Archive for March 10th, 2010

One fun thing about being a member of a sports forum is trolling the Mets boards and seeing what these unlovable losers are crying about on any given day. Since they have little else to talk about, except having 14 catchers, they decided to have a discussion about the concessions at Shiti Field.

Now Phillies fans, for the most part, try to stay out of the Mets forum for the simple fact that they have some mods who have a trigger happy ban hammer and enjoy stroking their internet peen. But on this fine day a member of the Phillies forum, who simply goes by “I Like The Phils”, decided to chime in on the subject with this gem:

Whatever you eat, don’t choke.

This of course netted him a two month ban. You will be missed ILTP. This ones for you.

Just wanted to give some updates.  There’s a couple things worth noting before we jump in.  Full spring training stats aren’t available.  The numbers on the team pages are from Grapefruit league action only.  Please please please keep in mind that spring training performance only affects position battles.  If Ben Francisco hits .400/.550/.800 he’s not going to take Jayson Werth’s job.  As we move toward the end of spring, we’ll look at the numbers.  For now it’s just news…

-JC Romero and Rich Dubee are both pessimistic about an opening day return for the lefty.  I’m ready to break out the permanent marker for Antonio Bastardo.  He will make the opening day roster barring injury.  The 7th spot is now a battle between sentimental favorite Scott Mathieson and an army of minor leaguers and NRIs.  As of today, that pack is headed by Drew Carpenter and the loser of the battle for the 5th spot between Kendrick and Moyer.  Speaking of which…

-Rich Dubee has restated that Kyle Kendrick must steal the job from Moyer.  He cited some concerns over Moyer’s endurance but otherwise indicated that he’s pretty locked in as the #5 at this early stage of spring training.  For what it’s worth, both pitchers have been fine thus far.  It remains to be seen if they’ll consider wandering north with Kendrick in the pen or if they want to keep him stretched out in extended spring training/AAA.  I’d bet on the latter.

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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