Just As We Thought
Yes, you in the back, calling me a lying turd.
Trying to get the true side of the story out of Phillies Management is like trying to pry information out of a five year old that just shit his pants and swears he doesn’t know how it got there. You never believe them. You can see (or in this case, smell) the lie from a mile away. One of the biggest off season questions for the Phillies and their fans has been the status of third base. We we’re told by David Montgomery immediately after the Phils were swept out of the NLDS that the Phillies needed to ‘upgrade at third base’. To every Phillies fan that has suffered through the lowlifes we’ve put at the hot corner since trading Scott Rolen in 2002, this was music to our ears. Reading over the names that have worn the candy red pinstripes at third base since the departure of Mike Schmidt is almost as depressing as reading over the names of those who died on 9/11. It’s beyond nauseating. Do we need to be reminded about signing David Bell and his genital warts ridden 4yr/ $17 million dollar contract after hitting a phenomenal .261 with the 2002 San Francisco Giants? Does the thought of Wes Helms give you ‘Nam flashbacks? Do you start to hate the world, your country, your children and parents….yourself, when you think of Tomas Perez? It’s not as if they haven’t had their chances to make a slight improvement in recent years, it’s just that they didn’t.
Should they have made Placido Polanco their full time third baseman after trading Rolen away? Yes.
Should they have removed the crack pipe from Ed Wade’s grimy, weasel mouth before trading Polanco instead of cutting your losses on David Bell? Yes.
Was Wes Helms really the best off season option last season? Probably not, although they only signed him for two years.
On average, since 2002 have the Phillies had the worst overall offensive stats at third base in the NL? It’s not even close. (see below, courtesy of philliesflow.com)
Phillies third basemen, 2002-07
Year HR RBI AVG OBP SLG OPS OPS in NL at 3B
2007 10 80 250 315 367 681 16
2006 7 65 254 337 347 684 T-14
2005 12 70 257 318 374 692 13
2004 21 89 297 365 463 828 6
2003 12 76 223 299 333 632 15
2002 21 91 273 354 449 802 3
….yet as of last week, ESPN was reiterating what Gillick has been saying all along in that “Gillick last week flatly denied any interest in Lowell and had indicated that they were going to spend the Phillies’ available money on pitching.” From GIllick’s own mouth, “We’re concentrating on pitching right now… We’re not focusing on any position players at the moment.” Now while he isn’t flat out denying zero interest in position players, he’s attempting to shy away from third base speculation. Umm, can we look at the stats above? We have been beyond shitty at third for way too long here. And no, I don’t care that we led the NL in offense this past year with minimal production at third. We had players step up last year when Utley, Hamels, and Howard went down and NONE of those players who stepped up played at third unless I’m forgetting something. So naturally, we here at City of Pain were skeptical of the Phillies disinterested stance at third. The Red Sox signed Mike Lowell yesterday and then all of a sudden we see the following report this morning:
“According to ESPN’s Buster Olney, the Phillies offered Mike Lowell a four-year, $50 million contract before he agreed to terms with Boston on Monday.
The offer reportedly came Monday and caused the Red Sox to bump their proposal from $36 million to $37.5 million, matching the annual salary the Phillies were willing to pay. If this is true, then the Phillies have been lying to pretty much everyone the last few weeks. They’ve claimed they had little money left to spend and what was left in the budget would be used to upgrade the pitching staff.” (philly.com)
On Sunday night the Phillies made a very good offer to Mike Lowell to come and play third base. And no I don’t care (although I figured) that they were lying to us. They made a great offer and even gave Lowell the fourth year he was allegedly looking for. This wasn’t even an instance where the Phillies were just going half-assed at a trade to make it look like they attempted to do something. This was the real deal. We learned that the Phillies DO have interest in not throwing the Helms/Dobbs combo out there every night, and we learned that they are willing to spend the money to do so. We are now faced with either of the two following scenarios:
The Phillies made their sole effort to acquire a big name at third. The fans now know they tried, they know we won’t blame them, and they know their offer was good enough to get Lowell. They are off the hook.
The Phillies, having not acquired the big name player they desired, have now shown their hand to the fans and to the rest of the teams in baseball. Other teams know we are now willing to do more to get someone, and the fans now expect you to go to Plan B/C/D, etc. Stopping at Lowell is not enough anymore. The Phillies organization didn’t go after Lowell just hoping to get lucky; they went after him to become the best team in the National League hands down. They are going to have to explore more options and find a new target, eat Helms’ smallish contract (about 3 million), and know that if they are successful they have Dobbs as both a backup outfielder and third baseman coming off the bench.
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