Earlier this afternoon, Mike and I both received offers to join the team of writers at Phillies Nation, one of the premier Phillies blogs on the Internet. Despite the attachment we both have to this space and the following we’ve attracted over the past year-plus, this is an opportunity that is simply too good to pass up.

We’ve both accepted, and will both be writing for PN, starting soon. All of our old posts will remain here in state, but nothing new will come after this post. We’ll work on trying to wrap up the Total WAR Project over at PN. Both of our Twitter accounts, @Phrontiersman and @atomicruckus, will remain.

On behalf of Mike, I thank you all for your attention and comments over the year. We’ll see you on the other side.

Go Phils!

The Roman governor of Britain, Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, at the head of 10,000 men, met them at what is now known as the Battle of Watling Street. Paulinus assembled his men, equipped with superior spears and armor, in a V shape, effectively funneling the Iceni attackers into a wedge where they could be surrounded by the cavalry and systematically cut down.

The plan worked spectacularly. The Romans suffered only 400 casualties, while the Britons suffered more than 80,000–200 Iceni for every Roman.

Amazing what you can down when you’ve got a plan and your opponent doesn’t.

What I’ve always found interesting about the Rockies is that while Coors Field caters to power hitters, the Rockies tend to have speedy, slap-hitting center fielders, rather than power hitters. The only exception is Ellis Burks–otherwise, the Rockies’ history is littered with guys like Dexter Fowler, Juan Pierre, Willy Taveras, and Alex Cole (look him  up, I dare you).

This is because the architects who built Coors Field knew that the thin air would result in the ball flying out of the park, so they built a massive outfield, which needed a speedy, slap-hitting center fielder patrolling it. Otherwise, just about everything hit in the air would drop for a hit. Offensively, even someone like Juan Pierre, who hasn’t hit a ball further than 300 feet since 2001, benefits because of that huge outfield. The deep fence means the opposing outfielders play farther back, which, in turn, means that lots of Texas Leaguers drop and lots of 180-foot doubles get hit.

Total WAR numbers for the Rockies after the jump.

2009 Roster

C1: Chris Iannetta (2.0 WAR)
C2: Yorvit Torrealba (0.8 WAR)

1B: Todd Helton (3.6 WAR)
2B: Clint Barmes (1.9 WAR)
3B: Garrett Atkins (-0.4 WAR)
SS: Troy Tulowitzki (5.4 WAR)
INF: Ian Stewart (1.2 WAR)

OF1: Brad Hawpe (1.3 WAR)
OF2: Dexter Fowler (0.7 WAR)
OF3: Seth Smith (2.7 WAR)
OF4: Carlos Gonzalez (2.4 WAR)
OF5: Ryan Spillborghs (0.3 WAR)

SP1: Ubaldo Jimenez (5.7 WAR)
SP2: Jorge de la Rosa (3.7 WAR)
SP3: Jason Marquis (3.8 WAR)
SP4: Jason Hammel (3.8 WAR)
SP5: Aaron Cook (1.9 WAR)

CL: Huston Street (1.5 WAR)
SU: Rafael Betancourt (1.0 WAR)
RP: Matt Daley (0.7 WAR)
RP: Franklin Morales (0.5 WAR)
RP: Manny Corpas (0.4 WAR)
RP: Josh Fogg (-0.1 WAR)
RP: Matt Belisle (0.0 WAR)
RP: Alan Embree (-0.1 WAR)

2009 Total WAR: 44.7

The more I look at the numbers, the more I like this team. You know how everyone was saying a while back how you can’t win with pitching and defense in Coors Field? Well FUCK ‘EM.

That rotation’s quite good, and still quite young (out of the 5 starters for the 2010 Rockies, every one has posted at least one season of 3.7 WAR or better, and their ages will be 25, 29, 27, 31, and 29).

When I was looking at how J.A. Happ was more lucky than good last year, and how Cole Hamels was more unlucky than bad last year, I kept running into Jason Hammel. His case was like Cole’s only worse. Ask a baseball fan to name 6 starting pitchers under contract with the Rockies in 2009, and I bet Hammel’s name doesn’t even come up. I get great enjoyment out of the fact that everyone acted like Jorge de la Rosa’s injury last year was as big a deal as the injury to Ben Sheets in the 2008 NLDS (the Phillies don’t get out of the first round in 2008 if Sheets is healthy), when Hammel, who had a slightly better season, was an afterthought.

You wouldn’t know it from these numbers, but the Rockies’ biggest problem last year was the platoon split. Brad Hawpe (someone at Deadspin called the 2007 World Series “Hawpe on Papi,” a pun that I’ve giggled at periodically ever since) has an enormous platoon split. Against righties, he’s essentially Chase Utley (about .300/.400/.550), but against lefties, he’s barely a major-league average hitter. Likewise Garrett Atkins. I’ll concede that Atkins’ biggest problem is not the platoon split—it’s the fact that since 2006, his OPS has dropped almost exactly 100 points a year like clockwork. But it is worth noting that he OPS’d almost 250 points higher against lefties than righties. Also, while I was on his splits page, I noticed that Atkins hit .350 or better facing a starting pitcher for the second or third time in a game, which was almost as high as his OPS against a starting pitcher in his first at-bat in the game. I’m not sure what can be done about this, but there must be something, because he sucked last year.

But Atkins is gone now, leaving only one bleeding, gangrenous pustule on the team’s otherwise impeccably maintained backside: the bullpen. In 2009, one would have been well-advised to heed the words of Captain Kirk on the Klingons and apply them to the Rockies relievers: “Don’t Trust Them.”

There’s a lot of potential in that bullpen, but not a single pitcher who can’t be touched. No one knows the perils of an unpredictable bullpen better than Phillies fans, and I know I can say that’s no way to go through a pennant race.

2010 Roster

C1: Chris Iannetta (3.0 WAR)
C2: Miguel Olivo (1.4 WAR)

1B: Todd Helton (3.0 WAR)
2B: Clint Barmes (1.9 WAR)
3B: Ian Stewart (3.0 WAR)
SS: Troy Tulowitzki (6.4 WAR)
INF: Eric Young (1.9 WAR)

OF1: Brad Hawpe (2.2 WAR)
OF2: Dexter Fowler (2.2 WAR)
OF3: Seth Smith (2.3 WAR)
OF4: Carlos Gonzalez (2.6 WAR)
OF5: Ryan Spillborghs (0.8 WAR)

SP1: Ubaldo Jimenez (5.1 WAR)*
SP2: Jorge de la Rosa (3.7 WAR) 4.07 FIP, 162 IP
SP3: Aaron Cook (1.9 WAR) 4.28 FIP, 172 IP
SP4: Jason Hammel (3.8 WAR) 4.32 FIP, 157 IP
SP5: Jeff Francis (1.6 WAR in 2008) 4.41 FIP, 157 IP (Bill James)

CL: Huston Street (1.5 WAR) 2.99 FIP, 55 IP
SU: Rafael Betancourt (1.4 WAR) 3.60, 63 IP
RP: Matt Daley (0.7 WAR) 3.98 FIP, 59 IP
RP: Franklin Morales (0.5 WAR) 5.10 FIP, 56 IP (Bill James)
RP: Manny Corpas (0.4 WAR) 3.87 FIP, 59 IP
RP: Taylor Buchholz (1.2 WAR in 2008) 4.32 FIP, 31 IP (Bill James)
RP: Matt Belisle (0.0 WAR) 4.02 FIP, 62 IP
RP: Esmil Rogers (0.1 WAR) 4.10 FIP, 62 IP (Marcel)

2010 Projected Total WAR: 52.6

Out: Atkins, Marquis, Torrealba, Embree, Fogg

In: Eric Young, Jr., Jeff Francis, Taylor Buchholz, Miguel Olivo, Esmil Rogers

Just as a note, I used the three Bill James projections and a Marcel projection because CHONE doesn’t recognize the existence of Jeff Francis or Taylor Buchholz, and they bumped Morales and Rogers up to the rotation.

Ah, a Taylor Buchholz sighting. I remember him being the onetime Phillies’ Closer of the Future—Now if that isn’t a death sentence I don’t know what is. Also, noted Phillies Killer Yorvit Torrealba has been kidnapped…no, that’s not right…released is the word I was looking for.

Anyhoo. Like the Braves with Hudson, the Rockies get a front-line starter back from injury, noted Canadian luminary Jeff Francis. I’ve been a Francis fan since I read a story on him in Baseball Weekly when he was in college. He didn’t want to leave Canada to go to college, so he went to the only Canadian school that plays NAIA baseball (for those of you unfamiliar with the NAIA, it’s the rung of American collegiate athletics below the NCAA, even Division III) even though he was a first-round talent. He wound up dominating and getting picked by the Rockies in the first round anyway, and I thought it was a cool story, so I’ve rooted for him ever since, except when he beat Cole Hamels in Game 1 of the 2007 NLDS.

