Around The Diamond

I think I'm going to make it my summer's goal to 

track down this place where rubbing mud comes from!

• Dugout Phunnies Issue #4 is a mere one week away from release! Like most things that are awesome, I was in on the ground floor when it first came out. But if the first six pages, and all the comments on Twitter are to be believed, 2012 is the season that David Jablow and Jeff Goff blow up! So buy a copy and watch Doc wrestle space snakes!    

• David Murphy's expanded explanation on the Chase Utley saga is really the best read on the piece. Despite the outrage you may hear, there are a number of caveats to this situation. It's been beaten to death over the last 24 months so I won't go into depth, but Ruben Amaro and Chase Utley are tiptoeing a three way line between lying, withholding information, and outright denial.  Any way you shake it, it's disappointing to hear about this development so late in the Spring. I can't claim to know what Utley did the last few months to prepare for spring training and as a guy who's mildly athletic but has never suffered any significant injury, I can't say what the difference between weight room workouts, and live game drills. But I can't help but wonder if something couldn't have been done differently to come to this conclusion in February, rather than the last week of March. Interestingly enough, former major leaguer David Segui seems to have the perfect solution for Utley: HGH. I could probably buy into a scenario where HGH was allowed to extend the career of guys with chronic joint pains. Maybe some sort of MLB employed doctor that can prescribe the drug? Just a thought...

• Ryne Sandberg has put his Chicago area house up for sale proving that you can only be snubbed by a city (despite being one of its alltime greats) so many times! If I said it once, I said it 100 times, I think he's your next manager for the Phillies following a retirement for Charlie Manuel. Ivan DeJesus (the guy the Phillies traded away Sandberg for), on the other hand, is bouncing around the Cubs system. Sweet irony. 

• Ken Rosenthal released his yearly kiss of death today which ranks the Phillies as the 8th best team in baseball and the 3rd best in the NL, but still predicts they'll continue the streak as NL East champs. It's tough to argue with the strength of the AL, but ranking the Giants ahead of the Phillies is a travesty worthy of a letter to your congressman. Buster Posey, Carlos Beltran, and Pablo Sandoval: three guys that a stiff breeze away from their next trip to the DL. And a rotation that while good, is still a notch behind Philadelphia. Take to the streets people! I will not rest until Ken Rosenthal apologizes (mostly just for wearing those silly ties, not his predictions)!

• Consider me fully behind the move to put Cole Hamels in the #4 slot to start the season at home. The Phillies have had a quite a bit of success with splitting their lefties and righties, Vance Worley matches up favorably with James McDonald of Pittsburgh, and Cole can handle his own with either Carlos Zambrano or Mark Buehrle depending on how the Marlins line things up. And while I'm looking at it, isn't it a little strange that the Marlins are opening up with a single game against the Cardinals on Wednesday, then hit the road for a 3 game series against the Reds? Why just one game?  
  

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:

Lunch Time Link Dump

• Adding to his resume, Jimmy Rollins will be appearing as a cartoon character on the Cleveland show this fall. The list of Phillies players appearing on television is getting pretty lengthy. With the Philly Phanatic appearing on the Simpsons, Ryan Howard on Entourage, and Chase Utley & Howard on It's Always Sunny, I have to ask myself who could be next? Shane Victorino on Hawaii Five-0 perhaps... though I'm not sure that show even survived it's first season. Hunter Pence as crazed serial killer on Dexter? Chooch on a Telemundo soap opera?

• A bit of a sad story about former Cubs great and current Lehigh Valley Iron Pig manager Ryne Sandberg. Drafted by the Phillies and traded after just a few major league at bats as a throw in piece to get Ivan DeJesus, Sandberg has come full circle in his major league career as the manager of the Phils AAA affiliate. His being overlooked for the Cubs big league job last winter was a major mistake and the thought of many baseball people seems to be that it has soured him on the organization altogether. Charlie Manuel is signed on as the Phillies manager for two more years after this one. Sandberg has been doing a solid job with the Iron Pigs this year and is looking to lead the team on a playoff run. My thought is that the Phillies pursuit of him in the offseason could somehow be as the grooming as a replacement for Charlie Manuel after 2013. This would assume that Charlie hangs up the spikes after his contract is up (he'll be almost 70 afterall), and also assumes that Sandberg is willing to wait in the weeds for 2 more years with the Phillies. But it sure would be awesome to see Sandberg back in red pinstripes and it would make for a much more upbeat story.

• I think I've posted about LegendarySportsPrints.com before, but their website doesn't seem to offer the one that I want the most. So head on over to Phillies Nation and buy me one (or 4). Cmon, my birthday is coming up and I'm well worth the $25!

• In other collectible news, the US Post Office (surprisingly, they still exist) is going to have a series of forever stamps in 2012 with four "All Star Stamps." Joe Dimaggio will be one, but they haven't released the names of the others just yet. Then again, if his current streak continues, they may need to replace Dimaggio's with a Dan Uggla stamp!

• I'll always maintain that the greatest thing about baseball is its unpredictability. So be sure to check out You Can't Predict Baseball for daily roundups of baseball tidbits that will make you shake your head. For instance, "The Tigers lead the AL Central, with a -14 run differential. —– The Padres are in last place in the tragic NL West. They have a -4 run differential."

• I drove by the Kansas City Royals Stadium last week and was surprised to see that the All-Star game will be held there in 2012. It's a decent looking place that has apparently gone under a huge renovation so I'll probably stop by there on one of my next trips. The Royals are a pretty nice young team, though so anything that can drum up interest for them is probably good for baseball. Mix in a little fanfare with a roster that has Billy Butler, Jeff Francouer, Alex Gordon, Melky Cabrera, Mike Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, Joakim Soria, Danny Duffy, and Aaron Crow all 27 years or younger and you mgiht just have a foundation for something big. They've retooled themselves with great drafts much in the way that the Rays did about 5 years ago. Speaking of All-Star games, keep an eye out for an upcoming post on All-Star game jerseys!