In the summer of 2005, I was shopping with my dad for things I might need for my dorm in my freshman year of college. One afternoon, we were in Target and found a  dish chair that was big enough to use as an easy-chair, but it folded almost completely flat and was light enough to carry around. We bought it for, I think, $25. Now, in terms of things I needed for college, that was relatively minor. My guitars were a bigger deal, as was my laptop, and my Xbox. Really, I’d say that there were about 15-20 bigger or more expensive things that contributed more to my collegiate experience than that dish chair.

The best $25 I ever spent

However, because the dish chair was useful and easily moved I still use it every day of my life to this day. It’s this kind of spur-of-the-moment, low-cost purchase that could be the difference between another pennant for the Phillies and watching the Revenge of the Mets next year.

You see, the Phillies are going to college, and Chase Utley’s their laptop, Ryan Howard is the microfridge, and Cliff Lee and Jayson Werth are the TV and Xbox. Jimmy Rollins and Shane Victorino are the guitars, becuase they’re noisy and a lot of fun. Ryan Madson and J.A. Happ can be the extra-long bedsheets.

But which scrap-heap free agent is going to be the dish chair? MLBTradeRumors.com (thanks for the link and bump today, btw) published a list of potential non-tendered free agents. These guys are going to be availiable and cheap this  offseason, so instead of making that big trade, why not pick up one of these guys?

Scott Olsen, LHP–I know it’s probably bad juju for the two-time defending NL champions to go after a guy who got non-tendered by the Nationals. Olsen’s a guy I’ve liked for a long time. He’s essentially J.A. Happ with no luck and no control: a tall, fastball-slider lefty who gives up more fly balls than ground balls. Olsen, who will only be 26 on opening day, has essentially had two good years and two abysmal years in the  major leagues, and 2009 was one of the latter. He spent half the year in the minors and the other half giving up 11 home runs in 62 2/3 innings with the Nats, good for a 6.08 ERA and a 0.1 WAR. But remember that part about the no luck. In his two abysmal years, Olsen’s BABIPs were .350 and .348, respectively. Now, Cole Hamels had a BABIP of about that this year and pitched much better, but we’re not talking about Cole Hamels. We just need someone to come and keep the  5th starter’s spot warm until Kyle Drabek comes up either next year or in 2011. Now, Olsen can most likely be had for a minor-league deal, and as Jamie Moyer insurance, I can’t think of a good reason not to sign him.

Maybe playing for a winning team with a great offense in front of him and a great defense behind him will inspire Olsen to recapture the form that allowed him to win 12 games and strike out 166 batters in 180 innings in 2006 for an awful Marlins team. If not, what has it cost us?

Mike Fontenot, INF–I’ve argued in this space before that trading for Fontenot wouldn’t be a half-bad idea, mostly on the basis that he’s not Eric Bruntlett. But the Phillies need a guy who can back up all 3 non-1b infield positions to spell an aging Utley, Rollins, and whichever AL player winds up manning third next season. Where Bruntlett was a mediocre defender and the worst offensive player I’ve ever seen, Fontenot is, well, not. Career OPS of .761 in 968 plate appearances next season for a guy who plays mediocre defense. And while he did hit .235 with a few (but not many) walks and no power last year, he is only one year removed from OPS-ing over .900 in 119 games in relief of Ryan Theriot and Aramis Ramirez, good for a 3-win season. I’d like very much for the Phillies to employ this man next season, particularly if he can be had on the cheap. It’s been…well, since Mariano Duncan since the Phillies had a utility infielder who was worth a crap.

Jusin Miller, RHP–Now, the Phillies need another reliever or six, and I think that while closers and 8th-inning guys are worth shelling out for, the Chad Durbins, Clay Condreys, and Tyler Walkers of the world are more or less interchangeable. I really wanted Bill Bray, the lefty out of Cincinnati, but he’s on the scrap heap for a reason: he’s just not very good. Though it would have been cool to hand off from someone named after something that a donkey does (Bray) to a guy named after something that a car does (Park). The Phillies bullpen could have traced the evolution of transportation. Miller’s another guy who’s been around the block. He even had a brief spell in the Phillies’ farm system in 2007 before landing with the Marlins and, ultimately, the Giants. Miller was awful as an up-and-coming cuy in Toronto, but in the past three seasons, he’s never pitched fewer than 46 2/3 innings and never had an ERA of over 4.24.

What is worrying is that last year, when he posted a 3.18 ERA in 56 2/3 innings in San Francisco, he somehow had a 4.91 FIP and was below replacement level. In fact, in the past 3 years, his FIP has gone from 3.08 in 2007 to 4.91 in 2009, and his K/9 has been cut nearly in half. Since he’s 32, this could be the beginning of a decline, but Bill James projects him to bounce back somewhat, to a 4.42 FIP and 7.74 K/9.

The biggest reason to sign Miller, however, is that he is required by Major League Baseball to wear long sleeves on the mound at all times. The reason: his arms are so tatted-up that the tattoos distract the hitter. Pretty badass, huh?

So keep poking around for that big-name Figgins or Halladay appearance, sportsfans. I’ll be looking at the non-tendered free agents, because one of them might be the best $25 the Phillies ever spent.

So there’s been an outcry for us to have an RSS feed. And here’s an attempt, though I make no promises that it will work. Subscribe if you wish. Or just subscribe or I’ll kill you.

Here it is. God, I hope this works.

EDIT: So apparently we’ve had an RSS feed all along, at thephrontiersman.wordpress.com/feed, or so our friend at The Girl Who Loved Andy Pettitte tells us. (And no, Paul didn’t make any friends in college except chick Yankee fans.) The good news is that I don’t have to update the feed myself, but the bad news is that that feeling of accomplishment I  felt for all of 10 minutes is now gone.

So disregard that link from before, because I sure as hell won’t be updating it manually. Just follow us at the link above.

Also, due to protests from our Twitter followers over the schizophrenic nature of our tweets, Paul and I have had a Twitter divorce. The good news is that because Paul didn’t sign a Twitter prenup, I’ve taken the cheating bastard to the cleaners. Child support, the house, sole custody, the works.

You can still follow Paul’s serious baseball commentary @Phrontiersman, the official blog Twitter, and you can follow my parables, profanity, and irrational screaming (LUNACY!) @atomicruckus.

It was only after I read Kevin McGuire’s piece on his blog about early- or pre-season predictions that I remembered I had made a similar post of my own.

A lot of these were made on no real basis of fact, and there weren’t many predictions of any substance whatsoever, but it’s only fair that I hold myself accountable – whatever value that holds for you, well, that’s not up to me.

