Kuzul

Phillies fans breathlessly await this offseason’s big-name acquisition.

After the 2009 season, the Phillies traded for Roy Halladay, committing $60 million to him, per MLB.com.

After the 2010 season, recognizing how foolish they had been in trading Cliff Lee away in the first place, the Phillies brought Lee back for $120 million, per sbnation.com.

Those moves made sense and, for the most part, Halladay and Lee have delivered on their contracts.

Unfortunately, as wise as the Halladay and Lee acquisitions were, the Phillies lost the plot during the 2011 offseason.

The signing of Jonathan Papelbon for $50 million (per ESPN.com) was only marginally defensible when it happened. Now, with three years left on the deal, that decision has turned out to be a serious error in judgment.

Mind you, this is in no way an indictment of Papelbon or his performance. 

Unlike many of the players to whom the Phillies paid eight-figure salaries in 2012, Papelbon did more or less what the Phillies expected him to do.

Papelbon saved 38 games. His earned run average of 2.44 was sterling, as was his 1.06 WHIP. Striking out 92 batters in 70 games was also in line with what the Phillies expected to get from Papelbon when they gave him all that money.

And when you look around the National League, it is hard to identify many closers you would rather have than Papelbon.

Craig Kimbrel is one.

Kimbrel shared the league lead in saves, posted absurdly low numbers for earned run average (1.01) and WHIP (.654) and he is only 24 years of age.

Aroldis Chapman, also 24, saved 38 games, but with much better peripheral statistics than Papelbon (1.51 earned run average, .809 WHIP, 122 strikeouts in 71.2 innings pitched).

But Chapman is only a year removed from his predominantly lost 2011 season, when the Reds could not figure out what to do with him and he struggled with injury.

After Kimbrel and Chapman, Papelbon compares favorably with the premier closers in the rest of the National League.

Jason Motte saved 42 games, but 2012 marked the first time in his career that he had ever saved more than nine games, and he is 30 years old. 

Beyond Motte, you see a number of journeymen and league-average types: Joel Hanrahan, John Axford, J.J. Putz, et al.

Given Papelbon’s track record and his solid production in 2012, the Phillies would likely prefer him to any of those closers.

So why is the Papelbon signing such a mistake?

If the San Francisco Giants proved anything in their recent World Series run, it is that Billy Beane’s famous theory that just about anyone can close games is true.

When the Giants won the 2010 World Series, Brian Wilson made a name for himself as a quirky, lights-out closer with a funky beard. 

This season, however, Wilson pitched in two games before needing reconstructive elbow surgery. The Giants’ regular-season saves leader was Santiago Casilla.

But Sergio Romo saved all four games in the 2012 World Series. 

Beyond that, the eight figures that Papelbon commanded meant that the Phillies entered 2012 with plans to have inexpensive pitchers bridge games from the pricey starting staff to him.

Jose Contreras, Antonio Bastardo, David Herndon and Michael Stutes were all projected to pitch in the seventh and eighth innings of close games.

Of that group, all but Bastardo got hurt, and Bastardo‘s performance was so poor that by the end of the season he was primarily used in low-leverage situations.

Further, because manager Charlie Manuel was exceptionally loath to use Papelbon for more than one inning, the Phillies were eventually compelled to entrust late inning leads to the likes of B.J. Rosenberg, Jeremy Horst and Joe Savery, with predictable results.

At this point, the Phillies are probably stuck with Papelbon, at least in 2013.

His trade value with $39 million more due over the next three seasons is not going to be great. As such, the Phillies are best served hoping that he will churn out another healthy season of 30-plus saves.

If they had it to do over again, though, the Phillies would probably have Papelbon make his generational money somewhere else.

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Chase Utley is in a no-win situation in 2013 because of his contract situation, his injury history and his lack of production in the past two seasons.

Utley is in the final year of a seven-year, $85 million contract. As so often happens with long-term deals, Utley’s production has waned precipitously over the past six seasons. From 2007-2010 (the first four years of the contract) Utley made the All-Star team every season. He earned MVP votes in each of those seasons but 2010, which was also the first year that Utley’s knees became a concern. 

When Utley missed 47 games in 2010, it was the team’s first real indication that maybe, just maybe, Utley’s body would not let him be the player he had been again, like, ever.