So that covers the two Rockies pitchers who haven’t thrown a ball in over a year. Apart from that, it looks like we’re in for a little regression across the board from what was an outstanding and fun starting staff last year. However, the various projectors show the bullpen picking up the slack a little, which would offset the regression of pitching staff. There’s no reason Ubaldo Jimenez doesn’t continue to get better, and given that, if they have 4 other guys who go out there and pitch well on their turns, as all indications say they will, the Rockies ought to be in good shape.

The really exciting part comes from the continued progression of Troy Tulowitzki and Chris Iannetta, as well as the emergence of perhaps the most exciting pair of young outfielders in the game: Carlos Gonzalez and Dexter Fowler. Fowler was the Rockies’ starting center fielder from midseason last year. He’s one of the fastest players in the game, and while he only hit .266 last season, he hit 29 doubles and walked 67 times in 518 PA. The thing I like best about him is that he’s already got pretty good plate discipline for a 23-year-old with fewer than 500 major league at bats in his career. Plus he’s got that top-end speed you need to patrol center field in Coors.

He needs to improve on two things in order to take the leap to elite status. First, he needs to be more selective in his basestealing. Fowler was 27-for 37 last year. With that speed, he can be absolute murder to opposing batteries if he gets better at reading pitchers and picking his spots.

The second, I’ll get back to in a moment. Carlos Gonzalez, who came to Colorado in the first Matt Holliday trade last season, is poised for a breakout year. I distinctly remember him hitting around .850 in last year’s playoffs. We just could not get this guy out. He’s almost like Fowler, a speed guy with an eye, except that he hits lefty (Fowler’s a switch hitter) and with a little higher average and a little more power.

Ok. Back to that second way Fowler can get better. Tony Gwynn told a story once that George Will recounted in his book Men at Work. In 1984, when the Padres went to the World Series, Gwynn credited the great season that he had to Padres shortstop Alan Wiggins. Wiggins got into drugs after that year and was never really the same; in 1987 he fell for the hidden ball trick twice in the same season and in 1991 he became (it is believed) the first major league ballplayer to die of complications from AIDS.

But in 1984, Wiggins stole 70 bases. Pitchers were so afraid of Wiggins on the bases that they faced Gwynn, who had almost Ichiro-like bat control, more fastballs than he had ever seen. The idea was that throwing fastballs would make it easier to catch Wiggins stealing. Never mind that it allowed Gwynn to sit on the heater and post what was to that point a career season. Gwynn tallied 213 hits and a .351 batting average, both league-leading totals, Wiggins scored 106 runs, and the Padres won the pennant.

Fowler and Gonzalez could be that kind of a 1-2 punch in front of Tulo and some combination of Helton, Seth Smith, Brad Hawpe, and Chris Iannetta if Fowler hadn’t struck out 116 times in 433 at bats in 2009. That’s an appalling rate, one that you can get away with if you’re Mark Reynolds, Ryan Howard, or Adam Dunn, but not if you’re a leadoff hitter who only hits 4 homers a year.

Particularly maddening is that Fowler’s BABIP was .355 last year, a mark that I suggest is 100 percent sustainable with his speed. If he ever cuts down on his strikeouts, he’ll be just incredible. Turning 10 percent of his strikeouts into walks and another 10 percent infield hits ups his OBP by 50 points.

I brought this up the other night with Paul, and he tells me that young players very seldom cut down their strikeout rates, but reducing his bat speed and concentrating more on contact might be the difference between Fowler being a good leadoff man and a great one. Either way, he’s a good player now, and is a couple tweaks in his game from being a great one. Even if he doesn’t cut down on his strikeouts, a little coaching could raise his stolen base percentage, and then you’ve got a .360 OBP leadoff hitter with blinding speed. I suppose you could do worse.

Fowler and Gonzalez are just two of five good outfielders on the Rockies. I think that’s going to be one of their greatest strengths: depth and flexibility. Apart from Tulowitzki, there isn’t a superstar on this team, but neither is there a position player on the roster who would be truly embarassing to trot out there every day. The Rockies have managed to get 13 solid position players on the same roster, which is hard to do. The Phillies and Yankees didn’t manage that last year.

Between Smith, Hawpe, Gonzalez, Fowler, and Ryan Spillborghs, they have five quality outfielders, plus second baseman Eric Young, Jr., who can also play center. Starting second baseman Clint Barmes can also play short (and third in a pinch), and third baseman Ian Stewart can also play second. Should he so choose, manager Jim Tracy could rewrite his lineup every day, putting the best seven of his non-catcher position players out there in just about any combination. That kind of interchangeability can be invaluable to a manager, particularly when injuries strike. Tracy showed in 2009 that he was no problem shaking  up the batting order, so expect more of the same in 2009.

The projections show the Rockies taking a big step forward, about 8 wins’ worth of WAR in total improvement. Of course, a lot of that is predicated on how well Jeff Francis and Taylor Buchholz bounce back from a year’s layoff, and how well players like Gonzalez and Stewart react to playing every day.

I’m really rooting for these Rockies–they’ve got a bunch of fun, likeable young players, and with all due respect to the Cardinals, this team is one breakout season away from being the Phillies’ biggest competition for the NL pennant next year.

The real issue with Goose and the Hall of Fame is a quote from the mustachioed reliever that came out in reference to the recent brouhaha involving Mark McGwire’s admission of PED use.

“I definitely think that they cheated. And what does the Hall consist of? Integrity. Cheating is not part of integrity.”

The “they” Goosage is referring to is players of the “Steroid Era” in the 90s and early 2000s. They part that’s missing from inclusion in “they” are the players who are already in the Hall that are known cheaters.

There seems to be some blissful ignorance that comes upon baseball players and media when it comes to the Hall of Fame. Its image is that of a pristine palace, adorned with gold-crusted plaques mounted on altars in the Holy Land of upstate New York.

There’s a great to-do about the “integrity” of the Hall, as Gossage puts things. People think that anyone with a scrap of personal trouble or ties to PED use automatically merits disqualification from Hall consideration. Ironic, then, that one particular Hall of Famer comes to mind who has been known to have bent – and broken – the rules, and yet receives absolutely no attention and achieves no mention when this issue arises whenever someone feels like leaking a name connected to the drugs.

Pud Galvin.

Pud Himself

Pud Galvin pitched 15 seasons in professional baseball, starting in 1875 when he was 18, and ending in 1892 with a four-year break in the beginning. Among his career highlights, Galvin started 75 games in one season (amassing 656 innings pitched in the process), struck out 1,800 batters and was given a 364-310 career record with a sub-three ERA. Even given the era, those are very good numbers and, in my opinion, probably Hall of Fame-worthy.

What you won’t see on Galvin’s Baseball-reference page is this nifty little tidbit:

In 1889, a Pittsburgh pitcher named Jim “Pud” Galvin became the first baseball player to be widely known for using a performance enhancer. (He was nicknamed “Pud” because his pitching supposedly turned opposing batters into “pudding”…) Before pitching a game against Boston, Pud used something called the elixir of Brown-Sequard… essentially testosterone drained from the gonads of an animal. And, low and behold, the juiced-up Galvin won.

Prepared from the gonads of monkeys, dogs and guinea pigs, to be precise. One hundred ten years before Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa essentially saved baseball with their home run chase, Pud Galvin was beefing up with animal man-juice. Yet, there he sits enshrined in Cooperstown, with nary a whisper of his name over the last decade-plus. Why? Brown-Sequard posited that his “elixir” would help prolong life. Isn’t that essentially what we’re dealing with with current steroid use? How does a man get away with this 120 years ago, but not today?

The easy answer, of course, was that it wasn’t illegal back then, and there’s no tangible proof to show just what kind of enhancement the mixture provided. Isn’t that the same set of circumstances we see surrounding Mark McGwire today? McGwire admitted to taking androstenedione in 1998, among other times in his career. Known as andro for short, the chemical is said to enhance production of testosterone, the male sex hormone. This, in turn, would perhaps aid in recovery and perhaps add a bit of extra strength.

(It’s worth noting, as an aside, that McGwire’s brother Jay claims Mark only took Nandrolone, a substance that was neither scheduled or illegal under MLB rules)

The key here is that none of this has been proven or exhibited quantifiably in a baseball environment. Only speculation exists as to whether andro – or any steroid/PED, for that matter – is the magic pixie dust that can turn David Eckstein into Ryan Braun. People think it can provide extra muscle to add a few home runs throughout the course of a season. Who’s to say if that’s a certainty?

Now, I’m not going to try and say steroids offer no benefit whatsoever; so many ballplayers wouldn’t have taken some form if they didn’t. It’s just that the benefits lie in other facets of the game, namely in regard to a speedy recovery. The argument against steroid users then shifts form: the drugs keep the player on the field, and they can definitely add to their home runs totals that way.

