Lunch Time Link Dump

I thought I was over my baseball funk, but I'm not. Truth is, I'm having a hard time getting interested in the post season hot stove news. Over pay for Papelbon? Resign an utterly useless Schneider? Yeah, sure why not. I've even found myself contemplating on more than one occasion how hard it would be to turn my Phillies man room into a Flyers room. But perhaps this being the eve of my yearly end of season fantasy baseball party, some stimulating baseball talk this weekend will get me back into baseball shape. In the mean time, chew on some links...

• Clayton Kershaw won the NL Cy Young yesterday becoming the youngest pitcher since Doc Gooden to do so. You may recall my late August rant in which I said it was all but locked up for him, but FanGraphs doesn't seem to agree. Until there's a massive changing of the guard in the BBWAA, don't expect to see xFIP or SIERA lines accounted for in award season voting. Hell, voters are just now starting to contemplate the concept of WAR. Roy Halladay can win the advanced metrics battle for the next decade, but if someone else comes out on top with the pitching triple crown, he's going home with the hardware in November. I'll be more than happy to settle having 3 pitchers finish in the top 5 every year. And speaking of voting, who are the two jokers who tossed Madison Bumgarner and Ryan Vogelsong 5th place votes? On no planet are those two pitchers even top ten material. 

• Phuture Phillies is a great site for tracking the up and coming prospects within the organization, but if you're looking for an outsider's perspective on some of the same guys, I suggest Seedlings to Stars.  A lot of the more recent guys they've been looking at are your potential bullpen arms for next year in Joe Savery, Justin DeFratus, and Michael Schwimmer. 

• If you haven't had a chance yet, you might want to check out the Yoenis Cespedes highlight reel. He's looking for a monster contract, but the Phillies have apparently kicked the tires on him. Potential left fielder? Doubtful, with all the interest the Phillies have shown in Grady Sizemore and Michael Cuddyer. But he's worth keeping an eye on because a few other teams in the division are looking at him as well...

 

• Considering the fact that most of my childhood baseball favorites are now at or nearing retirement, I always find "Will they get in the HOF?" articles to be interesting. Beyond the Box Score does a great analysis of Who's Next? using weighted WAR numbers that coincide with their adjusted Hall of Fame based on wWAR. 

• Big news out of Major League Baseball yesterday with the sale of the Astros leading to a move to the AL. For those not familiar, this creates two 15 team leagues with 3 divisions of 5, something baseball have been pining for for years. But it also creates the opportunity for MLB to add a 2nd Wild Card position into the mix and this is where the debate begins. On one hand, a second Wild Card position would take away the entire storyline of a September collapse and wrap it into one game around October 1st. The Braves and the Red Sox could have had their collapse and still had a last ditch effort against the Cardinals and the Rays to get into the playoffs. In that respect, the whole month can come down to a one game push and the build up to September 28th that we had this year may never have happened. On the other hand, this change truly puts a premium on winning your division. The Yankees-Rays-Red Sox no longer have the luxury of coming in first or second and still finding themselves automatically in the October mix. If you want to live to fight for more than one more day, win the division. Regardless of which side you take, between this and the collective bargaining agreement talks, the next few seasons are bound to shake out differently than what we're used to. Jayson Stark breaks it all down on ESPN in regards to scheduling.

Lunch Time Link Dump: First Off Season Edition

• Hot off the presses is Baseball America's Prospect rankings. The biggest surprises to me are Catcher, Sebastian Valle coming in at 3rd and Pitcher, Jonathan Pettibone jumping all the way up to Number 4. The Phillies have a handful of strong pitching prospects, but the Pettibone promotion seems to come out of left field to me. May, Biddle, Aumont, DeFratus, and Colvin are the more commonly talked about names which leads me to believe that Pettibone must have really impressed some scouts with velocity or movement to elevate his status so much. Also take a look at that 2015 projected lineup. A lot of familiar faces mixed in with a lot of high upside talent!

 

• Shane Victorino is a #Belieber 

• A growing rumor I've heard on a few sites is the idea of Jose Reyes to the Marlins. The Phillies are the model of success when it comes to signing a superstar free agent to a middle of the road team that's moving into a new stadium. But then what do they do with Hanley Ramirez? One option is to move him to third base which gives you a powerful lineup of Reyes, Gaby Sanchez, Hanley, LoMo, Bonifacio, and Stanton with a healthy Josh Johnson and Anibal Sanchez. But with Emilio Bonfacio playing a lot of games at 3rd Base for the Marlins last season, maybe either he or Hanley become expendable pieces for the Marlins. Either would be solid top of the lineup SS options for a whole host of teams, including the Phillies.

• Adding insult to an already insulting October/November, the Cardinals have asked for permission from the Phillies to interview Ryne Sandberg for their now vacant head coaching position. When word got out that the Cubs were looking for a manager with a little more experience than Sandberg, I was a bit giddy over the idea of keeping him in our organization. With Pete Mackanan interviewing for a handful of other coaching jobs, there's likely to be an opening just to the left of Charlie on the top of the dugout steps. At the very least, the AAA job is surely Sandberg's to keep. Maybe I'm just daydreaming alongside Justin from TBOH when I imagine Sandberg grooming Phillies minor leaguers for two more years after Charlie can ride off into the sunset of retirement and Ryne can take over a team largely made up of his own guys.  