By spring training in 2011, it was apparent that Utley’s knees were degenerating, the sort of injury that often cannot be fixed by surgery. He missed 59 games in 2011; because he came back in time for the playoffs, his absence was noticeable, but ultimately easy to forget.

Less so in 2012, as the Phillies‘ five-year playoff run came to an end while Utley played only four more games (83) than he missed (79.) Perhaps more alarming was Utley’s nose-diving production. From 2005 through 2008, Utley drove in more than 100 runs every year, hit no fewer than 22 home runs, hit no worse than .291 and scored more than 100 runs three times, including a league-leading 131 runs scored in 2006.

So it is not just the games he is missing that now trouble the Phillies, it is what he is (not) doing when he plays: eleven home runs in each of the past two seasons, 44 and 45 runs batted in, batting averages of .259 and .256. Sure, he is consistent now. It is just consistent mediocrity.

And this is why Utley’s coming contract year is such a problem. Utley will no doubt be heavily motivated to “prove he is healthy” and post numbers sufficient to convince the Phillies, or some other team, to give him another multi-year deal. Maybe he can do it, too.

If he does it, though, the Phillies and their fans will almost certainly question openly why he was able to do it in 2013 when he was not able to do it in 2011 or 2012. Particularly this past season, when Ryan Howard missed so much time with his Achilles injury, the Phillies desperately missed Utley’s bat in the middle of the lineup. Have his numbers declined? Sure. But he is still miles better than Freddy Galvis, Michael Martinez, Mike Fontenot and Pete Orr.

Utley’s worst-case scenario, of course, is having a year productive enough to get him signed elsewhere but not good enough to convince the Phillies to keep him. Because at that point, the fanbase will almost certainly feel that Utley used two expensive seasons to keep himself healthy at the team’s expense—and at theirs.

The team and its fans have no choice but to hope that Utley comes back healthy, strong and reasonably like the player he has been for them in the past.

It will be interesting, though, to see what that ultimately means.

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Technically, open season on MLB free agents does not begin until the sixth day after the World Series concludes.

But you could forgive most fans for feeling like free agent season really began Friday night, with Josh Hamilton being booed off the field in his last two at-bats as the Texas Rangers bowed quietly to the Baltimore Orioles in the one-game playoff between the two American League wild cards.

When Hamilton said it “doesn’t matter if I play here or somewhere else,” you figure he meant he’ll be playing somewhere other than Texas in 2013.  

He won’t be the only one.

Other prominent players looking for huge dollars (and possibly new uniforms) include Michael Bourn, B.J. Upton and Zack Greinke.

These are just some of the players—who the likely active buyers this offseason—will be vying for.

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The newest member of the Philadelphia Phillies‘ 2,000-hit club is a very hard player to define.  Jimmy Rollins is, and is not, a lot of things.

“J-Roll” has been the Phillies’ undisputed leadoff man for the significant majority of the past 12 seasons, the last five of which saw his team make the playoffs and included a pennant and a World Series title.

He is not, though, a “leadoff” hitter.  His career batting average is .270, which would not be such a problem except that his career on-base percentage is .328. 

In a career where he more often than not got 700-plus plate appearances per season, he has never drawn more than 58 walks in a year.

Leadoff hitters get on base any way they can.  Even despite 2011 and 2012 statistical lines that have dulled his brilliance, Ichiro Suzuki’s career on-base percentage is .365.  Yes, his career average is .322, and yes, that certainly explains some of the difference.  But then, Ichiro put the ball on the ground and exploited his speed, something Rollins only seems to do when he feels like it.

Rollins has speed.  He has 398 stolen bases against just 83 times caught stealing, a success rate of just below 80 percent.

But Rollins is not a “basestealer.”  He has led the National League in stolen bases only once, in his first full season in 2001.  He has never been the type who could steal 60-plus bases for three consecutive years like Jose Reyes (2005-2007) or for that matter lead the league in steals for years in a row (Reyes and Michael Bourn).

Rollins has pop.  He has hit 30 home runs in a season (during his glorious 2007 Most Valuable Player campaign) and has 10 double-digit home-run years in the record books.