That’s a true point, but what, then, are we to make of advanced surgeries? Tommy John surgery is a literal ligament replacement, meant to vastly accelerate recovery from an elbow injury. Why is that procedure considered legal and not cheating, while taking a chemical to achieve the same result – albeit on a different area of the body – is flogged chronically for days after every mention of a player’s use, ultimately hurting a player’s chances at entering the Hall of Fame? Well, those are just the rules. That’s what’s put in place for players to abide by.

This is what I mean when I say juicing is “kind of” a good thing. You can see plainly from the results of the 1998 season that baseball was almost single-handedly saved by steroids. Steroids that, at the time, were not considered illegal until MLB’s rules. Later, after these chemicals became outlawed, players continued to use them at great peril: suspensions and public de-lousing were in order upon revelation of every name tied to steroid use. These players put their bodies, careers and lives at risk to benefit their careers and, by proxy, benefit the teams they played on.

The angry mob rioters who surface every time a story likes this breaks claim hurt feelings and ravaged memories, when they’ve worked up entirely too much care-emotion and are misdirecting it at canonizing the game and history of baseball, thereby scrutinizing players under some illusory “context,” a context that Tommy Craggs debunks over at Deadspin in a piece published as I write this very one.

What context is that, exactly? Does it include those eight guys who dumped a World Series for Arnold Rothstein? All those fellows in the ’70s popping greenies like Chiclets? Gaylord Perry? The guy holding the telescope in the Giants’ clubhouse in 1951? Whitey Ford and Elston Howard doctoring a ball until it looked like something coughed up by a very large cat? There are no saints on baseball’s stained glass. And there is certainly no era of the game in which a sizable percentage of the participants didn’t try to score an advantage somewhere just the other side of the rulebook (and occasionally the law). That’s the most American thing about baseball, and, sometimes it’s the only thing that saves it from all the embroidered American values nonsense that George Will and Ken Burns and this crazy lady drape over the sport like a hideous doily.

People crying foul are fighting a misguided cause and stirring up undue angst among people who just plain don’t know better. Steroids help teams. They help keep players on the field and, heaven forbid, they make games entertaining. This is what thou wrought, Allan Selig, and now you wish to demonize it as if it were never your intention in the first place.

Is steroid use dangerous and partially stupid? Sure. The health risks are ominous. But it’s borderline admirable to me that these professional athletes put their bodies at such great risks in order to help their team win. Is it unfair? Well, if every single player isn’t doing it, sure, but competition is about getting a leg up and finding ways to win.

If something was available that a player on your favorite team could use to help him stay healthier longer and maybe even perform a fraction of a bit better, you’d want them to try, wouldn’t you? I would, whether it’s Tommy John surgery or a rounded pill, I would.

I don’t root for this, of course. In baseball today, being linked to steroids is instant political death. I want players on my team to be the best, but getting caught means a suspension and expulsion from serious Hall of Fame consideration. I think these steroids are certainly not the demons they’ve been made out to be, and it’s entirely possible that the general public’s perception of them has been irrevocably wrought akimbo by pervasive cries of excommunication from people with a position of power and an influential voice.

The Hall of Fame is no Hall of Saints, Goose. People across all eras have tried to get a leg up. They’ve tried to be better than the rest, both for the betterment of their career and of their teams. If we wanted to be selective in this department now, we had better rent a dumpster for Cooperstown.

Rethink things before you file an insurance claim for your wrecked childhood memories and jump on the bandwagon of indignation; maybe we’ve been going about this all wrong.

“A Different Kind of Performance Enhancer” – NPR

The Yankees finally perfected the art of option A last year, when three huge free agents propelled them to the title over the Phillies. The Mets, well, still seem to be stuck trying to master that art. After a lost season in which nearly every single starting position player and pitcher landed on the disabled list, the Mets are trying to get right back into the party in the National League East, not content to simply roll over and let the Phils take another division crown as they gather reinforcements.

Can the Mets’ returning starters – with a little help from some cavalry – actually make some noise and challenge the Phillies for the top spot in the East?

2009 Roster

C1: Omir Santos (1.0 WAR)
C2: Ramon Castro (0.9 WAR)

1B: Carlos Delgado (0.8 WAR)
2B: Luis Castillo (1.6 WAR)
3B: David Wright (3.4 WAR)
SS: Jose Reyes (0.7 WAR)
IF: Daniel Murphy (0.6 WAR)

OF1: Carlos Beltran (2.9 WAR)
OF2: Angel Pagan (2.9 WAR)
OF3: Ryan Church (0.4 WAR)
OF4: Jeff Francoeur (0.4 WAR)
OF5/UTIL: Fernando Tatis (1.5 WAR)

SP1: Johan Santana (2.8 WAR)
SP2: Mike Pelfrey (1.8 WAR)
SP3: Livan Hernandez (0.9 WAR)
SP4: John Maine (0.6 WAR)
SP5: Tim Redding (0.1 WAR)

CL: Francisco Rodriguez (0.3 WAR)
SU: Pedro Feliciano (0.6 WAR)
RP: Bobby Parnell (0.5 WAR)
RP: J.J. Putz (0.1 WAR)
RP: Sean Green (-0.1 WAR)
RP: Brian Stokes (-0.2 WAR)
RP: Elmer Dessens (-0.3 WAR)
P: Oliver Perez (-0.8 WAR)

2009 Total WAR: 23.4

That total is exactly half of what the regular Braves 25-man roster put up in 2009. Granted, this team was absolutely ravaged by injury, and the team leader in homers (Murphy) had just 12. Only six players appeared in 100 games or more. Jose Reyes and Carlos Delgado combined to play in just 62 games all year…you get the picture. The list of contributing players for this team is tall, but none cracked 3.5 WAR and 22 different players put up negatives. Twenty-two! The Mets needed to use practically an entire second roster to compensate for injuries.

(I wrote this up a few hours before the mess with Carlos Beltran surfaced. For pure irony’s sake, I’ll just leave it here untouched)

Barring another medicinal cataclysm not unlike the Andromeda Strain, this team will be better in 2010, if only because its regulars will actually take the field, well, regularly. The addition of Jason Bay helps, and makes an already talented lineup a little bit more fearsome. The real question surrounding the Mets, though, is this: who, besides Santana, can pitch the ball competently for anywhere close to 200 innings as a starter or 50 innings in relief? Even Francisco Rodriguez could only manage a measly 0.3 WAR for his $8.5M.

As an aside, did you know that K-Rod has a vesting option for 2012 at $17.5 million? That’s more than Mariano Rivera has made or will make in any year, and that includes the contract that will come after this current one expires after the 2010 season, and it vests with just some modest games finished totals and a clean bill of health. Lunacy, as someone would say.

Not content to just wait for healthy players, the Mets added Jason Bay to, essentially, replace what Carlos Delgado brought when healthy. How does the Metropolitans’ roster project right now?

2010 Roster

C1: Henry Blanco (1.0 WAR)
C2: Chris Coste (0.7 WAR)

1B: Daniel Murphy (0.7 WAR)
2B: Luis Castillo (1.3 WAR)
3B: David Wright (5.2 WAR)
SS: Jose Reyes (5.3 WAR)
INF: Alex Cora (0 WAR)

OF1: Carlos Beltran (4.7 WAR)
OF2: Jason Bay (4.0 WAR)
OF3: Angel Pagan (1.5 WAR)
OF4: Jeff Francoeur (1.1 WAR)
OF5: Fernando Martinez (0.1 WAR)

SP1: Johan Santana (4.7 WAR)*
SP2: Mike Pelfrey (3.6 WAR)*
SP3: Oliver Perez (1.3 WAR)*
SP4: John Maine (0.6 WAR)* 4.43 FIP, 123 IP
SP5: ?

CL: Francisco Rodriguez (0.9 WAR)*
SU: Pedro Feliciano (0.6 WAR) 3.75 FIP, 57 IP
RP: Kelvim Escobar (5.2 WAR as a starter) 3.15 FIP, 36 IP as a reliever
RP: Ryota Igarashi (Unknown WAR) 3.19 ERA, 52 IP
RP: Nelson Figueroa (0.6 WAR) 4.29 FIP, 156 IP as a starter
RP: Sean Green (-0.1 WAR) 3.93 FIP, 72 IP
RP: Brian Stokes (-0.2 WAR) 4.40 FIP, 69 IP
RP: Pat Misch (-0.3 WAR) 4.43 FIP, 67 IP

2010 Projected Total WAR: 37.3

Out: Delgado, Hernandez, Redding, Putz, Dessens

In: Bay, Escobar, Igarashi

Okay, now for the caveats. Escobar pitched just three innings in 2009, so 2008 numbers are listed for him. His career as a starter is over, and as I have no way to project what sort of value he could add as a relief pitcher, he did not factor into the total. Igarashi’s numbers are from his last season in NPB, and he, too, did not factor into the total.