• NL East finish: 1) Phillies, 2) Mets, 3) Braves, 4) Marlins, 5) Nationals

In actuality: 1) Phillies, 2) Marlins, 3) Braves, 4) Mets, 5)Nationals. Three out of five ain’t bad, and I figure I might have been closer to getting all five if the Mets hadn’t been stricken by some ridiculous injury bug. The first one is all that matters, though, yeah? Of course.

• Ryan Howard HRs: 52

In actuality: 45. It’s hard to call a 45-HR season a disappointment, and I won’t be doing that. Howard did see a 6.4 percent decreased in HR/FB rate, despite hitting fly balls at a greater clip than he did in 2008. Sometimes, them’s the breaks.

• Ryan Howard Ks: 179

In actuality: 186. Pretty close on this one.

• Chase Utley games played: 143

In actuality: 156. I expected Utley to miss some time with some lingering hip issues, but he barely missed any at all. Now, that brings up a very interesting point: with the hopeful retooling of the Phillies’ bench, Charlie Manuel needs to give his infield some days off once in a while. These guys can’t keep playing 155-plus games and racking up nearly 700 plate appearances every year into their 30s. Especially if they’re coming off hip surgery. It has to change; the infielders are too valuable to be played to death.

• Chase Utley HRs: 22

In actuality: 31. Dude rules. End of story.

• Cole Hamels starts: 29

In actuality: 32. He didn’t hit the DL mid-season like I thought he might, but he was still plagued by a high BABIP and, by proxy, short starts. He started plenty, just not for enough innings, in the end.

• Cole Hamels ERA: 3.47

In actuality: 4.32. I’ve been over this ad nauseum. No need to re-hash.

• Jimmy Rollins errors: 7

In actuality: 6. This was one of those predictions that was based purely on gut. A lucky guess, nothing more.

• Lou Marson season debut: May 22

In actuality: April 16. Again, what basis? None. Now Marson is in Cleveland, and the karmic load is mine to bear. Or something.

• Jayson Werth HRs: 33

In actuality: 36. Hmm, somebody knew this guy was going to have a good year.

• Phils record vs. Mets: 9-7

In actuality: 12-6. I must have missed a series when I looked at the schedule. These things happen. Certainly doesn’t make it any less confusing, but hey, here we are.

• Phillies win NL East by: 4 games

In actuality: 6 games. The Phils were behind by as much as 5.5 games on April 19, and yet managed to be in first place a combined 141 days, all told. Not only did they turn things around quickly, they held on, even though September got a bit tenuous at times.

• Team runs scored: 836

In actuality: 820. Ah, if only a few more of those solo homers had a couple men on base.

• Team runs allowed: 774

In actuality: 709. This part actually impresses me most. Not my prediction, but the fact that the Phillies had such improved pitching. They’d been able to hit with the best of teams for years, but pitching had left something to be desired. Now, we have Cliff Lee, have wispy talks about pursuing Roy Halladay, have a young, quality-potential starter in Kyle Drabek, and a great bullpen. All right, the last one is more of a wish, sure. But that’s what this offseason is for.

• J.A. Happ starts: 22

In actuality: 23. It would only be a matter of time before he took over Park’s spot in the rotation. Plenty of people knew this. The only reason Park was given the spot – aside from having a pretty good spring, slightly better than J.A.’s – was that he signed with the Phillies with the promise of starting. I certainly didn’t expect Park to be as bad as he was in the rotation so fast, nor did I expect him to become such a dependable reliever. Both of those things made it easier for Happ to transition into and stay in the rotation, though, and that worked out for the benefit of the Phillies.

So that’s that. Nothing special or earth-moving here. Go read Mike’s post.

UPDATE: I’ve decided to reward you for actually reading this, if you did. Here:

Ok, this is about what to watch during the baseball off-season, but we’ve got a few housekeeping points before we start.

First: the final standings for our Playoff Pool:

10. My Mom (1 for 7)
9. Michael (3 for 7)
8. Tim (3 for 7, 1 correct World Series team)
7. Kate, the long-suffering Girlfriend (4 for 7, 1 WS team)
6. Jeff (4 for 7, 1 WS team, correct length of WS)
5. Ben (4 for 7, 1 WS team, correct NLCS MVP)
4. My Dad (4 for 7, Correct WS winner)
3. Paul (4 for 7, correct WS winner and length of WS)
2. Blockie, Friend of the Blog and Sometime Fantasy Sports Antagonist (5 for 7)

and our winner, because even though I took her picks and not Paul, I’m still going to blame him for rigging the contest in favor of his woman-friend, with a perfect postseason….after the jump….

1. Ashley (7 for 7, correct WS winner)

There was talk, when we thought Blockie, Friend of the Blog and Sometime Fantasy Sports Antagonist, was going to win it, of granting a guest post to the winner. Now that a Yankee fan won, we’ll have to talk it over. Nevertheless, congratulations to Ashley, and I swear I’ll do better next time.

Next, this talk about Cole Hamels replacing Kyle Drabek in a potential Halladay trade needs to stop. I’m as big a Halladay fan as anyone. The angriest I ever got during last season was when I heard we traded for Cliff Lee instead, and that seemed to work out pretty well. I have never eaten so much crow in my life.

But to give up Hamels for Halladay is lunacy. LUNACY. Not only is Hamels just entering his prime and Halladay about to leave it, which is LUNACY, Halladay is more expensive than Hamels. Hamels  has just had a bad (read: extremely unlucky) season, which means his value will never be lower than it is now. It would be LUNACY to trade him. Trading for Halladay now gets you only a year of the sinkerballing Mormon’s services, instead of a year and a half, plus an extra playoff run. If Drabek, Gose, Brown, and Happ was too much to give up last July, then Hamels, Gose, Brown, and Happ is FAR TOO MUCH to give up now. Giving up more to get less? LUNACY. What’s more, without Lee, it was more necessary to get that big-name No. 1 starter. Now that we’ve got Lee (and I see Hamels bouncing back next season), there’s no need to get Halladay, much as I’d like to have him.

Listen, I think that a large part of Hamels’ drop-off last year was bad luck. His BABIP jumped up by about Eric Bruntlett’s batting average between 2008 and 2009, which will screw with any pitcher. But not only was Hamels unlucky, but he was, for the first time in his life, under a national microscope. More than that, he’s 25, had a pregnant wife all season, became a father during the first round of the playoffs, dealing with serious season-long adversity for the first time in his charmed career. I think that in addition to being unlucky, his mind was ANYWHERE else but in the ballpark, and rightly so.

