EVIL~! alkeiper

The Phillies signed Chan Ho Park after he had a revival year in Los Angeles. Let's see. Home, 2.18 ERA. Away, 4.50 ERA. Doesn't anyone ever learn anything?

Utter domination tonight from Wladimir Klitschko.

Ten years ago, Baseball America started listing top prospects by team. The Phillies at the time had a weak system, and BA chose reliever Ryan Brannan as the Phillies' top prospect. Brannan never reached the major leagues. Over ten years have passed, so now it is apparent whether any of the Phillies' farm products at the time became successes or failures. Looking back, could any of their players made better picks as top prospects? I drew up a list of the top ten based on current career win shares. Players in the organization as of January 1, 1998 and claimed rookie eligibility status. 1. Jimmy Rollins, SS (18 years old) Sally League: 270/332/370, 46 stolen bases Impressive second year, as Rollins displayed a bit of pop, plate discipline, lots of speed. A shortstop who happened to be one of the youngest players in the league AND exceeded the league OPS is certainly a top prospect. 2. Randy Wolf, LHP (20 years old) NY-Penn League: 4-0, 1.57 ERA, 40 IP, 8 BBs, 53 K's. Wolf was the Phillies' second round pick in the 1997 draft. It is hard to put a lot of stock in 40 innings. Michael Cisco would qualify as a top prospect under the same criteria. It would be interesting to go back and read scouting reports on this one. 3. Marlon Anderson, 2B (23 years old) Eastern League: 266/318/374, 27 steals in 42 attempts. Those numbers are hardly impressive at all. Low average, little power, high caught stealing rate. Anderson would explode for 62 extra base hits the next year in AAA Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Anderson spent a couple years playing second base for the Phillies before settling in as a valuable spare part for the New York Mets. 4. Desi Relaford, SS (23 years old) International League: 267/323/400, 29 steals. You want a higher batting average, but that's not bad from a 23 year old SS in AAA. Relaford bombed as a starter though in 1998. Relaford got mileage out of a career as a utility infielder. His placement on the list is due to longevity rather than real ability. 5. Johnny Estrada, C (21 years old) NY-Penn League: 314/341/489. 223 at bats, 9 walks and 15 strikeouts? How do you evaluate a player like that? Estrada never got his OBP up. He reached the Majors in 2001 thanks to an injury to Mike Lieberthal, but was terrible. He had a solid year with the Braves in 2004, but otherwise he was a poor hitter. A player like this lives and dies on his batting average and when you do that, it better be closer to .320-.330.[/i] 6. Carlos Silva, RHP (18 years old) Appy League: 2-2, 5.12 ERA, 58 IP, 14 BBs, 31 K's. Home run rates are unavailable, so I don't know if Silva's ground ball tendencies were readily apparent. While Silva crashed and burned in 2008, he's had a fine career thus far as a starting pitcher. 7. Adam Eaton, RHP (19 years old) Sally League: 5-6, 4.18 ERA, 71 IP, 30 BBs, 57 K's. Nothing in the stat line really stands out. The Phillies packaged Eaton to the Padres for Alan Ashby before the 2000 season. Eaton had a 4.13 ERA in 2000 and since then has NEVER posted a better than average ERA in a season of any length. 8. Bobby Estalella, C (22 years old) International League: 233/321/418 A beast. Estalella had power to spare, and was built like a truck. Unfortunately he had yet to hit for an acceptable average. Estalella exploded the following season in Scranton, posting a .993 OPS in 76 games. Estalella hit just .216 though in 904 MLB at bats. 9. Wayne Gomes, RHP (24 years old) International League: 38 IP, 24 BB's, 36 K's, 2.37 ERA MLB: 42.7 IP, 24 BBs, 24 K's, 5.27 ERA How the heck did this guy ever come around with those peripherals. Gomes had three decent seasons from 1998-2000, before losing effectiveness. 10. Derrick Turnbow, RHP (19 years old) Appy League: 24 IP, 16 BB, 7 K's, 7.50 ERA. Wow. Turnbow found his stuff for one good season in Milwaukee, but otherwise he had extreme control issues his entire career. I think Rollins and Wolf were obvious talents at the time. The rest are generally a collection of journeymen who had lengthy careers as reserves. In retrospect, Rollins probably should have been the number one prospect.

With six divisions, a wild card and three rounds of playoffs, it is really almost impossible for a team to buy it's way to a World Championship. The current system ensures a team controls a player for their first six seasons. Given that most players reach the majors at the ages of 23-24. that carries them through most of their prime. MLB success is usually determined via a team's scouting and development systems.

What the hell? There must be some behind the scenes stuff with Burrell that we don't know about. Not only is a far superior player than Ibanez, he's five years younger. The fact that he wasn't even offered arbitration, yet they went out and spent $30 million on Ibanez suggests that there is something fishy going on. I imagine the deal will look like 8, 10 and 12 million. Perhaps they felt that Burrell might cost in the neighborhood of $14-16 million, and they could not stomach the extra cost. This is a fine deal on its face. The problem is that it looks odd in the big picture. Two of the Phillies' best hitters are Utley and Howard, both lefties.* The Phillies have two reserve outfielders who both hit left-handed. They are going to need a righty presence beyond Jayson Werth.