But he is not a “power hitter,” much as he would like to be.  Tallying 187 home runs in 7,395 career at-bats is a home run every 39.5 at-bats.  As an example, Troy Tulowitzki has 130 home runs—in 2,813 at-bats.

Rollins is a very good defensive shortstop.  He has three Gold Gloves to his credit (2007-2009) and a career fielding percentage of .983.  Probably his defense had as much to do with the Phillies’ willingness to sign him to his current three-year contract extension as did his marginally declining offensive skills.

But he is not an elite defensive player, in the manner of Ozzie Smith or Omar Vizquel.  Or even Derek Jeter, who has five Gold Gloves despite playing short left field for the past few years.

And while Jeter is being mentioned, it has to be said: Rollins is the leader of the Phillies, but to call him a “leader” is probably stretching the meaning of the word.

Rollins leads the Phillies because when he plays well, they play well.  His 2007 MVP season was not coincidentally the team’s first playoff appearance in 14 years.  In 2009, Rollins led the league in plate appearances and at-bats and scored 100 runs while also collecting that third Gold Glove.

But “leaders” do not have multiple incidents of failing to run out ground balls and pop-ups.  “Leaders” do not show up late to the stadium without a reason.  Basically, leaders do not put their managers in no-win situations (bench the player and hurt the team, or excuse the offense and look weak.)

For that matter, leaders do not put their teammates in the awkward position of having to answer questions about their own poor choices.

The enigma that is Rollins extends into the stands.  He famously chided Phillies’ fans for being “too quiet” during Game 2 of the 2011 National League Division Series against the St. Louis Cardinals.  But when fans booed him for not running out a pop-up last week, well, he had a lot less to say.  “Hell no,” Rollins replied to interrogating reporters. “(Manuel) already told you what happened. There you go.”

That’s not “I made a mistake and I will do better going forward,” is it?

Even if Rollins only plays the next two seasons guaranteed on his current contract, he projects easily to pass Mike Schmidt (2,234) for the all-time Phillies lead in hits.  If he can play five more seasons, 2,500 hits and a ticket to the Hall of Fame become real possibilities.

Perhaps only then will Phillies fans finally know what sort of player Jimmy Rollins really was. 

Because, even at this late date, it is still pretty hard to know.

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Ask someone who does not know much about baseball why the Phillies’ season is in the hopper and you generally hear some variation of “they had a lot of injuries.” The only sane response to that is, “of course they did.”

There was a time in baseball when players got better as they got older. It wasn’t that long ago, actually. 

Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs—after never having hit even 50 before—at the age of 36. Roger Clemens went 20-3 at the age of 38. Luis Gonzalez hit 57 home runs—after never having hit even 32 before—at the age of 33. 

Yes, 2001 (the year all that happened) was awesome, if that was your sort of thing.

Draw your own conclusions as to whether all of those feats were nature, coincidence or something else.

But as far as the 2012 Phillies are concerned, all you need to know is that it is not 2001 any more. In 2012, players in their 30s and 40s do not get bigger, stronger, faster and better. Instead, they get smaller, weaker, slower and worse.

And they get hurt. Boy, do they get hurt.

Somehow, the Phillies’ front office never saw any of this coming. As an object lesson then, here is a quick look back at the “unforeseeable” injuries that in retrospect aren’t quite so shocking.

Jim Thome, 41 years of age, was going to be a stopgap at first base until the incumbent came back from his own horrific injury. Quickly, though, it became apparent that Thome’s body could no longer handle the rigors of first base, even sporadically. The Phillies traded Thome to the Baltimore Orioles, putatively so he would be in a position to DH some and prolong his career. 

As of this writing, Thome is on the disabled list with a neck issue.

Jose Contreras, 40, was going to serve as a valuable linchpin at the back end of the bullpen. His earned run average was over five when his right elbow more or less exploded. He will not pitch again this season and the jury is very much out on whether he will ever pitch again.

Roy Halladay, 35, was supposed to make another 34 or 35 starts, win another 15-20 games, post an ERA under 3.50 and lead the pitching staff. But he couldn’t do that once he came up with a lat injury that knocked him out for almost two months. Again, it’s not as if Halladay was making a Cy Young case before hitting the disabled list, not at 4-5 with a 3.98 ERA.