The Mets need a fifth starter, and I’m not buying CHONE’s inclination that Figueroa will be used in the rotation long enough to rack up 156 combined starting and relief innings. I just don’t see him making the 10+ starts necessary to reach that mark, along with many multi-inning relief appearances. The bullpen is still a mess, the rotation is average, and the Mets will need to pummel people game after game to keep their head above water.

They’re still being linked to Bengie Molina, as well as Orlando Hudson, should Castillo be traded. Joel Pineiro has also grabbed their attention. Molina is a swing-at-everything catcher with a little pop who is projected to add just half a win over Blanco, but will likely cost a few million over two years. As Phillies fans, we want this. Hudson, a severely overrated fielder, looks to be about one full win better than Castillo for 2010, while Pineiro, a groundballing Dave Duncan reclamation project, will be overpaid but should put up average numbers. His 2009 WAR exceeded his combined total from the previous four seasons, but he did have some effective seasons in Seattle prior to that. He’d offer value simply be being able to competently throw a ball over the plate for 150 or so innings, something the Mets need desperately; far more than they need another slight offensive upgrade.

New York should be pesky as ever in 2010, but shouldn’t be considered a serious contender for the division as they are presently constituted. By adding some combination of Molina, Hudson and Pineiro, they bolster their chances for the wild card, but don’t approach 90 wins and probably finish behind Atlanta in the division.

Fernando Martinez was rushed to the Majors, and his numbers were awful in 100 plate appearances, but he is still regarded as a nice prospect and should see a bump in production. Heck, he won’t even turn 22 until the second week in October.

It can’t be stressed enough how hard this season rides upon the health of the Mets’ key players. Having Beltran and Reyes healthy automatically makes the Mets a team to take notice of, and David Wright should be his normal, really good self (whether the Powerful Wright or Contactful Wright shows up is a different issue). Really, though, this team’s fate lies in the hands of its pitching staff, which was not much improved this offseason. Right now, its highlights are composed of Johan Santana, fragments of Francisco Rodriguez and about 15 contenders for fourth starter and middle relief. Despite the offense, they might struggle to post a decent run differential.

Mark the Mets for 84-78, third place in the East for 2010.

Khrushchev once said of LeMay’s vision, “The living would envy the dead.”

And so it came to pass that I discovered, after having promised the Total WAR project for all players, that FanGraphs’ CHONE projections don’t include predicted value numbers for pitchers. Therefore, where possible, I’ll be using the fan projections, which do. It’s far less scientific, I know, but for the purposes of keeping the numbers consistent, it seems to be the best option. If the fan numbers are completely f’d up the a, missing, or if only a few readers have projected stats, I’ll just repeat last year’s. This only seems to be happening with middle relievers and back-end starters, however. 2009 numbers will be italicized and followed by CHONE’s projected FIP and innings pitched, and fan predictions will be marked with an asterisk. It’s also worth noting that fan projections seem to be consistently optimistic, if only by a couple decimal points, because of the preponderance of, for instance, Braves fans projecting Braves players. Just bear that in mind when you’re reading.

So. On to the Braves.

In April 2006, I saw a Phillies-Braves game at Turner Field. The Phillies won behind early homers by Bobby Abreu, Chase Utley, and Ryan Howard, and Gavin Floyd got the win. In the later innings, the Braves fans (such as were left), started doing the tomahawk chop, and I almost caught myself joining in. It’s hypnotic. Far and away the best cheer in sports, racist though it may be.  Total WAR begins after the jump.

2009 Roster

C1: Brian McCann (4.4 WAR)
C2: David Ross (1.7 WAR)

1B: Adam LaRoche (2.4 WAR)
2B: Kelly Johnson (0.7 WAR)
3B: Chipper Jones (2.8 WAR)
SS: Yunel Escobar (4.1 WAR)
INF: Martin Prado (2.8 WAR)

OF1: Nate McLouth (1.9 WAR)
OF2: Garret Anderson (-1.0 WAR)
OF3: Matt Diaz (2.5 WAR)
OF4: Ryan Church (0.5 WAR)
OF5: Omar Infante (1.1 WAR)

SP1: Javier Vazquez (6.6 WAR)
SP2: Jair Jurrjens (3.9 WAR)
SP3: Derek Lowe (2.7 WAR)
SP4: Tommy Hanson (2.6 WAR)
SP5: Kenshin Kawakami (1.7 WAR)

CL: Rafael Soriano (2.0 WAR)
SU: Peter Moylan (1.5 WAR)
RP: Mike Gonzalez (0.9 WAR)
RP: Kris Medlen (0.9 WAR)
RP: Eric O’Flaherty (0.7 WAR)
RP: Manny Acosta (0.0 WAR)
RP: Jeff Bennett (-0.1 WAR)
RP: Buddy Carlyle (-0.5 WAR)

2009 Total WAR: 46.8

Obviously, there were contributions by players not listed here, but while other bench players like Greg Norton and Diory Hernandez spent some time in the majors, they didn’t get enough playing time to make a huge impact. These are literally quad-A replacement players, the likes of whom the Braves will probably trot out from time to time this season as well, to similar effect.

If the name Diory Hernandez sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’ve read a Braves box score. I remember him because the only game I’ve ever live-blogged (an extra-inning Braves win in June) featured Uncle Cholly intentionally walking Hernandez twice when he (Diory, not Uncle Cholly) was hitting .128. Mystifying.

Anyway, lots of these replacement-level players (some of whom snuck into the back end of the bullpen anyway) put up negative WAR numbers anyway. You can find stats for everyone who put on a Braves uniform last year here and here.

2010 Roster

C1: Brian McCann (4.7 WAR)
C2: David Ross (2.5 WAR)

1B: Troy Glaus (1.7 WAR)
2B: Martin Prado (2.2 WAR)
3B: Chipper Jones (3.8 WAR)
SS: Yunel Escobar (4.7 WAR)
INF: Omar Infante (1.1 WAR)

OF1: Nate McLouth (2.5 WAR)
OF2: Matt Diaz (1.1 WAR)
OF3: Melky Cabrera (3.4 WAR)
OF4: Gregor Blanco (1.4 WAR)
OF5: Eric Hinske (0.7 WAR)

SP1: Jair Jurrjens (4.1 WAR)*
SP2: Tommy Hanson (4.6 WAR)*
SP3: Derek Lowe (4.0 WAR)*
SP4: Tim Hudson (3.4 WAR)*
SP5: Kenshin Kawakami (2.3 WAR)*

CL: Billy Wagner (1.1 WAR)*
SU: Peter Moylan (1.5 WAR) 3.67 FIP, 52 IP
RP: Eric O’Flaherty (0.7 WAR) 3.74 FIP, 48 IP
RP: Kris Medlen (0.9 WAR) 3.31 FIP, 57 IP
RP: Manny Acosta (0.0 WAR) 4.47 FIP, 57 IP
RP: Jo-Jo Reyes (0.1 WAR) 5.02 FIP, 127 IP as a starter
RP: James Parr (0.1 WAR) 4.86 FIP, 104 IP as a starter
RP: Luis Valdez (0.0 WAR) 4.33 FIP, 78 IP

2010 Projected Total WAR: 52.6

Out: Vazquez, Johnson, LaRoche, Church, Anderson, Soriano, Gonzalez

In: Glaus, Cabrera, Hinske, Blanco, Hudson, Wagner, Reyes, Parr, Valdez

Obviously, Blanco, Hudson, Reyes, Parr, and Valdez all played for the Braves last year, just not enough to make the cut for the 2009 Total WAR list.

Hudson, if he can bounce back from injury, will probably be huge, and the 3.4 WAR the fans have him putting up is not out of the question. Derek Lowe and Tommy Hanson, on the other hand, are a different story. If Hanson and Lowe both put up a 4-win seasons next year I’ll do the tomahawk chop in Love Park.

The biggest acquisition for the Braves, by far, is that of Eric Hinske. The 2002 AL Rookie of the Year has bounced around of late, playing for 3 teams in the past 3 years. However, each of those 3 teams has won the AL pennant. Therefore, I can predict with extreme confidence that the Atlanta Braves will be your 2010 American League Champion! Wait…that’s not right, is it….

Having a full season of Nate McLouth will help, and I personally think that CHONE has completely screwed both him and Matt Diaz. Both are slated for a drop-off of at least a win in value, a prediction that I honestly can’t find any reason to suspect.

The bad news for the Braves is that they’re still broke, they’ve only got three really good position players under 30, and they’ve just traded their best player last year (by almost two full wins) almost straight-up for a mediocre outfielder.

The good news is that they’ve got at least five quality starting pitchers, including a pair of twentysomethings who could be monsters coming through in the next couple years, a few nice young relievers, and quality depth at just about every position.