What makes me think that Hamels’ travails were due to something else in addition to a high BABIP is Game 3 of the World Series. Pitching with a 3-0 lead, Hamels is mowing down batters. He looked like Lefty Grove through three and change, but he gives up a cheap homer to A-Rod. Now, 2008 Cole Hamels was good for at least one cheap homer a game, but it was usually a solo shot or with only one guy on, and he’d get the ball back, shake it off, and get on with his life. This year’s version of Cole Hamels went to pieces when things started to go bad. I think  he knows this, and will  come back next year with renewed focus and something to prove. To run him out of town would be LUNACY, but I worry, because Philadelphia sports fans are famous for being lunatics.

So, we’ve got a pitcher primed for a bounceback year at age 26 versus a 33-year-old. And the younger pitcher is under team control for 2 more years, with the older pitcher only under team control for 1 for more money. To trade Hamels for Halladay straight-up would be LUNACY! To throw in 3 of your best prospects with him would be  LUNACY beyond comprehension. LUNACY I tell you!

Ok. Now that I’ve got that out of my system, I’ve found a void in my sports-following life. Now, the baseball off-season is realtively interesting, with the NFL Draft being the only comparable offseason entertainment. But still, it doesn’t compare to being able  to watch your team every night. So what should you follow instead?

Well, here are my two choices:

International Soccer

• First, like baseball, it’s very globalized and cerebral. It rewards smart managers and smart players.
• Also, like baseball and unlike any other team sport in the world except college football, it has existed in its current from for 100 years. The result is a rivalry culture unlike anything you’ve ever seen. If you think Red Sox-Yankees or Michigan-Ohio State are bad (and they are, in a sort of naive, American Exceptionalist kind of way), Google “Old Firm Derby.” Celtic-Rangers, the rivalry between the two biggest clubs in Glasgow, Scotland, has more in common with the Yugoslavian Civil War than it does Red Sox-Yankees.
• It takes forever to develop, so you have a chance to think about what comes next, unlike in ice hockey and basketball, where everything goes by in the blink of an eye.
• It’s low-scoring, like baseball, so each score takes on added significance.
• Something I never thought about until Bill Simmons brought it up recently: it only takes 2 hours for a game. You know what kind of a time investment you’re going to make, unlike baseball, or even the three major American timed sports, where you could be around forever.
• It’s commented on and announced by people with British accents. I’ve found that a snarky and clever Briton’s voice makes just about anything more interesting. Plus, European announcers seem to have much more felicity in their prose and are much more prone to hyperbole and metaphor than are their American counterparts. Football announcers are more likely to be total meatheads, using nothing but shouting and normative language to make their points. It’s tiresome.
• This is the biggest reason: the World Cup is next summer. Every four years, American sports fans pretend to fall in love with soccer for three weeks and start copycatting everything that John Harkes says on ESPN. Well, if you start watching now, you can say things like “Yoann Gourcuff is the most underrated player in the world” or “Maradona’s refusal to play Gonzalo Higuain is going to cost Argentina a shot at the title” and people will think you know your stuff. You just need to learn half a dozen players’ names (other than David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, and Landon Donovan) and you’ll look like an expert. Also, this World Cup, God willing, will not subject us to Cristiano Ronadlo and his combination of being annoyingly homoerotic as well as head and shoulders above any other player in the world. We’ll know the World cup field in toto by this time a week from now, so it’s time to start on your homework.
• You get to say names like “Yoann Gourcuff” and “Gonzalo Higuain.” My personal favorite is Chelsea and Russia midfielder “Yuri Zhirkov.”
• Once the World Cup rolls around, the best international rivalries (USA-Mexico, England-Argentina, Germany-Netherlands) aren’t precipitated by anything as petty as the Babe Ruth trade. They trace their roots back to war.
• Paul has decided to start following soccer. Unfortunately, his recently selected club (Sunderland AFC of Newcastle, England) is going to get its teeth kicked in in its next match (home against my Arsenal team).

College Football

• The history argument, as iterated in the soccer section.
• Cheerleaders.
• The average NCAA football game is about half an hour longer than an NFL game (don’t quote me on that, it’s not an exact figure), which means you can fit about 2 1/2 more beers into a game in college than in the pros.
• It’s not as soulless and predictable as the NFL. Teams have personalities: the decidedly un-Christian TCU, the insufferably arrogant Florida, the lunch-pail Virginia Tech. NFL teams look like clones in comparison.
• You get to bitch about the BCS, which is always fun.
• The option. I love the option.
• There are only two NFL games on at any given time. Without a satellite dish, you get at most 6 NFL games a week, 3 or 4 of which will either suck or involve the Steelers. College football, with only basic cable, gets you aobut 10 games on Saturday alone, with other games littered around during the week. For a weekly game, it sure is on TV a lot. And that’s not even counting the games you get on ESPN360.com streaming live for free. You ought to be able to find at least one  decent game.

So that’s just my own bias. I’m sort of tired of the NFL and its predictability. While I love playoff NBA and college basketball, it just seems pointless until March. And I’ve been away from the NHL so long, what with the lockout and my being in the South without Versus for four years, that I still turn on Flyers games and wonder when Chris Pronger (possibly my favorite hockey player ever) left the Hartford Whalers. But I know I need to watch something until pitchers and catchers report in February, and when in need of a fix, soccer and college football, in addition to being the two sports I covered in college, fit me best. I hope you’ll give them a shot.

Oh, hey, check it out! Those pesky Roy Halladay rumors have kick-started again, just as expected. Though the Toronto ace didn’t make his way to Philadelphia in lieu of Cliff Lee back in July, it sure hasn’t stopped the rumor mill from churning once more.

It’s not surprising. The Phillies still have J.A. Happ, Domonic Brown, Michael Taylor, Kyle Drabek, and Anthony Gose, all of whom were rumored to be part of one proposal or another drawn up by Joe Fan. It seems we need to add another name to that list, though, and this name is the most preposterous trade chip of all.

Cole Hamels.

Really, we have a reputation in Philadelphia for having incredibly short fuses – and fuses with amnesia, at that – but this might just be going one step too far. Look, Roy Halladay is an excellent pitcher – an excellent pitcher – and one I’d love to have on my team. I think adding Roy Halladay to this pitching staff would be a dream come true. Literally. But to do this at the expense of Cole Hamels is absolutely absurd.

