Pat Gillick Thoughts
after taking a look at gillick's comments on why he signed ryan franklin, the one word that jumped out at me was "gamer." i think this is an important word (certainly at this stage of undoing the mess that head wade left), because it seems like injecting this team with heart is step one in pat gillick's plan and is a higher priority right now than improving the talent on the team. i don't have a problem with this.
on the way in to the office this morning, i heard that the phils are talking to the orioles about an abreau for tejada swap (ostensibly to fill the hole at third). wow, if gillick can pull that off i'd have to give him a pretty long period of immunity. that would be the perfect move because it eases some of the logjam the phils have in the outfield, while plugging a gaping wound in the infield... not to mention the fact that tejada is a gamer while abreau is the antithesis of gamer.
good luck pat!
on the way in to the office this morning, i heard that the phils are talking to the orioles about an abreau for tejada swap (ostensibly to fill the hole at third). wow, if gillick can pull that off i'd have to give him a pretty long period of immunity. that would be the perfect move because it eases some of the logjam the phils have in the outfield, while plugging a gaping wound in the infield... not to mention the fact that tejada is a gamer while abreau is the antithesis of gamer.
good luck pat!
posted by The Mean Guy at 8:34 AM
3 Comments:
Wow Pete, that is the ultimate glass half full attitude. I know Gillick knows what the hell he is doing. The thing that dawns on me when I listen to Jody Mac is that we don't know shit. All we see is what the media wants us to see. The Phillies organization may have told Gillick that he can't spend anymore money and he just did the best he could. Franklin's stats are brutal. The only good thing that I saw was that he tends to go deep into the game, which for some reason doesn't make sense to me with how high his ERA is. You would figure that he would get yanked earlier.
I actually thought that Gillick is going to use this year as an assessment of "things". Charlie Manuel, the clubhouse, some players like Burrell and Abreu, Ryan Howard and Chase Utley....you figure when Bell and Lieby's contract is up, you can deep six them and have more money to throw at better players. Randy Wolff is also making a ton of dough and I think that this is his final year.
Everyone needs pitching. The whole league. The whole organization knows that as well as the fans. Contrary to what that piece of stool Eskin says, I don't think Brito and Tejada are that bad. As a matter of fact, I like Tejada and would love to see him as a closer. He throws gas. So, again, this year could be an evaluation of things and hope that we have enough staff to win 80-90 games. Gillick probably knows Franklin and if he thinks that he's a gamer, fine.
On another note, if we can move Abreu for Tejada, awesome. That solves the Abreu fan dilemma, replaces Abreu's offense nicely and fixes the third base problem. I think that Baltimore would want more than Bobby, so we'll see. Awesome move if it can be done. Then we would have an all White dud outfield...Burrell, Rowand, Michaels...actually that outfield with Tejada, Rollins, Utley and Howard (and Lieby) looks pretty decent on paper.
Wow Pete, that is the ultimate glass half full attitude. I know Gillick knows what the hell he is doing. The thing that dawns on me when I listen to Jody Mac is that we don't know shit. All we see is what the media wants us to see. The Phillies organization may have told Gillick that he can't spend anymore money and he just did the best he could.
yeah, you may be right about the budget thing. i hope not, and given how much money they were willing to spend on wagner i don't think that's what is driving gillick. mostly i'm reserving judgement on gillick to give him a chance to do his thing.
Although, I sometimes think the Phillies play/have played the game where they know they are going to be outbid and get into the market just to "say they did". It's like they go to the auction and will scream out bids, but know ultimately that they will fold...but have the presence of being in the running. The thing that drives me insane with the Phillies is their reluctance or patience. There are some guys who you need to have on your team and overpay to have them around. For example, I think that Carlos Beltran will actually be a great player in NY. So will Delgado. Billy Wagner, on the other hand, is not one of those guys. I do think he is great, but there was something about him that I really disliked. He was a whiner. He whined about how the fans were crude (I go to Phillies games and I don't think fans are bad at all) and that this was a football town. Yeah. It also can be a good baseball town if you TRY to be competitive. I never, ever thought Wagner was going to stay here. Ever. I think that he used the Phillies as a bargaining chip and no matter what, he was going somewhere else. I think that he hated it in Philly and went to NY just for the money, as most players do. I think it was a shame that Head Wade could not read that and was not able to move him before the deadline to get some players back. Also, I was never this huge fan of the Thome signing. Don't get me wrong, he was a good guy, hit a lot of bombs, and apparently was good in the clubhouse. I liked the signing at first just because it was the first time that I EVER remember the Phillies coming to the table with a ton of money. It is easy to be Monday Morning QB, but they got a one dimensional guy who basically just hit for power. I can't tell you how many games that I went to that Thome hit a hard grounder to the 2nd baseman who was playing short right field at every at bat. Almost every time. I don't think that he was a guy that you over-spend for. Like Mike Hampton. But a solid player who is good on a good team.
That being said, I think that the Phillies are actually doing the right thing this off-season and Gillick gets a free pass until he does something really really bonehead. He inherited a fixable mess. Fixable because they have some players, but not something that can be done overnight. I suspect that he will probably back-off on trading Abreu now. This probably will be the team that goes into Spring Training. I suspect that there probably is a 3 to 4 year plan for fixing this money pit of mediocre players. Bell and Lieby and Wolff have big contracts that expire after this season. These guys can't be moved. Maybe, when Abreu is hot in May, he can be moved then. Or not....I don't like moving his numbers now because he provides some offense and is not a huge strike-out threat. The free agent crop really sucked this off-season and there wasn't a player who I would have even risked over-paying.
So, in conclusion, Gillick gets a pass. I can't honestly see Pat having Manuel being the face of the organization for long...we need pitching and hopefully the staff can hold up for this year and be competitive...next year we will lose some of the money pit players....maybe we will overpay then??? At least we are not in the cellar yet and there is some hope.
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