One unique condition for the Braves is that of Jason Heyward, one of the few young prospects who I think warrants special mention, so, with your indulgence, a few words on him before we finish.

Heyward is very young—he’ll only miss the distinction of “first major leaguer born after I was potty-trained” by only a couple months, but he’s a 6-foot-4, 220-pound man-child.

Heyward won’t turn 21 until after the all-star break next year, but Bill James has him getting 600 plate appearances in 2010 and hitting .300 with pretty good power and plate discipline. Last year, he started as a 19-year-old single-A outfielder and finished the year in AAA, having OPS’d (near as makes no difference) 1.000 between three levels of the minor leagues.

Essentially, all indications are that Heyward can step into a major league uniform before he can legally step into a bar and be a Jayson Werth-type player right off the proverbial bat.

CHONE only has him getting 300 or so at-bats next year, with all rate stats down about 50 points from James, but that’s still an age 20/21 season worth 1.4 wins.

I’m inclined to predict that Heyward will start the season at AAA Gwinnett, but will not stay there long. By the time Heyward turns 21, Atlanta will have liquidated one of Cabrera, Diaz, or Blanco, and installed Heyward in his place.

But I digress.

All told, Total WAR shows the Braves having improved by nearly six wins. I call bullshit on that, based on CHONE overrating Melky Cabrera and Gregor Blanco and the fans counting their starting pitching chickens before they hatch. If Cabrera and Blanco duplicate last year’s stats, they’ll combine for about 2 wins between the two of them. CHONE puts the two of them at close to 5 wins.

We’ll see throughout the rest of the project whether that’s a systematic thing or not. For now, you can lock in Atlanta’s delta-Total WAR: +5.7.

Next up in Part II: the New York Mets

The way I see it, the Phillies have two main rivals for the division: the Braves and Mets. Once they get out of the division, I’d say that last year’s three other playoff teams (Rockies, Cardinals, and Dodgers) are a threat in the National League playoffs. Honestly, the Giants and Cubs might make a push for the pennant, but they’re so dysfunctional that I seriously doubt the likelihood of such an occurrence.

In the American League, the Yankees and Red Sox stand head and shoulders above everyone else, with the Rays, Mariners, and Angels in the second tier of contenders. Nothing good’s going to come out of the Central, trust me. Of course, now that I’ve said that, we can all bank on a Twins-Giants World Series next November.

So that makes 10 teams in all. The Phillies, if they’re going to win the World Series this fall, will have to make it through some combination of those teams. With all the wheeling and dealing going on, who out of those teams has gotten better, compared to last season, and who has gotten worse?

In short, how well and truly screwed are the Phillies heading into next fall?

Now, this is going to be an extremely unscientific analysis. Originally, I was just going to consider major acquisitions and departures (the Yankees lose Melky Cabrera and Johnny Damon but pick up Javier Vazquez and Curtis Granderson, for instance), and compare WAR from 2009 and the CHONE projections in 2010 (available on FanGraphs), but I figure, why not make this an 11-part series? So I’ll put together a 25-man roster for each of these 11 teams (or, more accurately, outsource it to India, where our Phrontiertern, Vikram, will do it for 10 cents on the dollar), total up the 2009 WAR and the 2010 CHONE-predicted WAR, and get back to you with the list, the totals, and some brief analysis.

I realize that rosters haven’t been finalized, and that each team will probably field at least one player that none of us has ever heard of, but I hope that it will just give an impression of where we stand.

Finally, FEEL FREE TO COMMENT. The whole point of this experiment is to start irrational screaming matches, so if you think something’s way off, speak up fachrissake.

That is all. See you, most likely tomorrow, with part I: The Atlanta Braves.

Almost as a gesture of protest, I tended to wear athletic apparel whenever my band played a show. A few times, we played when South Carolina was playing or preparing for a big football game, I wore a USC baseball cap. We played a house show when Villanova played North Carolina in the Final Four this April, so I wore my Nova hat and asked for updates throughout our set. I’d say more often than not, I wore my Zenit St. Petersburg jersey at shows because, hell, indie kids respect obscure things, and what’s more obscure than Russian Premier Leauge soccer? Shirzees fit that bill as well–in the one Android Opera poster ever produced,  I’m wearing my Steve Carlton shirzee.

So that brings up the question, more a propos to Paul’s birthday, what shirzees are most appropriate for a Phillies fan? I know it’s sort of a stupid question to waste space on, but we’ve got to keep ourselves busy until pitchers and catchers report.

Buying player name apparel is a tricky business. I put a lot of thought into it, which is why I’ve only sported 5 named jerseys in recent years. You need to ask yourself a lot of questions. First of all, is the player going to be around and performing at a respectable level for the foreseeable future. For Christmas in 2006, Kate, the Long-Suffering Girlfriend, spent a ton of moneny on a Thierry Henry Arsenal jersey that I wore about once a week until he transferred to Barcelona six months later. I’ve been burned like that too many times (thanks a lot, Mike Mamula, Jevon Kearse, and Lenny Dykstra) for this not to be a major consideration. When I bought a shirzee for The Most Irreverent Ben (a close friend of Paul’s and mine who’s going to seminary soon), it was a big decision. He had just started following baseball seriously, and his three favorite Phillies were the three on his fantasy team: Cliff Lee (even last summer, he was clearly a rent-a-player), Raul Ibanez (too old), and Jayson Werth. So I got him a Werth shirzee and haven’t regretted it. Of players on the Phillies’ 25-man roster, this eliminates older players like Jamie Moyer, Placido Polanco, and Ibanez, most of the bullpen arms (who tend to be disposable or unpredictable anyway) and the bench players.

The second consideration is: what would wearing this shirzee say about you? During the playoffs, I bought a new J-Roll shirzee from Amazon.com, and during the World Series, they sent me an offer for a discount on Phillies apparel, so I went around looking for another player to support. The problem with this is that arguably the two most popular Phillies, Chase Utley and Shane Victorino, have had their apparel co-opted by women, which is  a real shame. I’d wear an Utley shirzee if it wasn’t every bit as chicky a piece of clothing as a set of high heels. Go ahead, argue with me on this one–the simple fact of the matter is that about 80 percent (if not more) of the people you see wearing Utley and Victorino shirzees are women, and about 90 percent of the shirzees you see on women are for Utley and Victornio. Every team has a player who exists to sell chick shirzees (oddly enough, it’s David Akers on the Eagles), so whatever.

It’s not just whether you’re getting a chick shirt, though. I didn’t get a Brett Myers shirzee because, well, even though I make a lot of jokes about domestic violence, I didn’t want to wear a sign that says “I beat my wife” around town.

This concern also takes into account an issue that isn’t exactly huge for the Phillies right now, but is something that Philly-area fans have dealt with for years. How much imagination did it take for a Sixer fan to buy an Allen Iverson jersey between 1997 and 2003? Or a Flyers fan to buy a Lindros jersey between 1993 and 2000? I always liked the people who wore Mark Recchi or Simon Gagne jerseys a lot more. The Phillies don’t have one overwhelming star, except maybe Utley, and his is a chick shirt anyway.

The originality concept makes all throwback shirzees fair game. Any of the Phillies’ retired numbers  (Steve Carlton, Jim Bunning, Mike Schmidt, Richie Ashburn, and Robin Roberts) are fair game, as are particularly colorful and historically important people (Greg Luzinski, Tug McGraw, Granny Hamner if you can find his shirzee).

So we’ve boiled the pool of shirzees to wear down to the following players: Halladay, Hamels, Happ, Blanton, Howard, Ruiz, Rollins, Werth, Madson, and Lidge.

The final consideration is whether that person’s performance on the field and personality off it warrants purchasing his apparel. This is a matter of personal taste. Whether you think that Lidge can bounce back. Whether J-Roll’s quotability and sense of humor outweigh his low OBP. Whether Cole Hamels’ tremendous potential outweighs his recent whiny streak. Whether Ryan Howard’s game-changing power is a bigger plus than those terrible Subway commercials and his inability to do anything remotely interesting outside the batter’s box are minuses. These are decisions that one has to make on one’s own.

For myself, I’ve worn through two Jimmy Rollins shirts in the past 18 months and am currently on my third. I’ll also buy a Roy Halladay shirzee at my earliest convenience. I also think that the Phillies are missing a massive marketing opportunity by not marketing Carlos Ruiz shirzees. Ruiz is really the test case for this last consideration. He’s an average player, at best, and seriously flawed, but he’s such a comical character to watch. Plus, CHOOCHTOBER! The guy turns into Babe Ruth as soon as the NLDS rolls around, and no one can account for it. I think he’s enough of a funny/original/ironic pick that he’d make the Phillies a ton of money in shirzee sales. I’d buy one.

Another option for particularly opinionated Phillies fans…a Cliff Lee Mariners shirzee? Definite potential there.

