alone – he has an upper management team. The manager may have a role in that team, but there is zero evidence, none, that, in terms of the current ownership, the manager has had an out-sized role, let alone a dominant one.
Now, I DO see a pattern of the ownership making some questionable hires in terms of upper management. But no evidence that they either control personell decisions, or have delegated that control to managers.
In terms of your more general point, you’re leaving out a huge part of the picture. The modern GM may not have a lot of scouting/talent evaluation knowledge, but he supplements it, not just with modern statistical analysis, but by building a team of scouts and executives with player evaluation knowledge. The idea that they lean on their managers for personnel decisions is not true, and supported by no actual evidence.
I could go organization by organization – and really, there is no one clear pattern. But don’t know of any current baseball teams that follow the specific model you advance. None.
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Thank you for a civil discussion. I never said that the owners made decisions about personnel, apart from management personnel. I have said that they have set limits on spending for the draft and international talent, and I think there is substantial evidence for that. You want to see RAJ as the big, bad incompetent, because he gives very awkward justifications for some of the stiffs (aka the Youngs and Adams) whom he brought in this winter, when he was short on $ and presumably the market was more expensive than the Phillies expected. If you concede that the manager and the GM each have a role in the Phillies major league personnel decisions and the strategic decisions made at the Fall meeting, then perhaps we aren’t all that far apart.
I don’t agree that there are no organizations that follow the model I suggest. Just to take a current to the Philies example, I doubt very seriously that Leyland reports to the GM as his boss to any meaningful extent. I also think that in most organizations it is the manager who tells the GM “I need a second baseman and don’t find the available guys in our minors adequate” rather than the other way around. When Brown went down, I think Manuel told RAJ whom he wanted from the minors. I think most experienced field managers do this, especially when the GM is not a strong GM.
There was a lot of talk about how different Gillick was from the normal Phillies GM. He was different. He had a lot more clout than Wade or RAJ. He was the rare Phillies GM hire who came to the post with a ton of experience and heft. Those guys are out there. There is a reason that the Phillies normally don’t hire one of them. They don’t want a Beane or an Epstein. They were very happy with Ed Wade for a very long time. I have no doubt that Wade was not Bowa’s boss. Do you think he was?
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Look, I have no doubt that Amaro was significantly constrained this off season. But:
(1) Within the context of those constraints, he made some awful decisions. not Adams so much, he had some bad luck there. But both Youngs, Delmon especially, were horrible decisions EVEN WITHIN THOSE CONSTRAINTS.
(2) The continued fascination with M. Martinez is another example. No, you can’t blame that on Manuel. Even if Manuel expressed a preference for him HE IS NOT THE BOSS. Claiming otherwise does not make it so.
(3) He’s made plenty of bad decisions that pretty clearly were not caused by financial constraints. e.g., Pence. And no, I don’t buy the made-up notion that Manuel held a gun to his head and forced him to make that trade.
(4) The lack of a plan, which YOU cite, is 100% on Amaro.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Contrary to all appearances, I don’t have all day to go back and forth about this.
And as for civility, I apologize for some of it, but I can’t and won’t pretend that this is simply a case of two people making different conclusions from the same evidence. I’m arguing from evidence, you’re making things up out of whole cloth, and I won’t pretend otherwise.. Even there, I guess anything is theoretically possible. Maybe Romney really did molest his kids. In the very unlikely event you’re right, it’s by accident, in the “even a stopped clock” sense.
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You can’t be arguing from evidence if you have presented no evidence. Your opinion is not evidence. If one is to judge reasonableness, I’m not the one who raised the Romney issue. That was you. You are a joke.
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Evidence is not needed to reject something out of hand that is not supported by evidence.
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And Joe says it better than me in many fewer words. That’s the core point.
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Allentown, remember Larry M. is a lawyer(so he says) not a historian who follows managerial patterns.
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Another day, another death match over minor league baseball..
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Thats funny.;)
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Rollins says he will veto a trade because there are club records he has his sights set on breaking. He is second in franchise history in games, at-bats, doubles and stolen bases and has a shot at beating some of those records if he plays out his contract.
“Until those things are done, I’m not going anywhere,” Rollins said.
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LarryM…al-town…take a breather, take a look at Brookover on Zach Green.
http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/phillies/20130728_Williamsport_s_Green_patient_at_crowded_third_base.html
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How in world can anyone. Try to defend Amaro. You would think that the phillies dont care about these blogs, But they must, because only a employee of the phillies, would have the guts to try to defend amaro. anyone in there right mind cant defend the man . who made the Howard signing. Pence trade, brought in Vadis, Adams, gave that contract to Paps. brought in Young, Young, and Nix, horst, another great bullpen arm. you want proof, you can handle proof, third highest payroll and still cant put a winning product on the field, you cant handle the proof,
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No one is defending Ruben Amaro…..its the matter of his decision making authority and autonomy all within the scope of the amount of power he wields.
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I am going to step back on this as advised – and really it is pointless to go on, allentown and I are arguing past each other.