• Citi Field is in the midst of a make-over. No, not some sort of noise suppressing dome to eliminate the sound of airplanes landing at Laguardia, but instead they'll be moving in the outfield walls to address the significant drop in HRs that they've experienced since moving from Shea. Perhaps they don't realize that a deep outfield isn't necessarily a bad thing for a team that led the league in extra base hits that didn't clear the wall and has enough speed to rank 3rd in SBs. Do the 10-12 extra HRs a year make up for the likely reduction in doubles and triples that drive in runs? No one else in baseball can quite screw things up like the Mets. With their aforementioned noise pollution problems, the ridiculous Jason Bay contract, the revolving door of management, having to watch their best player leave via free agency, and finishing 3.5 games behind the Washington Nationals, it's only getting worse to be a Mets fan.

• It's not too early to start Christmas shopping for me:

Sure, Why not...

As if the legal ass-kicking Lenny Dykstra hasn't been enough, he'll be entering the boxing ring this Saturday for a showdown with frequent "celebrity boxer" Jose Canseco. Mark this in your Calendar as perhaps the first time ever that Jose Canseco is the least despicable man in the ring. Those of you (no one) who may have been looking forward to catching up with the Dude this Saturday at the autograph show at Oxford Valley will be disappointed to know that he's had to cancel in order to make it out to Hollywood. 

A woman abusing, gun toting, writer and failed MMA fighter versus a twizzler chewing, bankrupt, drug addict who frequently exposes himself to women. Only in America!

DST Awakens From Hibernation

Yawn... A solid 25 days now, I've been hiding in my cave. Partially because my beloved Phillies playoff collapse had soured me on the prospects of writing anything positive about baseball, and partially because I know that with the calendar rolling over into November, free agent and trade markets will once again have me immersed in baseball 24/7 soon enough. And while the interesting story lines technically haven't stopped since the Phillies last played (Nelson Cruz now holds the title of biggest World Series goat in my life time), I have a good feeling that the next two months will require my undivided attention.

Draft Picks or Keep the Old Guys?

Yesterday, MLBTradeRumors procured the Elias Sports Bureau Rankings list which indicates where each available free agent stands and therefore what kind of compensation can be expected should said free agent sign elsewhere. With three Type A free agents (Jimmy Rollins, Roy Oswalt, and Ryan Madson), and two Type B free agents (Raul Ibanez, and Brad Lidge), the Phillies can expect a pretty big haul in draft pick compensation should their free agents decline arbitration and flee to greener pastures. If a player is offered arbitration and a deal cannot be reached by December 7th, should that player sign with another team, the other team must provide high round draft picks in the following year's draft as compensation. For a team that has spun highly touted picks into gold in recent years, the idea of having more than a handful of choices in the top 50 for this year's amateur draft must have Ruben Amaro salivating at the mouth.

As it stands right now, it seems likely that the Phillies will offer arbitration to Madson and Rollins and both will likely decline. The other three are up in the air. While I feel there is a certain depth value in having guys like Ibanez, Oswalt, and Lidge on your team, youth may be just as important. Of the five names mentioned above, I predict that no more than two of them will return to the Phillies and you might be shocked to hear that I think those two will be Raul Ibanez and Ryan Madson; the youngest and oldest of the group.

First of all, why not the other guys? Rollins is going to get a few aggressive offers this off-season from other clubs and while I think the Phillies will attempt to bring him back, I ultimately don't see them going 4+ years on another contract and Jimmy will hold fast to his demands. With a fairly strong finish to the season, Lidge will be looking for another full time closer job and while he may not get one guaranteed, a number of teams will be interested in his potential. Finally, Oswalt is an interesting scenario only because his market value is probably going to be pretty similar to what he would have gotten in arbitration from the Phillies anyway. With pitching being scarce this off-season, another contender will likely offer Oswalt multiple years in the double digits. Expect all three of these roles to be filled with youthful candidates. Young pitchers will be given every opportunity to become this year's KyleKendrick/JAHapp/VanceWorley and another Valdez/Martinez combo will man the left side with a possible sprinkling of Freddy Galvis.

Madson enters free agency for the first time in his career in a year where the market is flooded with guys that have closer experience. Jonathan Papelbon, Heath Bell, Francisco Rodriguez, Francisco Cordero, and Matt Capps top the list of guys with significant closing experience, but that list also includes Jon Rauch, Joe Nathan, and Frank Francisco. Every one of those guys has more experience in a 9th inning role than Ryan Madson. And while we know him as the guy who as recently as last year was tossing 96 on the radar gun, I'm not so sure he's viewed by rival GMs as an elite closer. Not to say that the Phillies will be able to get him at a discount, but I think the price given his lack of long term experience and his health issues could lead to a lesser contract than what Madson and Scott Boras are expecting for the 31 year old.

As for Ibanez, let's just say that the market for reasonably priced bench help isn't quite as robust as it is for a closer. Despite being 40 years old, his 20 HRs and 84 RBI were invaluable last season. His days as a multimillion dollar player are through, but one last swan song on the bench of a contender might be his only option at this point. When he joined the Phillies in 2009, two things were missing from his quietly pleasant career: an All-Star appearance and a WS Ring. If Raul wants to take one more crack at it, I think he'd be welcomed back to the Phillies for a Matt Stairs-like $1.5-2M to be given one last shot at that World Series. Otherwise, I think he's looking more at a one day contract with the Mariners and retirement.