Now, all of this could change with another winning season and division title or pennant next year, plus a Cy Young for Roy Halladay or another MVP for Howard (or a first one for Chase Utley) isn’t out of the question.

I say this because even though the past 10 years have been great, they could have been much, much better, once you consider one of the greatest “What If?” questions in Phillies history. I’ve been arguing this in social settings for years, but never really crystallized the argument. Until now.

In the winter of 2001, the Phillies’ best player was third baseman Scott Rolen. Rolen, going into the 2002 season, was entering his age-27 season, his sixth full year in the majors. In his first five, he had collected a Rookie of the Year award and three Gold Gloves. In that time, he had hit between 21 and 31 home runs and posted OPS marks between 119 and 139. Rolen had also won (and deserved) a reputation as the best-fielding third baseman of his generation and as one of the best baserunners in the game, despite limited speed and stolen base totals.

Rolen was just entering his prime and headed for free agency in the winter of 2002, and Phillies GM Ed Wade offered Rolen a 10-year contract extension worth $140 million, a contract that, to this day, is the richest offered by the Phillies to any player.

Rolen, an Indiana native who never felt totally at home in Philadelphia, had become frustrated with the miserly ways of the turn-of-the-century Phillies, who had just run Curt Schilling out of town. Who could blame him? Yes, that 2002 team had Bobby Abreu, Pat Burrell, Jimmy Rollins, and Brett Myers, but none of them were at anywhere close to realizing their potential, even though Rollins was a 2001 All-Star and led the league in stolen bases as a rookie (and would have been ROY in any season that didn’t feature Albert Pujols).

So Rolen instead accepted a one-year deal worth $8.6 million with the intention of testing the free agent market. You all know how this ended. On July 29, 2002, the Phillies traded Rolen and reliever Doug Nickle to the Cardinals for Placido Polanco, Bud Smith, and Mike Timlin. Smith, who famously pitched a no-hitter as a rookie, was never worth anything again. Timlin left immediately after the season as a free agent, and Polanco gave the Phillies three solid years before they shipped him to Detroit for Ugueth Urbina in 2005.

Rolen went on to sign an eight-year, $90 million deal and post three monster seasons for the Cardinals in 2003, 2004, and 2006  (he was hurt in 2005) before injuries started to catch up with him. In that time, St. Louis managed to eke out two pennants and a World Series title of its own.

So what happens if Rolen accepts the Phillies’ offer before the 2002 season? I think Rolen’s departure, through a somewhat convoluted chain of events, delayed the Phillies’ return to the playoffs by at least two years, if not three, and may have cost the team not only a World Series title, but the chance to trot out the greatest infield ever assembled. Bill James lists the best infield of all time as the $100,000 infield of the 1910s Philadelphia A’s, if memory serves. Now, he didn’t calculate for this year’s Yankee infield of Rodriguez, Jeter, Cano, and Teixiera (though A-Rod was hurt part of the year), but I think a 2006 Phillies infield of Rolen, Rollins, Utley, and Howard might take them. If not, it’d rank right up there.

Ok. So, if Rolen signs, here are some things that don’t happen.

1) Jim Thome never signs with the Phillies

Essentially, the Phillies used the money they spent on Rolen to sign Cleveland first baseman Thome to a six-year, $85 million contract before the 2003 season. Thome became an immediate fan favorite with the Phillies, and put up two good seasons before he, too, caught the niggling injury bug in 2005. He was traded the next year for center fielder Aaron Rowand.

2) Chase Utley becomes the full-time second baseman Opening Day 2004, instead of summer 2005

Utley’s path to the majors was blocked by Polanco, who, remember, was the only player we got from St. Louis who was worth a crap. By 2005, Utley had marinated in the minors so long that the Phillies brought him up as a part-time replacement for the injured Thome at first and a left-handed power bat off the bench. By midseason, it had become abundantly clear that the Phillies had the best two second basemen in the NL, so they traded Polanco to Detroit for a relief pitcher (Ugueth Urbina) who was OK for the rest of the season, then murdered his gardener in Venezuela over the winter and was never heard from again.

3) Ryan Howard becomes the full-time first baseman Opening Day 2004, instead of summer 2005

All we heard about during the 2004 season was how this dude from a small college in Missouri hit more than 50 home runs between Reading and Scranton, and how neither he nor Thome was athletic enough to play the outfield, so he was chilling in the minors. When he came up in 2005 to replace Thome, he stepped right into the lineup and won the rookie of the year award on 2/3 of a season. I say that if he comes up in early 2004 (remember, Thome isn’t blocking his path in this scenario), he has that great minor league season in Philly. He probably doesn’t hit 52 home runs, but he probably hits 30 at the very least, batting behind Rollins, Utley, Abreu, and Rolen and ahead of Pat Burrell.

4) The Phillies don’t trade Bobby Abreu in 2006 and Shane Victorino opens 2006 as the Phillies’ starting center fielder

Ok, this seems like a stretch, but not an enormous one if you think about it. The Phillies traded Abreu before the deadline for four Yankee prospects, one of whom is playing for the University of Kansas basketball team, and two of whom I can’t name right now to save my life. They did that in part because they had Aaron Rowand in center field and Shane Victorino burning a hole on the bench. Without Thome, there’s no Rowand and Victorino plays center from the get-go. They don’t have a solid fourth outfielder to plug into right field, so that might give them pause. Also, consider the fact that they traded Abreu midseason and had some combination of David Bell and Abraham Nunez playing third base and only missed the playoffs by three games anyway.

In 2006, Bell was worth 1.9 wins. Rolen was worth close to six. So let’s replace Bell with Rolen, Rowand with Victorino, and say the Phillies don’t trade Abreu. This team, I’ll remind you, only missed the playoffs by one game. If Rolen’s in that lineup instead of Bell, maybe the Phillies think they’ve got a shot to make a run in 2006 and either try to re-sign Abreu or keep him and take the two first-rounders when the Yankees inevitably sign him anyway later on.

And, by the way, the Phillies only missed the playoffs by three games anyway. And you’re never going to guess which team won the pennant and the World Series that year—the St. Louis Cardinals, who won only 83 regular-season games, started Al Reyes (Al Reyes!) in Game 7 of the NLCS in Shea Stadium, and still won the World Series in five games. By the way, playing third base and batting cleanup for that team? Scott Rolen.

5) Jayson Werth becomes the starting right fielder Opening Day 2007 (assuming the Phillies, emboldened by their 2006 World Series victory, don’t re-sign Abreu) instead of 2008

This one’s not as big a deal as the rest, but Werth’s 2007 OPS+ was 120 in 94 games and 304 plate appearances. So for all those people who’d miss Rowand’s monster 2007 season and say the Phillies couldn’t have made the playoffs without it, his OPS was only 4 points higher than Werth’s. And the two players who played third the most, Wes Helms and Abraham Nunez, OPS+’d 69 and 55, respectively. At the time, I described the 2007 Phillies’ third base situation thusly: they’ve got a righty who can’t hit righties, a lefty who can’t hit lefties, and switch-hitter who can’t hit either. Rolen struggled with injuries and only played 112 games in his last season in St. Louis and was still worth 2.6 wins.

So let’s look at the lineups for the Phillies in 2004 (missed the playoffs by six games), 2005 (missed the playoffs by one game), 2006 (missed by three), and 2007 (swept in the first round).

2004

2005

2006

2007

The practical upshot of this is that you can insert Rolen into the lineup and get pretty much an apples-to-apples replacement of him for any third base bat. I stopped here because Pedro Feliz was OK for two years and the Phillies won the pennant 2008 and 2009 anyway, so let’s not get too greedy. But it’s worth noting that Rolen’s past two years in Toronto and Cincinnati have been three-win seasons, despite the fact that he’s fighting off injuries and essentially playing out the string, while Feliz’s past two seasons have been worth about a win and a half each.

Of course there are a few good counterarguments. I’ll list some of them here.

1) If your aunt had balls, she’d be your uncle

This is absolutely true. Also, there was no chance Rolen would have stayed, no matter how much money Ed Wade threw at him. And there are a lot of “ifs” in this argument.

2) If the Phillies don’t sign Thome, they don’t hire Charlie Manuel to manage the team

A lot was made of Thome’s ties to his buddy Manuel when he was hired to replace Larry Bowa. I don’t know that the Phillies don’t sign Uncle Cholly anyway, or if whoever they might have gotten instead wouldn’t have been better, but if I’m saying the Phillies keep Bobby Abreu until the end of the 2006 season, I might as well acknowledge that someone other than Uncle Cholly might have been managing the team.

3) Rolen was hurt in 2005 and might not have produced as well as he did in St. Louis.

