I’ll get to Halladay in a minute because first I must comment on how horrible an experience this was for my ears/brain. Mike Morgan and Brian Jordan headed the broadcast team last night for Atlanta’s CSS station. Now, if you watched on MLB Network like most of us had to you were forced to listen to the garbage being spewed from their mouths. Also someone should tell these guys it’s HALLaday not Holliday, I seriously can’t stand that. I know I ruined a couple of people’s nights when I sent this food for thought out through tweet. But enough about these assholes, follow me ATJ for what happened with the Phils.

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Yesterday I rolled out a simple player payroll spreadsheet.  Such instruments are useful to the organization to help form soft plans and goals.  To us fans, a rough payroll estimate gives us an idea of the strengths and weaknesses of future rosters.  With that in hand, we can speculate which direction the organization envisions and even make suggestions.  We already took a quick look at 2011 and saw that pretty much everything was decided.  21 of the 25 guys I listed will be returning to the Phils.  This doesn’t even include guys like Antonio Bastardo who are all but certain to play a role this year and in the future.  This makes space on the 25 man roster tight for all comers in 2011.  Now it’s time to extend our sights out another year to 2012.

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Or: Not Another Beard Post

See what I did there?

Did you guys know that this Jason Worth character grew a beard this off-season? Also his hair is kind of long, too. As a matter of fact, he closely resembles Jeff Bridges from that one movie he was in!

We all know Werf hasn’t been very forthright with information about his choice of coiffure; preferring just to let his mane speak for itself (which it has, at length.) My good pal Dave Brown was ballsy enough to ask Jayson if he could touch it, just to prove that it was real. Spoiler alert: hell no.

But just how far has Beard Mania™ gone? Well, pretty gosh darn far. Far enough that the bigwigs at the venerable Topps Trading Card Company have taken notice and may consider preserving the legacy that is Jayson Werth’s Beard in a very, shall we say, personal manner. Check out how after the jump.

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Ruben's smitten!

This is the final installment of a series in which I attempt to objectively evaluate Ruben Amaro’s performance as general manager. Part I can be found here, and Part II here.

I concluded Part II with a paragraph that I probably should have saved for the end of this post. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a “edit” function on this blog, or a “delete” key on my keyboard, so my slight error will live on in infamy. Still, when you examine Ruben’s dealings with other ballclubs, as I will today, it remains apparent that he is capable of alternating strokes of genius and mediocrity. The trades, and accompanying analysis, after the jump.

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Obviously a fascist

In an online forum, the purpose of a moderator is to keep everything from going to shit.  What that should mean is squelching the trolls and dumbass kids who fail to contribute even a modicum of positive influence on the forum.  A good forum will have many good users who weed out the bad by constantly making them look foolish.  A person can be made to look dumb only so many times before he/she goes elsewhere.  I like to think that Chris, Ruckus, Liney, and I are that type of user on our particular forum.  We do a lot of good in our forum teaching others how to think critically about baseball and the Phillies.

Which brings me to why I’m annoyed.  I created a thread explicitly to contain our blog’s thoughts.  The idea was to keep things in one place.  We get the benefit of a little promotion while the forum gets the benefit of not having our crap spread around 10 different threads. 100% less “I can answer your question but I’m just going to link you to my blog article” is a good thing.  And of course, because this post has happened, you probably have figured out that thread has been closed.  I don’t blame the particular mod in question for blindly following the rules, what I’m bothered by is people applying arbitrary rules that they have no stake in.  It doesn’t matter to this particular mod if the Phillies forum has a thread that promotes a blog.  He doesn’t use the Phillies forum.  Shouldn’t it be up to the discretion of the Phillies moderator to close threads in the Phillies forum?  I sent this to the mod who closed the thread.

The express purpose of the thread was to make the forum better. A number of PSD Phillies forum users are followers of the blog and like to remain updated. By allowing us use of a thread, we’re able to keep other threads uncluttered. Otherwise our work would be linked into whatever thread was appropriate and discussed there. I see this as detracting from the forum because it changes our post behavior. By keeping updates in one place, we the bloggers can continue to post in other threads as we usually would and the forum goers have the option of following our blog or not.

Further, for those users that do like to follow us, an updates thread provides a richer PSD experience. There hasn’t been any negative feedback in the thread from the Phillies forum goers.

I ask that you reconsider your decision to close the thread. A dedicated thread keeps things much neater and tidier. Further, it keeps everyone involved happy. Please consider re-opening it.