The operative word being immediately available for comment. And the story was posted at 2:36am. I can imagine calling, getting the answering machine, and "PRINT!" It's a tremendous journalistic device.

Fantastic snippet from Joe Posnanski's blog, regarding the Kyle Farnsworth signing.

Yankee hating will never go out of style. If they lose 100 games, I want them to lose 105.

How about Andre vs. Big John Studd?

Do you wonder if 2006-07 was an unsustainable peak? His strikeout rates as a reliever weren't impressive at all until he exploded as a 29 year old.

This one puzzles me. Jaramillo had to go. The Phillies have three real catchers at the moment in Carlos Ruiz, Lou Marson and Chris Coste. One for the MLB starting job, one for the backup job and one as a AAA starter. Jaramillo didn't fit in there, so where does Paulino figure in?

I'm not tremendously high on J.A. Happ. How many good MLB starters were full time AAA starters at the age of 25? And Happ was good in AAA, not dominant. I've seen him live a couple of times, he never impressed me. Check the TSM blog for more thoughts on that. I'll be stunned if Happ is as good as Randy Wolf was from 2000-02. Coste is obviously expendable with Marson coming up and Ruiz possibly sliding into the backup role. I'd support the trade myself. DeRosa would replace Utley in the short term, and be a useful piece in the long term. It also helps that he's a righty hitter, and a UPenn graduate. Good points, as usual. But I think Ruiz will be the starter this season barring unforeseen events. His work in the playoffs will get him a year or two as a starter, imo. His OPS in the playoffs was .737. If the Phillies let that get in the way of a personnel move, they are delusional. I doubt it will matter, it will come down to Spring Training performance.

The Orioles got a good haul for Ramon Hernandez. Ryan Freel plus two decent infield prospects. Not bad for a catcher with a .308 OBP that was only blocking the best prospect in baseball.

He's no star, but there's definite value in a pitcher who never misses a start.

I'm not tremendously high on J.A. Happ. How many good MLB starters were full time AAA starters at the age of 25? And Happ was good in AAA, not dominant. I've seen him live a couple of times, he never impressed me. Check the TSM blog for more thoughts on that. I'll be stunned if Happ is as good as Randy Wolf was from 2000-02. Coste is obviously expendable with Marson coming up and Ruiz possibly sliding into the backup role. I'd support the trade myself. DeRosa would replace Utley in the short term, and be a useful piece in the long term. It also helps that he's a righty hitter, and a UPenn graduate.

I think it's fair to separate their 1987 WM match from the feud that ran in the first half of 1988. And yes, those matches were awful. What I've seen of the '80 series wasn't much better either.

62 saves is hyperbole, but Rodriguez does own a 2.35 career ERA. His career ERA is third among active pitchers with 100+ saves. Five of seven blown saves were two runs. Three of those came in one particularly bad week. The problem though is that Wagner was obviously pitching hurt. From my viewing experience, a normally fine pitcher with a spike in home run rate is a red flag as far as health. You're right about the tied and one run games, Wagner only pitched in ten of them. It makes me wonder about the obsession over a top flight closer in the first place. The real problem for the Mets appeared to be the 6th-8th innings.

SNME is a must buy for me.

By offering arbitration they effectively offered somewhere in the neighborhood of $8-10 million. Varitek declined it. I think a multi-year deal is probably a bigger deal for Varitek than any amount of money. The point for the Red Sox though is that no player is irreplaceable. The Sox turned over a large portion of their 2004 championship team and still won it again in 2007. They can replace the offense easily. Catcher defense is harder to place, but no one's been able to find any evidence whatsoever that game calling skills are measurable. As for other options, Ivan Rodriguez is available on the free agent market. They might go that route.

The trade is a great one for the White Sox. They get a potentially good starter at the price of a guy with one year left on his contract. Given the market, there is a glut of corner outfielders on the market and the Sox are bound to grab one at a good price. Hell, given the money they save on dropping Jermaine Dye, Orlando Cabrera and Nick Swisher, maybe they figure on jumping into the Manny sweepstakes. The White Sox have Chris Getz, Brent Lillibridge, Alexei Ramirez, etc. to try and sort out the middle infield. I think Josh Fields finally gets a crack at the third base job. In any case, they are accumulating good talent and they really haven't surrendered that much to do it.

Gavin Floyd thrived with the Sox. I wouldn't count out Bailey, who obviously needs a change of scenery.

Orosco and Plesac obviously are not Hall of Famers, but they both had remarkable careers. Orosco of course pitched forever. In that classic 1986 NLCS, he took the win in three of the final four games. Plesac was top ten all time in strikeouts per nine. It almost makes you wish the Hall of Very Good had a sub-section for middle relievers and set up men. Here's a fun Jesse Orosco game. http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CI...198607220.shtml

Slasher Flick: Regarding TSM Slasher Flick: Can you announce to the draft folder that my computer broke Slasher Flick: And that I should be skipped until its fixed or whatever There ya go.

I posted my final Phillies prospect list in my blog. A-Rod is playing for the Dominican Republic in the WBC. Let's see if he can beat out Aramis Ramirez for the starting job.