This one I don’t buy. The concrete cathedrals of Veterans Stadium and Busch Stadium I can’t have helped Rolen’s career totals. There’s no telling what numbers he might have put up at the Bank, starting in 2004. And it’s true that every move I proposed the Phillies might have made or not made since the Rolen trade would have weakened the bench, so maybe there’s no cover at third if Rolen pulls a hammy or tweaks an ankle, as he did so many times with the Phillies and Cardinals.

4) There’s no telling how Werth, Victorino, Howard, and Utley would have played if they had gotten into the lineup a year sooner

I also don’t buy this one, but it’s worth noting. All four were inserted into the lineup after spending at least a year behind an established starter, and all four replaced that starter’s production (with the exception of Victorino with Abreu, though he wasn’t half-bad) immediately. I think we can say with certainty that Howard was kept in the minors at least a season more than was absolutely necessary, maybe more. (UPDATE: Likewise, Utley spent at least the first half of 2005 on the bench when he was ready to play, and probably could have played from opening day 2004. Commenter Badfinger took me to task on this point, and while I hate being told I’m wrong as much as anyone else, I’m willing to concede that I am in this case. Utley, whose early-career struggles against lefties I had forgotten, probably wouldn’t have hit the ground running the way I thought, so we’d have suffered through a Feliz-like season from him in 2004 while he learned to walk and hit lefties.)

Werth and Victorino were sort of risky options to start when they did, but both produced well when given the chance. I say they produce anyway, but there’s no way to be sure.

Regardless, I think we can agree on the following principal points:

• Scott Rolen, from 2003-2007, was far better than David Bell, Abraham Nunez, and Wes Helms
• The Polanco-Thome-Rowand chain reaction that the Phillies got instead of Rolen wasn’t a whole lot better (if at all) than the players who were sitting behind them on the depth chart
• Missing Rolen probably cost the Phillies at least one playoff appearance and it’s not a stretch to say it cost the Phillies at least two Wild Card berths and a pennant, perhaps as many as two pennants and a World Series.

That’s really all I wanted to say.

Follow Mike and Paul on Twitter: @atomicruckus and @Phrontiersman

I suck at going up and down steps. This has become painfully obvious to me on my commute to school, where I have to go up and down stairs at four different train stations twice each day. Often, I’m just sort of trundling up and down the steps while everyone around me glides as much as walks. You know what I mean—the steps so quick that you hardly see their heads bouncing. By comparison, my slower, jerky movements make me look like I’ve got spina bifida.

My mom says this is because I grew up in a one-story house while I was learning to walk. This is a surprisingly uncommon circumstance for a suburban kid, and I can’t think of very many other developments in Voorhees/Cherry Hill/Berlin apart from my own that are composed entirely of single-story homes.

What lends credence to this theory is that my parents finished the basement when I was about 5, but before my brothers learned to walk. They learned to walk up and down steps at a young age, so they had no problem. Nowadays, both of my brothers (aged 19 and 13) have no problem with steps.

I say this because watching Chase Utley play baseball is like watching me go up and down steps at twice normal speed. Let’s compare him to another left-handed power hitter who also played excellent defense: Ken Griffey, Jr.

Junior was all arms and legs. Watching him swing a baseball bat—the looping, seven-iron swing, dropping the bat head on the low inside curve and sending it on a ballistic arc into the seats, followed by bat flip and jog around the bases—is one of the most beautiful sights in all of sports. Junior used those long legs to cover acres in center field before his Wrist Incident catch in 1995. He was a creature of extraordinary grace, of no wasted motion, never breaking a sweat. I think that’s what made him the most popular player of the 1990s, his effortless way of taking the field, banging out two hits and making a nice catch, having a good time, and going home.

Utley is the antithesis of Griffey, first and foremost in body type. While I had read James’ note on body type, I never really thought about it until I was watching soccer a while back. The best soccer player in the world, Real Madrid winger Cristiano Ronaldo, is a classic foot fairy type, all flash and speed and dribbling tricks. He gels his hair, barks at referees, wears loud jewelry, never wears a shirt in public if he can’t help it, and dives to draw fouls. He’s a stylish, pretty player, more Griffey than Utley.

But his legs? Tiny. The guy’s got a huge barrel chest and little stubby legs that force him to take short strides and allow him to change direction in the blink of an eye. The top levels of soccer are filled with Utley types, however. These are players who do nothing beautifully but do everything effectively. They are blessed with otherworldly amounts of talent but expend enough effort that they’d be solid players even if they weren’t so gifted. So take a look at Chase Utley. Then take a look at Wayne Rooney, for instance. Now apart from the fact that Utley’s a little taller and Rooney looks like his face was assembled from spare parts, they’re built similarly.

So where Griffey was all grace and finesse, Utley is all exertion and compact power. I can’t think of a single thing that Chase Utley does with style. His swing is awkward and it doesn’t look like he follows through all the way, but it’s about as quick as any in baseball, and it generates more than enough power, particularly since he’s turned yanking the ball around the right field foul pole into a science.

In the field, he’s brutal. He doesn’t really dive for the ball so much as he seems to trip and fall on it. He wears a tiny glove that he never seems to close unless he’s squeezing on a pop-up, giving the appearance that he’s got one hand bigger than the other, sort of like Hellboy. To this day, there’s a small part of me that doesn’t believe that he’s such a great defensive player because, frankly, if he really was the best defensive second baseman in the game, he’d be able to chase down a grounder without looking like a chimpanzee chasing a penguin across a skating rink. I guess UZR doesn’t take style points into account.

Then there’s the running. Short legs, long, low-to-the-ground strides, elbows out, chest puffed out as if breaking the imaginary finish line tape got you to first base faster. It’s bizarre, particularly when you hit him in front of Jayson Werth and put him next to Jimmy Rollins in the field. When one of those two steals a base, it’s smooth, calculated, and characterized by efficiency of movement. When Chase Utley steals a base, it looks like Monty Python’s “Ministry of Silly Walks” sketch on fast-forward.

The fact of the matter is that while his game is as ugly as any other major league baseball player’s, Utley has used his stubby limbs and brute-force approach to generate more bat speed, accelerate more quickly on the bases, and cover more ground in the field than practically anyone else.

It’s truly remarkable, then, that despite not looking like a superstar player in the slightest, Utley is really in a three-way dead heat for second-best player in baseball right now (oh, and look at Albert Pujols sometime—he might be huge, but he’s got the same big-torso-short-arms-and-legs thing going on). And I suspect that it’s a good thing—if Utley cared as much about not looking stupid as he does about winning, he wouldn’t be nearly as good a player as he is now.

I had braces until halfway through my junior year. I took all AP classes, and spent a lot of time doing homework. While my high school’s social hierarchy was based largely on how much money your parents gave you to spend, my parents never really had a tremendous amount of money, and not a whole lot of that trickled down to me for my own personal entertainment.

Let’s put it this way: being in marching band in high school is bad enough, being drum major for two years just about kills any chance you have of dating hot girls. And just to make sure I was consigned to the social underbelly of the school, I played clarinet and did three years of academic challenge.

What I learned from this experience is the value of buying low and selling high.

My overwhelming nerdiness and lack of panache (somehow I managed to be smart and funny without being charming) limited my dating options tremendously. As a result, I wound up doing what most small-market baseball teams do when they find themselves priced out of the targets they really want—I lowered my standards. So instead of chasing the Roy Halladays of the world, I had to try to work out a trade for the 15-year-old female equivalent of Brian Bannister. This worked out for me about as well as it did for the Royals: a bunch of ugly relationships, jeering, and embarrassment. Ask Paul, or Blockie, Friend of the Blog and Sometime Fantasy Sports Antagonist.* There are a few that I still haven’t lived down.

*On a related note, I knocked Blockie, Friend of the Blog and Sometime Fantasy Sports Antagonist, out of both of our fantasy football playoffs this year. Neener Neener Neener.

After a time, however, I realized that there were attractive and engaging girls out there who might not have been out of my league—I was just looking in all the wrong places.

What I realized was that you could find yourself a good-looking girlfriend—sometimes better than the “popular” people—if you found a hot girl who happened, for instance, to take AP science classes, or had sacrificed whatever chance she might have had at being popular to do indoor color guard.

As an aside, I realized my sophomore year of high school that the color guard in my marching band existed to provide a pool of good-looking girls for the drummers and saxophonists. The next year, I traded my clarinet for a saxophone.

The pinnacle of my buy-low-sell-high mentality happened when a girl I was in wind ensemble with did one of those classic “I-just-turned-16-and-started-caring-about-my-appearance” transformations. She went from being somewhat…well…motherly to quite attractive almost overnight. She dropped about 25 pounds, ditched her classes, cut her hair and started wearing tight pants. And I noticed before anyone else did, and suddenly, for the first time, I found myself taking a girl out and not wanting to cover my head with a paper bag. I never quite managed to land a free agent of her caliber again. And Kate, the Long-Suffering Girlfriend, has had me pretty much locked down for the past 4 years, so it’s unlikely that I’ll be readopting my buy-low-sell-high strategy in the future.