This is where ignorance of statistics really hurts. All a fair number of fans seem to look at with Hamels are his wins and ERA (48 and 3.67 in 116 starts to date) and somehow classify him now as something of a bust. Neither of those numbers are particularly impressive, no, but they don’t tell the whole story. I honestly feel like a broken record, but now that sites with more national exposure, like Baseball Prospectus, have published treatise on this very issue, more people seem to be taking notice and paying attention to the details between the lines (the linked article is fully viewable only by subscribers, but the relevant stats show before the jump).

Boiled down to simplicity, here’s what we have between 2008 and 2009 for Hamels:

• HR allowed per nine innings stayed the same at 1.1 (it actually dropped .06)
• Strikeouts per nine stayed the same at 7.8
• Walks per nine decreased slightly (basically, stayed the same) from 2.1 to 2.0
• Strikeout to walk ratio increased from 3.70 to 3.91

His peripherals are exactly the same – if not better – than they were in 2008, except for two numbers: hits allowed per nine and BABIP.

• Hits allowed per nine increased from 7.6 to 9.6
• BABIP increased from .262 to .321

Those are two massive jumps. How does that happen? More importantly, how does that happen when every other peripheral stat indicates that Hamels was the exact same pitcher from a year ago? You could cite the defense, for one. As good as the Phillies are as a defensive unit night in and night out, they just couldn’t turn as many balls in play into outs for Hamels in 2009 as they had in 2008. Look here. You can see that, in 2008, the defense behind Hamels did a great job of turning balls in play into outs (an efficiency rating of .741), but were considerably less effective in 2009 (a .683 rating). A drop of .058 is hefty.

By the way, the defintion of DER is as follows:

Defense Efficiency Ratio. The percent of times a batted ball is turned into an out by the teams’ fielders, not including home runs. The exact formula we use is (BFP-H-K-BB-HBP-Errors)/(BFP-HR-K-BB-HBP). This is similar to BABIP, but from the defensive team’s perspective. Please note that errors include only errors on batted balls.

Great. Super. Even with that out of the way, you’re probably still dubious. There has to be an explanation for the defense missing balls more in 2009, right? Hamels is probably giving up a whole lot more line drives, making the balls harder to field.

Well, actually, you’d be reasonable to assume that; you’d just be wrong. Hamels’s line drive percent fell a whole percentage point, from 21.8 percent in ‘08 to 20.8 percent in ‘09. He also induced more ground balls in 2009, and a good deal more infield fly balls.

Combine all of this, and you’d figure that Hamels’s ERA should have been closer to his 2008 figure of 3.09, and you’d be right. His xFIP for 2009 was 3.75: exactly 0.03 points lower than his xFIP for 2008. That stat, xFIP, is what a pitcher’s ERA “should” be, given his peripheral stats and normalizing his home runs allowed.

All of that is what’s important, not the ERA. A pitcher’s ERA is far too dependent on things not in the pitcher’s control (i.e., defense) to be the end-all statistic for performance. When every single other stat – save the lone stat that hinges almost exclusively on luck, BABIP – stays the same or improves from a solid year, you have nothing to worry about. This hand-wringing is for naught, and we as Philadelphians have every right to consider ourselves robbed if Hamels is dealt.

So, what kind of pitcher is the “real” Cole Hamels? The answer lies somewhere in between 2008 and 2009 in terms of ERA, but there’s still room for improvement. The kid’s only 25, after all. If you honestly, genuinely, want to trade a 25-year-old left-hander with those kinds of numbers and three more years of team control – he will have a fourth arbitration year in 2012, after his current contract expires – for a 32-year-old right-hander with one year remaining and no assurances of retention past next season, you’re nuts. You’re crazy. You’re jerking your knees and thinking that trading a cornerstone player for a one-year fix is worth it in the long haul.

The pure truth: it isn’t. One year of Roy Halladay is not wroth sacrificing three years of Cole Hamels. Cole has proven himself to be an effective pitcher. Even this year, he was an effective pitcher that didn’t get a whole lot of good breaks. Prospects are a different matter; you risk trading them because they’re generally unproven at the Major League level. Hamels, though, is not a prospect. He is a proven commodity, signed affordably and under control through the 2012 season.

I want to win again as much as the next guy, but this is not the right way to go. Think twice, look at the numbers and realize just what kind of pitcher Hamels is: one you don’t dream of trading. That’s just the way it ought to be.

Follow the Phrontiersmen on Twitter, @Phrontiersman and @atomicruckus

Ordinarily I take credit for anything clever that I’ve heard and later repeat, but this one’s incredibly racist, so I’ll blame it on Blockie, Friend of the Blog and Sometime Fantasy Sports antagonist. I’m not 100 percent positive he said it, but I know it was one of my 4 friends and it wasn’t me or Paul.

With the neck-beard, Pedro Feliz sort of looks like he stepped out of Planet of the Apes. This is racist because he’s not white, though I swear it’s only meant to say that he’s got a beard, big ears, and a round face, not that he’s somehow less-evolved than the rest of us. I’m sure he walks as upright and uses simple tools as well as any one of his less-hairy teammates. I will say that his approach at the plate could stand another Ice Age’s worth of fine-tuning.

Which is precisely why the Phillies have declined a $5 million team option on their Simian infielder.

This clears room for the equally indisciplined but measurably better (and underrated) Adrian Beltre to come here for 2 years or so. Beltre is an upgrade over Feliz pretty much everywhere. I’d love to have him as a right-handed power bat (which would almost-perfectly balance out the Phillies’ power hitters from a platoon advantage standpoint), a defensive player, and the fact that I think the number 48 would look good on a Phillies uniform.

Now, on to something that’s going to piss some of you off. Here are two other offseason acquisitions I’d really like to make.

The first is Ben Sheets. I know, his elbow is made of spaghetti, the Phillies aren’t exactly desparate for starting pitching, and even in the best-case scenario he’s probably only going to be the Phillies’ third-best starting pitcher. I know he’s probably headed to Texas and a reunion with his beloved pitching coach Mike Maddux.

But the Phillies have had great success recently with low-risk, high-upside deals in the past 2 or 3 years. Jamie Moyer, Pedro Martinez, Greg Dobbs, Matt Stairs, J.C. Romero, Scott Eyre. He’ll probably command an incentive-laden minor league deal and I think he’s worth that kind of risk. I think if his elbow hadn’t abruptly given out at the end of 2008 and he pitches in that first round against the Phillies, we don’t make it out of the first round. I think that kind of power pitcher can’t be overlooked, particularly when you can pick him up off the scrap heap for $1.75 plus tax.

