The trade deadline is this Thursday. The Phillies are 46-59, last in the NL East and 12.5 Games back of the Nationals so I guess the good news is they will be on track to get another high value draft pick. The only bright spots on the big club right now seem to be Cole Hamels and Ken Giles.
On the farm you can point to Crawford. In his first full season of pro ball J.P skipped Williamsport started the year in Lakewood and advanced to Hi A Clearwater and is more than holding is own. Nola the 7th pick in this years draft out of LSU has flashed a bit of the potential that allowed him to dominate in the SEC. Outside of that Jesse Biddle took a huge leap backwards and Franco while good of late struggled mightily to start the season in AAA. Not a big deal since he is still very young for the league.
If its better to be lucky than good this club is in major need of a rabbits foot and about a half dozen four leaf clovers. Cliff was supposed to be the one chip in my opinion they could deal at the deadline for a possible blue chip prospect or young player with years of control. A player to possibly form the nucleus of a new core of young players to get us back into the playoffs. An elbow injury in May derailed that plan. Cliff's two starts since coming off the DL have been less than Cliff like.
Let's see what happens with Papelbon, Byrd and dare I say Utley. Rumors continue to swirl that the Giants might be interested and Chase interested in them if you want to make the leap that he does maintain an off season home in the area. Why the Giants went fro Uggla is beyond me. He maybe worse than Howard in terms of drop off in performance, minus the contract of course.
The bigger shame might be that Brown and Asche failed to dominate this year. This team has made plenty of opportunity for a young player to come up and make a statement and it just hasn't happened.
The clock is ticking and it may have to run into over time meaning the waiver period come August. Easily Lee would clear waivers and so would Papelbon. Jimmy might also, Ruiz might but Howard will not.
Finally one must always consider a team blowing the Phillies away for a guy like Cole Hamels. Not an easy road ahead for the front office.