But he is, indeed, pretty explicitly, defending Amaro. He’s not saying, “who knows how Amaro would do as a GM, he has no real power,” he’s claiming that he’s doing well in the (few) areas where he does have power. Now, I think that’s a pretty classic example of special pleading, but whether I’m right or wrong, it does amount to defending Amaro.
And you know what? I think someone could construct a defense of Amaro by (a) pointing out the cases where he has made successful decisions, (b) pointing out the areas where there is actual evidence of constraints on his actions, (c) conceding that he’s made some mistakes in the many areas where he does have authority, and (d) arguing that “a” outweighs “d.” I wouldn’t but it, but it would at least be a rational argument.
But what allentown seems to be doing – and most of his arguments are vague enough that I do have to use the word “seems” – is to exaggerate b and drop c from the equation, blaming all the bad stuff, without evidence, on other actors.
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No. I am not saying RAJ has no power and that he has made only successful decisions where he has power. He is not the all powerful CEO-type totally in charge of the Phillies fate guy that you paint him as — he has just slightly less authority than a typical MLB GM. He doesn’t have the authority or organizational clout that Gillick had, but he has as much power as Wade or Thomas did.
Yes, I do support RAJ. No, it’s not special pleading. I am not making the ‘here are all the cons to go with all the pros case’, I am simply stating the areas where I think he is not allowed to simply do as he chooses and does not deserve as much blame as you give him. I am also pointing out what he did right. The Phillies didn’t win 102 games in 2011 by accident. That was a better result than was achieved with Gillick as GM.
This isn’t RAJ”s team, just as the 2008 WS team wasn’t Gillick’s team. Gillick won with largely parts which were there when he came, his role was to add the final pieces, which Wade failed to add and to do a far better trading job at the trade deadline. The 2008 team over-performed in the playoffs, it certainly was not the strongest Phillies team of this recent era. RAJ’s 102 win team also was built largely on players he inherited and the problems of 2012 and 2013 were also largely inherited, although this was an awful off-season. The Phillies biggest problems of 2013 and going forward is the weakness of the farm and the aging out of the core. Those problems both pre-date RAJ, although he hasn’t fixed them. They seem to both come from The Phillies Way, which includes a very big PR component in baseball decision making, especially anything that hints of rebuilding and insufficient emphasis on the farm. These are both problems that go back over 4 GMs, along the whole course of the Giles ownership group. De-emphasis of the farm was the biggest change made by the Giles group. Ruly Carpenter built a very strong farm and a very strong Latin American operation, with no more $ than the GIles group had in its early years and a heck of a lot fewer $ than the Giles group has today. The organizational philosophy has been too consistent not to have been set by ownership, and that is the role that ownership usually plays in every organization. It is the right of owners everywhere. Sometimes that philosophy is sub-optimal and the whole organization suffers, despite good lower-level management.
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I check out of here on weekends and man I couldn’t wait to jump on and see the discussion this sign was going to generate. I’m not disappointed.
I think whether you approve or disapprove of RAJ, whether you think ownership is cheap or not cheap many of you have brought to light a simple fact. No one here on this board knows all the facts to say for certain one way or the other.
And again before you judge this organization as dysfunctional take a look around the league at other ownership groups and other GM’s…it’s not just us. I think there are multiple philosophies out there being implemented and any one of them can win a championship and not a single one of them will (consistently) win championships.
You don’t know what our offer for Chapman, Soler, Puig, Dharvish, Cespedes was and for all you know it was in the same bracket but the player chose his own situation based on his comfort level. Let’s not forget the player doesn’t have to go to the highest bidder.
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DMAR,
While there’s some truth to that, there’s a pretty big gap between the 6 to 10 best run organizations and the rest of the league. We can all agree on the top organizations, can’t we. Cardinals, Red Sox, Yankees, Rangers, Rays, A’s for sure. A few others could maybe be added. Cubs probably headed in that direction.
One can, I think, reasonably debate where Amaro fits into the “best of the rest” – in the middle or at the bottom – but I don’t think anyone can fairly argue that he’s one of the top GMS.
And here’s the thing. You CAN win even if you’re not one of the top organizations. SF of course the biggest recent example, though (a) Sabean IMO has some strengths Amaro does not have, and (b) they had a lot of luck, both in terms of concentration of talent arriving close together, good luck with peak seasons of non-elite talent occurring at the right time, and post season luck. But for SUSTAINED success, you need to be ahead of the pack.
Why can’t we, why shouldn’t we, aspire to that?
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Never thought I ever say this in April, but could Ben Revere’s absence be a critical component to the Phillies recent demise?
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See Ruben knows best!
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Oh no, don’t go there.
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biddle with a second straight horrible game – 5 earned runs and 6 walks (!!!!) in 1.1 innings. he’s in a serious funk right now. must be on the same wavelength as the parent club right now.
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Or not… Todd Zolecki reporting that the deal may not happen after all.
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ICYMI, MAG reportedly signed.
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