The other one is a little bit of a stretch. Aroldis Chapman is the latest in a line of Cuban two-sport athletes–combination power pitchers and world-class open-water sailors.

The 21-year-old lefty touched triple digits at the World Baseball Classic with average to above-average breaking stuff. Scouts say he’s the best defector to come across the pond since Jose Contreras, which might sound like damning with faint praise until you remember that Contreras was actually quite a good major league pitcher for a few years.

Now I’m aware that these highly-hyped imports, both Japanese and Cuban, tend to be a mixed bag. There are those who lived up to the hype (Nomo, the Hernandez Brothers), those who didn’t but still turned out to be effective major league starters (Contreras, Daisuke Matsuzaka), moderate disappointments (Rolando Arrojo) and those who were Oil Rig Fire flameouts  (Hideki Irabu, Ariel Prieto).

Odds are, Chapman will command the kind of money offered to Contreras earlier this decade (4 years, $30+ million), if not more, which is a somewhat bigger risk. Upsides, he could turn into the Tonto to Cole Hamels’ Lone Ranger after the Mass Exodus of November 2011. Downside is that if he’s actually 21, I’d, well, let’s just say I’d be very surprised if he actually is as young as he says he is. Another downside is that he’s got a reputation for being a little petulant and hotheaded. Well, that’s not surprising at all. He’s “21.” The two best homegrown starters the Phillies have produced since the Korean War are Cole Hamels and Brett Myers, and at 25 and 29, respectively, they’re both still a little petulant and hotheaded. Ok, Randy Wolf might have been a little better than Myers, and he’s cool as a cucumber.

Also, if between Robin Roberts and Cole Hamels the best pitchers your farm system can cough up are Brett Myers and Randy Wolf…well, if that’s not a damning indictment of a team’s scouting department, I don’t know what is.

The point is, after two straight pennants and nine straight winning seasons, with their first set of marketable stars since 1983 and a relatively-new ballpark, the Phillies are priniting money. Printing money. The way you get that big-team mentality that separates great teams like the Yankees, Dodgers, and Red Sox from bad teams in big markets (Detroit and San Diego) is by taking big-money risks like this one. I say we at least bid, and bid big, on Chapman. If the Yankees get him for $60 million so be it. But if he can be had for $35  million, we may one day regret not at least asking.

Though I am the guy who practically jumped off a bridge when the Phillies traded for Cliff Lee instead of Roy Halladay, so you might want to take any of my pitching advice with a grain of salt.

I think the Phillies should be a big player in the Winter Meetings. You’ll remember that the great sustained winning teams of recent years (Atlanta 1991-2005, Yankees 1995-present, Red Sox, 2003-present) have been able to continue to win division titles and pennants with a continual player turnover. Hitching the wagon to the same 6 guys works for 2 or 3 years, but you do eventually need to trade in your used Damon for a late-model Ellsbury from time to time, or when the lease is up on your V6 Soriano, see if you can get a Cano to replace him. Those little deals, trading like-for-like, gradually getting younger and better, is how those teams put together sustained runs of success, and it’s the difference between a 4-year run of division titles and becoming a perennial World Series contender.

With that said, no major league Phillie, apart from Hamels, Lee, and Utley should be completely untouchable this offseason, and tires ought to be kicked on anyone who might make the team younger and/or better, if only to establish what Joakim Soria might cost, or even Ryan Zimmerman. It can’t hurt to ask.

Ruben Amaro should go into these winter meetings with a price in his mind on every player under contract, and if he can sell Shane Victorino or Jayson Werth now at peak value in the interest of continuing to contend in 2012, I say do it.

I’m sorry I kept my head low in the three days since the Phillies finally gave up the ghost, but I felt like it would be safer for everyone if I did. That and I was too embarrassed to admit that I was on the verge of tears for most of Thursday morning. Oh, wait…

Anyway, this calls for a completely emotional, visceral post. In a longstanding Phrontiersman tradition, a stretched and tortured metaphor for Phillies fandom after the jump. For your listening pleasure while you read:

I don’t remember if I’ve told this story in this forum before, but I started following the Phillies on Aug. 30, 1993. I was six years old and six months from starting my first season of organized baseball. I followed my dad downstairs to the television one afternoon to watch the Phillies lose 10-6 to the Chicago Cubs. I was hooked immediately, and by the time Joe Carter had run his course, I had experienced the tremendous disappointment that comes with being a diehard Phillies fan.

For the next 14 years, that was as good as it got. A series of last-place finishes and 90-loss seasons followed by being in third place, 5 games out at the trade deadline, then failing to make the right deal (or any deal at all) and watching the Braves win the division year after blessed year while we finished a game out of the wild card.

It was a long period of very few ups and a lot of disappointments. Tyler Green. Mike Grace. Danny Tartabull. Andy Ashby. Watching Curt Schilling, Darren Daulton, Scott Rolen, and Terry Francona leave to win world titles elsewhere.

Somewhere in the fall of 2005, after twelve years of Phillies fandom, somewhere between Ryan Howard’s major league debut and when the Astros won on the final day of the season to avoid a one-game playoff, I was introduced to the other great love of my life.

There was a girl who lived a floor above me in my freshman dorm. I remember she wore a lot of band t-shirts and brightly colored Chuck Taylors. She was sort of a rebel without a cause, having just escaped an upper-class Atlanta-area private school upbringing for the orgy of culture and freedom that is any major state university.

She’s the only person I’ve ever met who self-identifies as a Bob Marley fan and doesn’t smoke pot. When I got to college, I dove right into the social life of my dorm, knocking on doors, helping to carry moving boxes, borrowing and lending and eating dinner with people. It quickly became clear to me that this 80s-punk wannabe was at the social center of the freshman honors class. She was the one who organized parties and outings and trips to the dining hall, so I made sure to befriend her. We bonded over our shared love of pop music and late-night jaunts to our local sandwich shop and were able to avoid topics like politics and religion (she, having grown up with thoughtless and militant Christian conservatives, had rebelled by renouncing religion and voting Democrat; I, having grown up around thoughtless and militant secular liberals, went to church regularly and voted Republican).

So it was pretty natural that when my first college relationship ended, this girl was the first person I talked to, and, through a confluence of events over the next four months, she evolved into Kate, the Long-Suffering Girlfriend.

And it’s been great, over the past 4 years. This isn’t to say that we haven’t had our rough spots. I mean, we did break up twice and get back together, and there were rough spots that resulted from her being hormonal and my being immature. Rough spots bad enough that resulted in me busting my face open to the point that when people asked why my nose was crooked and my forehead was swollen, I told them that the first rule was I’m not allowed to talk about it. Rough spots bad enough that I almost drank myself out of school at one point in 2008.