His response:

A thread specifically dedicated to a blog is not what we allow. If the thread is about a Philly related topic and refers to blog it is fine. But threads referring to the blog specifically are not what we want.

sigh I don’t understand.  I try to make things as simple as possible and they want it done the hard way.  I guess the forum will now become an extension of our blog.  Hello Prospects Thread.  Allow me to introduce you to The A Team’s Top 10 Prospects…

Douche of the Day: Billy Wagner

On the day he is scheduled to pitch against us in a spring training exhibition, lets all take a step back and reflect on just how much of a douche he really is.

Google is pretty awesome isn’t it?  Attached is a spreadsheet of the Phillies payroll commitments as noted by Jeff Euston at Cots Contracts.  I will be updating the data as the season goes along, the spreadsheet is intended to provide everyone a quick snap shot of the Phillies commitment to the 25 man roster.  Keep in mind there are plenty of minor leaguers also making serious coin and some of the players have performance incentives that may scale up the value of their contracts by the end of the season.  Option buyouts are not indicated in the spreadsheet.  Most options have buyouts, you can look those up at Cots.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0ArCib-AD2n2VdHRfdDBrMGdrdVdIRkRhTEVUN2dIOWc&hl=en

A number of simple observations should jump out.  First, the Phillies are heavily committed to 2011.  Only 4 players are set to come off the books in Moyer (8m), Werth (7m), Durbin (2.15m), and Dobbs (1.35m).  Pay raises are set to eliminate those savings.  An additional 4.95 mil could come off the books if options to J.C. Romero (4.5m/.25m buyout) and Juan Castro (.75m/.05m buyout) are declined.  With only about 2-7 million to spend on four to six roster spots, 2011 looks like it will be a very boring offseason to be a Phillies fan.  Hopefully the club will make it a shorter and sweeter offseason with a Championship.  Looking ahead, you’ll probably notice that things open up a bit in 2012.  This will be looked at more in depth tomorrow.

For those of you hoping to retain Jayson Werth, the 2011 payroll certainly bodes ill.  This is especially concerning since Ruben and Montgomery have publicly hinted at a firm payroll ceiling around 140 mil for opening day rosters.  Creative options to retaining Werth will be explored in a few days.

So while we’re all well versed in the Phillies offseason moves, I’ve decided to inform and educate about what our fellow NL East rivals have been up to since September of Oh-Nine.  I’m starting with the Mets, because they’re LOLtastic.  Omar Minaya is the ringleader of the largest circus that the MLB has seen in quite some time.

Honk Honk

Their offseason will be known more for their non-moves to fix their holes, than their actual transactions.  No Joel Pinero, no Jon Garland, no Ben Sheets, no John Lackey.  Yes, they signed Jason Bay, but unless he can pitch every fifth day, his impact is going to be fairly neutral.  The pitching staff that had a combined 7.3 WAR (only above the Padres, Nationals, and Brewers) will again rely on a post-surgery Johan Santana, John Maine, Mike Pelfrey, Oliver Perez, and a fill-in youngster.  So here we go, after the jump…

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He stole half of this list

It’s that time of year when everyone is publishing lists of all kinds and sizes and varieties.  We at Long Drive didn’t want to fall by the wayside so here is our own list: The 2010 Top 10 Phillies Prospects!  Some of you may recognize this as a slightly edited version of the list I posted on PSD.  I spruced things up a bit by using a 1-5 star ranking system which I will briefly explain in a moment.  We also did a solid 2 minutes of collaborating.  I  included a player’s upside and downside and 2010 age.  All these player evaluations come with the qualification if healthy. These projections are a median expectation.  The upside/downside is provided to indicate certainty.  And check out the links…there’s some video or stats pages for most of the guys.

One final note before I plunge into things.  James at Phuture Phillies recently published his Top 30 prospects list.  His work is far more ambitious than mine.  I highly recommend reading it AFTER mine.  We have differing opinions on a couple things, mostly he’s just more bullish on Gillies and Singleton than I am and less bullish on Brown and Valle.

The ranking system:

• 5 star – Future All-Star/Elite talent.
• 4 star – MLB average to above average talents.  Players who will consistently put up between 2-4 WAR most healthy seasons.
• 3 star – MLB role players.  These guys may or may not be starters but they will usually be between .5-2.5 WAR per season.
• 2 star – Replacement level/Organizational soldier.  These guys will probably have fringe MLB talent and will struggle to become more than the 25th man on a roster.  Sometimes these guys are briefly useful and sometimes they fool everyone.
• 1 star – Really? is this ever going to show up on a top 10 list?  A 1 star athlete has no semblance of talent or projectability.  When a player is listed with 1 star downside, that means there is considerable risk of him being a complete bust.

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Brian McCann spotted a penis.