Cliff Lee, 33, was also thought to be an “every fifth day” pitcher. But when his manager, Charlie Manuel, inexplicably decided to have him pitch ten innings, in San Francisco, in April, Lee missed three turns.  Is the left oblique strain Lee complained of soon after that game the reason he is presently 2-7?  Maybe not. You doubt it helped much, though.

Carlos Ruiz, 33, was slotted as the everyday catcher. He would get appropriate breathers from Brian Schneider, 35, but Chooch was the man on whom the plan largely depended. Ruiz, after all, was entrusted with handling more than $50M worth of starting pitching and an eight-figure closer. 

That Ruiz hit .335 with 14 home runs was just icing on the cake…right up to the point where he came up with Plantar fasciitis and landed on the disabled list. He will remain there for the foreseeable future. 

Schneider would have helped out, but he missed the entire month of July with his own injury.

You are almost 600 words into this article and you still have not read the names Chase Utley, 33, or Ryan Howard, 32. You may have heard that they missed some time, too.

Well, at least Jimmy Rollins, 33, stayed healthy.

Then again, the calendar still says “August.”

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Most nights, for an inning or so, it all still makes sense—the Philadelphia Phillies still look like the Phillies.

Friday night’s game, for example, saw Roy Halladay take the ball.  He gave up a solo home run to Carlos Beltran in the first inning, but after that he was really excellent and never in any serious trouble.

Just how you remember it. 

The Phillies’ first four batters in the game were Jimmy Rollins, Juan Pierre, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard.  Four legitimate major league baseball players, two former National League Most Valuable Players. 

Or to put it another way, an aggregate of over $47 million in salary to four hitters.

Save for the occasions when Jonathan Papelbon ($11 million) comes in at the end of the game (as he did Friday night), that is where the similarities to the Phillies you remember ends.

After Howard on Friday night, the next four hitters in the Phillies’ lineup—the team that led the National League in run differential going away in 2011—were Domonic Brown, Nate Schierholtz, Erik Kratz and Kevin Frandsen.

Or to put it another way, an aggregate of far, far less than $47 million in salary to four hitters.  Actually, far less than $4.7 million, as only Schierholtz is making more than $1 million this season.

Three games out of five, you still get to watch Halladay, Cliff Lee or Cole Hamels pitch.  You are no doubt well aware of their significant contracts.  Hamels is getting by on $15 million this season before his lucrative extension kicks in.  Halladay and Lee are being paid $20 million and $21.5 million, respectively, this season.

Trouble is, once they stop pitching and before (if) Papelbon pitches, the pitching staff, like the back half of the lineup, gets tough to recognize.

Antonio Bastardo is still there, but after him, so many of the names and faces are so hard to place.  Could you pick Josh Lindblom, B.J. Rosenberg or Jeremy Horst out of a lineup?  You might be the only one.

Going back to Friday night, the last four position players in the lineup combined to go 3-for-12, all of the hits singles, with one run batted in (Brown) and no runs scored.

Utley bailed the offense out with a mammoth home run to deep right center field in the bottom of the eighth inning.  Rollins, standing on third base when Utley struck it, simply smiled and pointed skyward.  And again, it felt like old times, if only for a moment.

All the while, an announced crowd of 43,122 (98.8 percent capacity, if you care) did what it has done for the past five successful seasons.  It sat idly when things were going poorly, it roused when the Phillies threatened, it willed some big outs from Halladay.  Then it erupted when Utley played the hero.

This, then, is how the remainder of your 2012 Phillies season is likely to play out.

Even though the team’s playoff hopes are all but dead, the park is going to be plenty full for many of the remaining home dates…because the money is already spent on the tickets.  That money is not coming back, either, at least not on StubHub or eBay.  The tickets have been devalued by the team’s poor play.

In the past, the choice was often just to stay home and eat the tickets.  But when the cheapest seat in the stadium costs $20 (and with so many seats already bought for so much more) it is much harder to justify watching the game on television or, for that matter, going out and doing something else. 

That would mean burning entertainment dollars twice on the same night.

So on the surface, then, the 2012 Phillies continue to look sort of like the Phillies teams of the recent past: plenty of people in the seats, big names in the lineup and for most games, big names on the mound.