But since then, it’s been smooth sailing. Just a general feeling of contentment, comfort, and security. I’m not an expert romantic by any stretch of the imagination, more of an impulsive codependent, but I always got the impression that this was what a long-term relationship ought to be like. Not the exciting-but-hopeless battle for legitimacy that I had thought it should be (I read too many adventure books as a child), but something that you can count on.

So while there are still moments of excitement (picking her up from the airport after not having seen her for 6 weeks, being able to take her to meet the extended family, playing a show and seeing her standing up by the stage), it’s not as perilous as it might be.

In the fall of 2007, during the runup to the Phillies first playoff appearance since 1993, I was watching a night game on ESPN when Kate, the Long-Suffering Girlfriend, sat down next to me on the sofa and said (as she often does when she wants my attention and I’m engrossed in something she finds boring), “I’m prettier than baseball.”

I responded by saying, “Kate [the Long-Suffering Girlfriend], I’ve loved the Phillies long before I loved you, and I’ll love them long after you’re gone.”

That might have been an overstatement, but as all-consuming and devoted as my love for Kate, the Long-Suffering Girlfriend, is, my love for the Phillies, having been rooted initially in childlike wonder and innocence, rather than in teenaged hormonal rushes, is just as deep. Which some of you probably think is sad. I don’t care.

The difference is in how each of them makes me feel. My relationship with Kate, the Long-Suffering Girlfriend, is one of great comfort, one that makes my life appreciably easier most of the time, because (much to my father’s delight) she actually thinks about her life in longer terms than what she’ll be doing 30 minutes from now, which is more than I can say for myself. The highs are good and often. The lows, while precipitous, are few and far between.

With the Phillies, however, I’ve really only had four moments of sheer euphoria. In 2007, just after my now-infamous conversation with Kate, the Long-Suffering Girlfriend, when the Marlins beat the Mets on the last day of the season to hand the Phillies the division title. Minutes later, we had the famous Brett Myers glove toss. Called Paul, screamed incoherently for about 10 minutes.

A little over a year later, I was in The Daily Gamecock newsroom overseeing production and watching the NLCS. When Victorino and Stairs hit their home runs, I was alone in the room and started screaming so loud that everyone came back in because they thought I had broken my leg. Some days later, I went absolutely bonkers when the Phillies finished off the Dodgers.

Then, of course, the 2008 World Series. When the delayed Game 5 ended, I ran around and bounced off the walls for another few minutes.

But apart from that, it’s been a combination of the constant hot-lead-in-the-stomach kind of uneasiness and moments like this: when the Phillies finally gave up the ghost to the Rockies in the NLDS in 2007, I threw the television remote across the room and screamed, “That’s what I get for believing.” My sports-hating roommates saw and I never lived it down.

The two things in the world that I can say I truly love really show the two sides of the emotionally attached coin: first, all of the good things, the security, the laughter, the thing you look forward to. The other is the Ike Turner of lovers, all darkness, despair, fear, uncertainty, rock-bottom depression, and just enough moments of senseless ecstasy that keep you coming back even though you have to keep explaining to your friends and co-workers that you just fell down the stairs or ran into a door.

I feel like being a Phillies fan really makes me understand battered-wife syndrome. I’m only fortunate to have someone else to remind me why I get up in the morning.

One year ago, things were a little different.

I remember October 31 pretty vividly. I had come back to the Philadelphia area from 150 or so miles away for the very thing Yankees fans are enjoying and watching in the Bronx right now: a parade. Sure, I had seen other parades in my lifetime. I had been to see the Mummers once, I think. I saw my fair share of fire engine and high school cheerleading squad combination parades in small towns. But this one was something else altogether.

Granted, anything that features a million-and-change people will surely pale anything that comes out of a town with one main street, but the very aura of the event was something spectacular. The line to enter the PATCO station wrapped outside and around the sidewalk. Parking spots were overflown with cars. Everyone was talking to everybody else. Then, if you were lucky enough to squeeze on a train headed over the river, more than a few stations were passed by as overloaded rail cars rumbled across the bridge and into the heart of madness.

And it was our madness. We bred the insanity over the course of the postseason under it was ready to romp around Broad Street, and boy, did we ever let it have free reign over the city.

Now, a year and change later, we’re on the Tampa Bay side of things. We’ve just been defeated, and now head into the offseason with some questioning, some doubt, but a whole lot of optimism to balance it out. Herein lies the Offseason Plan for the 2010 Phillies to get back to the World Series and bring the party back to Philadelphia next fall.

• Exercise Cliff Lee’s 2010 option (this is already done)

What, you thought they should decline an $8M team option on a guy who pitched as well for the Phillies as even the most extreme optimist could have expected (though not without a few hitches)? Didn’t think so.

• Decline Pedro Feliz’s 2010 option (this is already done)

The Phillies have until Monday, Nov. 9 to make a decision on this, one way or another. Feliz has proven himself to be a more-than-adequate defender, but numbers show that not only was he less effective defensively during his tenure in Philadelphia than in San Francisco, but he actually seems to be declining (and hard). Unfortunately, he’s also fallen just short of Type B free agent status, and so his departure will net the Phillies no compensatory draft picks. Just as well: offering him arbitration likely would have netted him more than $5M, anyway, were he to accept. There are a couple of solid third base options in the free agent market at the right time – including one that’s a leaps-and-bounds superior fielder – to make declining this option plenty reasonable.

• Non-tender Eric Bruntlett, Tyler Walker and Clay Condrey

Jack Taschner has already been given his walking papers after being outrighted to AAA Lehigh Valley, so that removes one sure-thing move from this bullet point. Bruntlett, as has been well-documented throughout the season, gave little more to the 2009 Phillies than an unassisted triple play. Heck, even that required more luck than skill. His OPS+ this season was 21. He had 64 hits in his two years here and recorded 271 outs. For comparative purposes, Kansas City’s Tony Pena, Jr. had 43 hits and 243 outs in 41 more ABs over that same span. Eric Bruntlett made 38 more outs in 41 fewer ABs than, arguably, the worst position player in baseball over the 2008-09 time frame. He goes.

Something about Walker screams “horrid regression.” I’d be terribly dubious about using him in any high-leverage situation.

Condrey, for all of his valuable mop-up ability (I’m only being half-snarky, here. He actually started out rather well this year before getting hurt), really doesn’t fit into future plans here in Philadelphia. The ‘pen needs an overhauling, and it can start with offing a little dead weight.