And here’s how this relates to baseball. The whole idea of Moneyball was to pay less for players than they were worth, both in terms of salary and resources (monetary and personnel) necessary to acquire them. The girls I tried to date in high school were likewise undervalued—if they had better self-confidence, it’s likely I would not have dated anyone at all. I know that’s demeaning and sexist, but it’s the truth. So by taking the Moneyball approach to dating, I was able to still get dates for dances without ever landing the Albert Pujols of my high school social life (And yes, there is such a girl, and no, her self-esteem wasn’t low enough to date me).

The Phillies are maxed out on payroll, as has been made painfully obvious by the Cliff Lee trade. It doesn’t matter if you believe management, because in this case, perception is reality.

Here’s a secret. Particularly in sports without a salary cap, it’s very rare to make money while you own a professional team. Salaries in sports like baseball and soccer are just too high. Even the meager contributions that owners make toward building stadia are in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Here’s how you make money. If you’re lucky, you get a ridiculous TV deal like the one the Yankees have, or like the one in the NFL. If not, the only way you really make money is by selling the team. I know that sounds absurd, given that even the poorest major league teams still make hundreds of millions of dollars a year, but after taxes, payroll, operating expenses, and stadium depreciation, even the stingiest major league teams spend just as much.

For instance, George Steinbrenner (who used to be one of Woody Hayes’ assistants at Ohio State—who knew?) and a group of investors that included notorious car designer John DeLorean bought the Yankees from CBS in 1973 for about $10 million. That, by the way, has to be the most interesting ownership group in history, certainly in American sports.

Today, Forbes values the team at a shade over $1 billion, and I bet they’d get more than that for the team if they decided to sell. That’s 100 times more valuable than when Steinbrenner bought the team. That’s how these rich people make money.

So if the Phillies brass says they’re not going to spend any more money, we have no choice to accept it. It doesn’t mean that the team’s complete, however.

Two deals happened over Christmas that really cemented the Phillies’ status as a chaser for the World Series. First, the Yankees traded a mediocre outfielder for Javier Vazquez, who, it can be argued, has been one of the top 10 pitchers of this past decade. He is, after all, one of only two pitchers to strike out 2,000 men in the 2000s. And he’ll be the No. 4 starter for the Yankees next year.

Also the Red Sox bagged Adrian Beltre, who will play a Gold Glove third base and probably drive in 80 runs or more at the bottom of the Boston order. If they wind up trading for Adrian Gonzalez, as they are rumored to do, there’s no telling how good the Bosox can be.

So even if the Phillies make it back to the World Series, which I think there’s about a 50/50 chance they’ll do, they’ll most likely have to beat one of the AL East giants four times out of seven, which, given the Vazquez trade and Beltre signing, doesn’t look that great a bet.

So the Phillies need someone who can come in and be an impact player, and they need him on the cheap. With the lineup more or less set, the Phillies can use a No. 5 starter and some bats off the bench. The only way you get an impact player on the cheap as a free agent is if he’s flawed somehow. It’s a strategy that has worked for the Phillies throughout their run of division titles because they’ve gotten lucky with this type of pickup. They got Shane Victorino for free because he couldn’t hit. Matt Stairs was too fat to play the field. Jayson Werth couldn’t hit right-handed pitching or stay healthy. Jamie Moyer was too old. Brad Lidge had gone nuts. Pedro Martinez had lost his fastball. All of these players made significant contributions toward one or both of the Phillies’ pennant runs in the past two seasons. Let’s get some more.

RHP Ben Sheets—One thing I never really realized was how good Ben Sheets was in 2004. Paul would love this season, because it’s as damning an indictment as any I’ve seen of won-loss records as an indicator of pitcher effectiveness. Even the relatively unsophisticated stats were stellar. Sheets had 264 strikeouts, a 2.70 ERA and a 1.25 WHIP, and he did this over 237 innings. But then you look at his 8.25 K/BB and his 2.65 FIP. Most impressive, though, is that his 2004 season was good for 8 wins above replacement. EIGHT! Since 2003, there have only been six seasons that good by pitchers, and three of them came this year (Zack Grienke, Justin Verlander, and Tim Lincecum, in case you were curious). And Sheets went 12-14.

I know that after they opened up Sheets’ right elbow in late 2008 and found out it was made of spaghetti, we most likely won’t get that pitcher in 2009. But we’re not asking for an ace, or even a No. 2.We just need him to be better than Kyle Kendrick or Jamie Moyer, and if either of them is significantly better than replacement-level this season, I’d be shocked. Interestingly enough, while Sheets’ curveball, worth 14.8 runs above average in 2004, dropped to about average in 2008, his last season, his fastball was worth 5 1/2 runs more in about 40 fewer innings. I think he’ll still have decent stuff when he gets back.

If the Phillies drop $3 million or $4 million on Sheets, and get 100 innings of better-than-average ball out of him, I consider that to be a bargain. I don’t know if he can be had for that, and I know he wants to pitch for Texas, but would he turn down the opportunity to pitch with Cole Hamels and Roy Halladay and have this team behind him? I dunno. I think Ruben Amaro should take another page from my high school dating philosophy–call and ask, because the worst they can say is no.

RHP Chad Bradford–Speaking of the Moneyball approach, Bradford, the knuckle-dragging reliever, was one of the stars of that book, and an appropraite target for a team looking to get good relief help on the cheap. One of the most astounding things to me about baseball is the life cycle of a relief pitcher. It seems like there have been ten times more flash-in-the-pan relief aces than there have been guys who were consistently good for 10 years or more, even if they never got to the level of a 2002 Robb Nen. More likely, they’re amazing for a couple years, then flame out. Some come and go, like Brad Lidge. But guys like Jesse Orosco, who put together careers of 15 years of effective relief work, seem like they only come along once in a generation, making Mariano Rivera, who’s been a dominant reliever for 15 years, all the more remarkable. Bradford’s been just consistently good.

Bradford is the perfect storm for an undervalued player: he’s 35, doesn’t throw hard (his fastball hasn’t averaged above 80 miles an hour since 2005), has a weird delivery, is coming off injury (back pain limited him to 10 1/3 IP in 2009). He’s also thinking about retiring. So why not ask Bradford, who’s never been even to an LCS in a 12-year career with six teams, if he’d like to come to spring training? The one thing the Phillies lacked last year was a reliable reliever, and if he’s healthy and motivated, Bradford can be exactly that.

INF Khalil Greene–For me, the biggest offseason concern for the Phillies was not the bullpen, because I think Lidge/Madson will bounce back some, and I’m optimistic about Scott Mathieson. Neither was it Cole Hamels, whom I’m penciling in for 18 wins and 160 strikeouts, and close to 200 innings pitched. No, it was how to keep Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley–both recently stepping over to the wrong side of 30–from wearing down over 162 games without having to put Eric Bruntlett in the lineup. Now, I realize that, Ding-Dong, the Bruntlett’s dead, but this Juan Castro character isn’t a whole lot better.

Greene’s an odd case. He started off as the Padres’ biggest position player prospect, and put up roughly 3-win seasons in 3 of his first 4 years. Then, he’s been below replacement level since 2008 with very little warning. He only played 77 games for St. Louis last year (hitting .200 with 6 home runs) before going on the DL for social anxiety disorder.

Now I realize that putting a guy with social anxiety disorder–particularly social anxiety disorder bad enough to end his season–in Philly sounds like a terrible idea. But he’s got enough of a reputation as being injury-prone (he’s played more than 122 games just twice in his six-year career) and a head case that his value’s going to be waaaay down. We could get him for a pittance, and there are several advantages to having Khalil Greene on your team.

First and foremost is his bat. Yes, he’s a career .245 hitter, but he walks enough and hits for a fair turn of power, so his OPS is usually around league average. He’s a solid enough right-handed bat off the bench that you can use him to pinch-hit in the late innings. Second, he plays shortsop and third base, so when you get him those 250 garbage-time at-bats, you can use him to spell Rollins and Polanco directly, or put him at third and move Polanco to second to spell Utley. When was the last time the Phillies had a backup infielder who doubled as a right-handed power bat.

My favorite Khalil Greene story: when he was coming up with the Padres, an African-American-focused magazine wanted to do a feature on young black athletes of the future. When they called him for an interview, Greene had to explain that he’s a white dude with flowing blonde hair.

Greene is also probably the second-most famous member of the Bahá’í Faith, behind The Office star Rainn Wilson (if Dizzy Gillespie were alive, he’d beat both of them, but he’s not, so he can shut up).

So I hope that the Phillies will continue to take my Scrap Heap Digest advice. At least that way the dating hell I went through as a youth won’t have been in vain.

Any other suggestions (any takers for Chien-Ming Wang) are, of course, welcome in the comments, particularly if you think I’m crazy for wanting Khalil Greene.