Any exercise in deciding what the Phillies should do going forward, I imagine, begins with an evaluation of payroll for 2014:
Hamels-$22.5
Howard-$25
Lee-$25
Papelbon-$13
Rollins-$11
Adams-$6
Brown-$500K
Revere-$500K
Known is roughly $104 Million tied up in 8 players. Unknowns would be Utley and Ruiz, Kendrick and then a bunch of role players.
A 25 man roster and you need to allocate the remaining budget to 17 players, 4 of which will be starting position players C, 3B, 2B and RF. 3 of Which will be starting rotation behind Lee and Hamels.
The 2014 F/A market is thin. Garza is supposed to hit the market unless the team he gets traded to locks him up. Ellsbury is probably the top name available in the OF both are likely to get AAV deals upwards of $18 Million. Choo will be another name to watch but I'm not sure either is a likely fit for us. I see us needing a right handed hitting RF with .850+ OPS.
We'll see how it shakes out!
Monday, July 22, 2013
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Here we go! 13
Days until the trade deadline and 66 games remaining. The Phillies would need to go 42-24 a .636 winning percentage down the stretch to win 90 games. Sure Charlie has done that before but with teams on a different trajectory than this one.
The propaganda from Amaro is that we are buyers not sellers. Dave Montgomery said today its too early to tell. The team sits now with a number of rentals: Utley, Ruiz, Michael Young, and Delmon Young none of which are lighting the stat sheets on fire to a degree where you would say a team in contention would overpay for 3 months of their service and all of which have question marks in their game or injury history or both.
The real assets on the team would be Cliff Lee and Oucho Cinco. Amaro has made it a point many times to say Lee is a guy we build around. My opinion is he would have to be blown away with an offer to move him. Papelbon on the other hand is a candidate for sure. Both Boston and Detroit could use an experienced closer at the back end of their BP and both can afford his remaining $45.5 in salary but would either of them absorb that amount of money and give up a top flight prospect? I don't think so not when Papelbon has struggled of late. Timing in life is everything and unfortunately for RAJ there appears to be other less expensive options out there.
I often say its better to be lucky than good and RAJ for all of his effort has been neither. An optimist might say he is at least due for some luck but Revere's injury seems to indicate otherwise. Brown is cooling off and with the lack of talent around him would suggest a mediocre finish to an otherwise fine first half is in the cards.
So here we are in mediocre land. Not horrible enough and without good assets to sell and not good enough and without a deep enough farm to buy. I would guess a team looking for cash or cash relief might have something of value to give you. Maybe a piece to sure up the BP but offense and defense are still going to loom large in their sprint to the finish.
The propaganda from Amaro is that we are buyers not sellers. Dave Montgomery said today its too early to tell. The team sits now with a number of rentals: Utley, Ruiz, Michael Young, and Delmon Young none of which are lighting the stat sheets on fire to a degree where you would say a team in contention would overpay for 3 months of their service and all of which have question marks in their game or injury history or both.
The real assets on the team would be Cliff Lee and Oucho Cinco. Amaro has made it a point many times to say Lee is a guy we build around. My opinion is he would have to be blown away with an offer to move him. Papelbon on the other hand is a candidate for sure. Both Boston and Detroit could use an experienced closer at the back end of their BP and both can afford his remaining $45.5 in salary but would either of them absorb that amount of money and give up a top flight prospect? I don't think so not when Papelbon has struggled of late. Timing in life is everything and unfortunately for RAJ there appears to be other less expensive options out there.
I often say its better to be lucky than good and RAJ for all of his effort has been neither. An optimist might say he is at least due for some luck but Revere's injury seems to indicate otherwise. Brown is cooling off and with the lack of talent around him would suggest a mediocre finish to an otherwise fine first half is in the cards.
So here we are in mediocre land. Not horrible enough and without good assets to sell and not good enough and without a deep enough farm to buy. I would guess a team looking for cash or cash relief might have something of value to give you. Maybe a piece to sure up the BP but offense and defense are still going to loom large in their sprint to the finish.
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