• Let Brett Myers, Matt Stairs, Pedro Martinez, Paul Bako and Miguel Cairo walk without new deals

Brett Myers just doesn't fit into this particular future with the Phillies

There a couple of interesting cases in this motley crew. Myers, for all the time he’s spent at the Major League level, is still only 29, but few people have any idea what to make of the man. He trudged through the early part of his career as an average starter (4.34 ERA, an ERA+ of exactly 100 from his rookie season in 2001 through 2006), then overthrew a pitch in Florida and completely rewrote his script. He was turned into a reliever upon his return, and was acceptable in the role. He returned to starting in 2008, average once more (96 ERA+), and then got hurt and relieved again in 2009. All of this happened as he made $5M, $8.5M and $12M in those three successive years. His production wasn’t worth it by the end of his deal, especially if his destiny now lies in the bullpen. If he can accept a short deal to be a reliever for, say, two years and eight-to-ten million dollars total, consider it. Even then, I think it’s an overpayment. So I let Myers go to greener pastures.

Stairs actually had a nice OBP to go with a bad batting average, but his effective days are gone. Pedro had a great run and was entertaining as all get-out, but he has extreme durability issues and almost certainly will not be able to pitch more than half a season in 2010. Bako and Cairo were minor league deals that turned into some playing time, but neither was incredibly impressive, and not worth keeping around for anything more than another minor league deal. We can find guys to fit that bill anywhere who could be more productive. They go.

As I was writing this, Myers was told he will not return in 2010.

• Sign Shane Victorino to a two-year/$11.5 million contract

The Soaring Pacific Islander made a reasonable $3.125M this year after avoiding arbitration, and will stand to see a raise in this, his second such offseason. It would be wise of the Phillies to buy out his last two arbitration years, and a figure around $11.5M seems reasonable for his level of production and defense. I would not, however, go beyond two years. With the crop of outfielders waiting in the wings – specifically, as it applies to centerfield, Anthony Gose – it would be unwise to burden the payroll with commitments to players who will be aging as a younger core is ready to emerge. He needs to have a little more face time with Davey Lopes, though, as a player with his speed should be able to steal bases more efficiently. We can agree that Shane is faster than Chase Utley, so how is Utley able to steal 23 bases without being caught once while Victorino only steals at a 75 percent clip (25-for-33)? Got to work on that.

• Sign Joe Blanton to a one-year/$6.75 million contract

Buy out his last arbitration year. Blanton had a fine second half, but found himself bounced around the postseason pitching staff. He’s certainly not going to turn into an ace-type guy who will toss a sub-three ERA for an entire season or even strike out 200 batters. No, Blanton’s thing is to try and stay low in the zone to get weak contact outs and strike out just enough guys to not run your defense ragged chasing down balls. He’ll be fine for another season; beyond that, I’m not willing to commit to a pitcher of his type.

• Re-sign Chan Ho Park to a one-year/$3.25 million contract

Park was, for all intents and purposes, one of the team’s two best relievers once he moved to the bullpen. He wanted to start prior to 2009, though, and one wonders if he’ll accept a full-time ‘pen role back here in Philly or pursue a starting job somewhere else, should some team offer him one. If he is fine with being a reliever, bring him back. Park was one of the bright spots in an otherwise dark bullpen, and his stuff looked excellent late into the year.

• Re-sign Scott Eyre to a one-year/$2.5 million contract

The man is a lefty killer. If he decides he doesn’t want to retire after all, he has a spot in my bullpen. If Romero can come back healthy, I doubt the two of them will alow more than 25 hits to left-handed batters all season. Walks, well, that’s another issue for Romero, but Eyre’s effectiveness has been proven over his time here.

• Sign Chad Durbin to a one-year/$1.8 million contract

He shows flashes of stellar stuff, but needs to get command issues in order. Still, I’ll take his numbers as a righty insurance option in a weak class of free agent relievers, more so than I would Condrey’s.

• Sign Carlos Ruiz to a two-year/$6 million contract

His emergence as a bottom-of-the-order bat not to be completely discarded has been doubly important after the departure of Lou Marson. The next-closest catcher to the Majors is now Travis D’Arnaud, and he took a step back in 2009 while not even reaching AAA. Ruiz’s first arbitration year is this year, and this deal would leave one more year of team control after its expiration. It pays Ruiz while still leaving the Phils with some flexibility both financially and with eyes toward the future.

• Release Jamie Moyer

His injury kills whatever trade value he may have had this winter. The team needs to move in another direction, and though what Moyer brought to the table for three-plus seasons was undeniable, he is no longer an effective pitcher. Hopefully, he can be retained as a coach if he can’t find work elsewhere on the mound.

• Promote John Mayberry, Jr. to the ML level.

Pair JM, Jr. with Francisco, and your outfield bench is set.

All right, you’ve made it nearly 1,500 words so far. Take a quick break, and we’ll meet with you after the jump.

Hi! Glad you’re still around. Assuming all of the moves above take place, here’s where the 25-man roster stands for the Phillies:

SP1: Cliff Lee
SP2: Cole Hamels
SP3: Joe Blanton
SP4: J.A. Happ
SP5: ?

RP1: Brad Lidge
RP2: Ryan Madson
RP3: Chan Ho Park
RP4: Scott Eyre
RP5: J.C. Romero
RP6: Chad Durbin
RP7: ?

C: Carlos Ruiz
1B: Ryan Howard
2B: Chase Utley
SS: Jimmy Rollins
3B: ?
LF: Raul Ibanez
CF: Shane Victorino
RF: Jayson Werth

B1: Ben Francisco
B2: Greg Dobbs
B3: ?
B4: ?
B5: ?

Let’s fill those last six spots.

• Starting Pitcher 5: Kyle Kendrick/Drew Carpenter/Kyle Drabek

It’s not glamorous, but the Phillies only need a holdover until Drabek is ready, and basically nothing on the market available via free agency or trade is appetizing. At all. Well, except that Roy Halladay fellow, of course. Do the Phils re-open talks with Toronto for their ace now that a new GM is in town? I think they’d be silly not to. If a package of, say, Happ/Michael Taylor/Michael Schwimer/Michael Cisco can get it done, why not? It couldn’t hurt to ask.

That said, I don’t see that deal getting done in any capacity. Cliff Lee was this team’s big acquisition for the foreseeable future. Someone like Josh Fogg may get a minor league deal from this team, but I wouldn’t expect much else.