Looking closer, though, it does not take long to notice that these Phillies are not the genuine article.

You usually know by the middle of the second inning.

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It is Jonathan Papelbon, not Cliff Lee, whom the Phillies should be trying to move via waiver trade this month.

All indications now are that Lee is not going anywhere in 2012.  ESPN has reported that waivers on Lee expired over the weekend, and CBSSports.com’s Jon Heyman tweeted today that the Los Angeles Dodgers were one of the teams that Lee could block a trade to.

But the Phillies are still eleven games under .500 and on a slow boat to nowhere with a little more than a month and a half to go.  This is not a time for the front office to idly count days passing.  This is a time for creativity, and action. 

The “trade deadline” has passed, but teams are still able to make deals.  The complication for the Phillies in trading Papelbon now (and for any trading partner) would be that Papelbon must clear waivers.  Explanations of the waiver trade process are abundant—a good one was provided recently by FoxSports.com.

Why trade Papelbon?  It is not his fault that his team has not had as many wins to save as anyone expected.  His numbers—3-4, 3.00 ERA, 1.13 WHIP, 24 saves, three blown saves—are in line with expectations given career marks of 26-23, 2.39 ERA, 1.03 WHIP, 243 saves and 32 blown saves.

Which is exactly why the Phillies should try to move Papelbon, now.

It is patently obvious that the forces that convinced the Phillies to sign Papelbon to a four-year, $50M contract this past offseason have proven ephemeral.

Papelbon’s signing, while costly, was justifiable under the assumption that the pitching-rich, hitting-challenged Phillies would be playing a lot of close games and would have many slim leads to protect.

Unfortunately, the hitting turned out to be not just challenged, but largely non-existent—as of this writing, the Phillies are 19th in Major League Baseball in both runs scored and slugging percentage, and they are 21st in on-base percentage.  That kind of production will not normally keep a closer busy…

…unless he is being asked to pitch in non-save situations, which Papelbon has done seventeen times so far in 2012.

The Phillies will need to be open to the idea of paying at least some of Papelbon’s contract if they hope to move him.  But while the idea of paying someone not to pitch for you is never appealing, the truth is that the Phillies as presently constituted are simply not the sort of team that can justify holding onto an eight-figure closer.  The sellout streak is over, you know.

Fortunately for the Phillies, there are some teams with serious postseason hopes, deep pockets…and iffy closer situations.

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim have settled on Ernesto Frieri as their closer, whose performance thus far has been spectacular.  But he got the job on May 23.  He was in San Diego to start the season.  Is that who the Angels want to take the ball with a playoff series on the line?

The Los Angeles Dodgers have tabbed Kenley Jansen to close their games.  But he has six blown saves so far, compared to 21 games saved.  The Dodgers have made it clear that they will be aggressive and will spend money.  They could decide that Papelbon is the last piece of the puzzle in 2012.

And the Detroit Tigers have walked the high wire with Jose Valverde closing games.  He has 21 saves against four blown saves…but his ERA is 3.63, and he has only 33 strikeouts against 20 walks.  Surely the Tigers would feel more confident giving the ball to Papelbon in a big spot.

At some level, it almost seems unfair to be targeting Papelbon as a player to move.  Like Hunter Pence and Shane Victorino before him, Papelbon would thus be punished for the shortcomings of his teammates, despite having a representative season in his own right.

But if the Phillies are serious about freeing up money to build around Lee, Cole Hamels and Roy Halladay in 2013, the time to slip out of the knot that is Papelbon’s contract is now.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

It will take more than three wins against the terrible Colorado Rockies and the very injured Los Angeles Dodgers to save the Phillies‘ season from being a bust.

Five straight National League East titles, three megastar aces returning—the Phillies were ticketed everywhere to get back to the postseason.  No, they probably were not going to win 102 games again, but with a second wild card in play, it seemed nearly impossible that a team of this pedigree could lose its way.

Well, their recent three-game win streak brought them all the way back to…40-51, 13 games out of the division lead and four games out of fourth place in the division.  That tempting second wild card?  Ten games away.

You can call this season anything you like.  I am calling it a bust.

The Phillies have a lot of company in decimating the hopes of fanbases.  Meet the devastating bust teams of the past decade.

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