• Relief Pitcher 7: Scott Mathieson

Again, the only external additions here are likely to be very cheap or minor league deals. If Eyre and Romero return, there’s a less pressing need for a lefty. Plus, Sergio Escalona is available in the system. Mathieson, according to some hearsay, has a fastball sitting around 94 and a sinker/slider around 83; this, of course, coming after two Tommy John surgeries. Mathieson, once a top prospect, is now relegated to relief work for the balance of his career. With reports of stuff of that caliber, though, I see no reason why he can’t be a productive pitcher for this team almost immediately in 2010. Oh, and he’s still only 26, too.

• Third Base: Adrian Beltre

Ah, yes, now things get interesting. If the Phillies are to make a big move this offseason, this is where they make it. Beltre is coming off an injury-plagues year that hit his production rather hard. But Beltre’s loss is Philadelphia’s gain. Beltre will be cheaper than fellow free agent third baseman Chone Figgins, both in terms of annual value and length of contract, and that’s exactly what this team could use. Figgins, as I said when discussing this plan with Mike on Thursday, is a guy you sign to supplement a younger core of position players in need of a top-of-the-order bat for the maturation years of your prospects. The Phillies aren’t in such a situation. They have an established core and, at this point, need nothing more than a supplement.

Is Adrian Beltre the cure for Philly's 3B woes?

Beltre is just that type of player. His OBP isn’t as great as Figgins’s, but his defense is far better – perhaps the best in all of baseball – and he packs a considerably more powerful punch with the bat. The only way Figgins fits into the lineup is if Jimmy Rollins is moved down the lineup, and I just don’t see Manuel bending nor Rollins being complicit with a move like that for an extended period, even though Jimmy’s days as an effective leadoff hitter are all but over.
Beltre could probably be had for two years and about $18-20 million total value. He played in 2009 for about $13.4 million, and with his injury setbacks and correlative dip in production, his price comes down. He’s still not cheap, but he spares the Phillies the likely long-term commitment they would have with Figgins, when the club is, for all intents and purposes, set for reinvention by the time 2011 rolls around. Beltre seems to make the most sense of any option.

• Bench spots: John Mayberry, Jr., Gregg Zaun, Adam Kennedy

Promoting Mayberry to full-time power bench bat will likely be a showcase for a potential trade, as there’s just no room for him outside of giving another outfielder a spell or filling in as an injury replacement. For now, though, he’s a good option for power alongside Francisco. Zaun would be the backup catcher, being a switch-hitter with a pretty good bat and a killer website. Honestly, though, he’d be a far, FAR more palatable backup at catcher than Paul Bako or Paul Hoover. Kennedy is a versatile fielder, but he hasn’t played any shortstop since 2007. Personally, I’d reintroduce him to the position in spring training, as his bat would be a more reliable one, both off the bench as a lefty and as a spell guy, like Mayberry. He plays second and third base, primarily.

My lineup would be as follows on a typical game day vs. RHP:

1. Shane Victorino, CF
2. Chase Utley, 2B
3. Jayson Werth, RF
4. Ryan Howard, 1B
5. Raul Ibanez, LF
6. Adrian Beltre, 3B
7. Jimmy Rollins, SS
8. Carlos Ruiz, C

And, against LHP:

1. Shane Victorino, CF
2. Jimmy Rollins, SS
3. Chase Utley, 2B
4. Jayson Werth, RF
5. Raul Ibanez, LF
6. Ryan Howard, 1B
7. Adrian Beltre, 3B
8. Carlos Ruiz, C

Howard hit .207/.298/.356 against lefties in 2009, and for his career only has a .226/.310/.444 line against southpaws with 371 strikeouts in 1,060 plate appearances, or once every 2.86 times he faces a lefty. I don’t think it requires any more than a look at those numbers to make a drop in the order against lefties rational.

If I could make a trade, there would be one I would consider making above all others:

• Michael Taylor, Michael Cisco, Kyle Kendrick and Sebastian Valle to Minnesota for RP Joe Nathan and SS Steve Singleton

There may yet be a fit for Taylor to get a starting job in 2010, though probably not until the summer. The Twins traded Carlos Gomez to Milwaukee for J.J. Hardy. That replaces Orlando Cabrera, but leaves a hole in the outfield. The big problem here is that the Hardy trade is not a move to get younger; it’s a move to try and win. If that’s the Minnesota attitude, Nathan won’t be available until July, and only if the Twins are out of it in the Central, something you can never count out.

Is relief help in the works via trade?

Similarly, if Kansas City’s Joakim Soria can be had, knock on the door. Those two guys would immediately make the bullpen menacing and extremely tough to bat against.

So, that’s my 20 cents. Agree or disagree with specific moves, the general perception is true: this Phillies team should be right back in the mix in 2010. There is room for improvement, and opportunities to make said improvements are now before GM Ruben Amaro.

Here’s to a productive winter. We’ll be with you all through the offseason to talk transactions. Thanks for toughing this one out, and go Phils.

First of all, I’m just glad we’ve got a six-game World Series. It’s been too long since one of these actually had some drama.

According to my math from yesterday, the Phillies now have a 10 percent chance of winning the World Series. The shellacking that the Phillies put on A.J. Burnett (who went from Curt Schilling to Rick Ankiel last night) gave us this gem from Jimmy Rollins, as quoted by ESPN’s Jayson Stark:

“How hard is it to kill this team? Hopefully it’s like trying to run over an armadillo,” said Jimmy Rollins, after his team had lived to play another ballgame. “Just roll up and put our shells on. And after the car goes over us, we unfold and walk away.”

Wow. You know, I like strained metaphors as much as anyone, but that’s just….I don’t even know what to say.

So we have a night of panic and waking up in a cold sweat before tomorrow’s Game 6 where two aging pitchers will battle each other in the freezing cold. I think the extra 2 days of rest will do a world of good for Pedro, vis-a-vis Pettitte, who hasn’t pitched on 3 days’ rest since coming off HGH. Fox ran a graphic that said pitchers on full rest versus 3 days’ rest win something like 3/4 of the time in the World Series.

I’m not necessarily optimistic yet, but I can see a way out, and that way gets more and more likely with each passing moment. Is this just another way to maximize the heartache when the other shoe drops, as it inevitably will? We shall see.

No one likes to hear radio from losses. That’s why we’re back with a radio call post after a win! Hooray! Have at them:

• Utley’s 1st HR
• Utley’s 2nd HR
• Werth RBI Single
• Ibanez RBI Single
• Ibanez HR
• Final Out

Enjoy. Go Phils.