Well you've been waiting for it and here it my take on every team's offseason. I'm sure you've all been losing a lot of sleep over when this would come out, but you're prayers are answered. Okay seriously, I know everyone's doing this 30 teams in 30 days things so honestly how many can you actually read or watch, so I'm going to keep them short to give you an idea where everyone stands, at least in my humble opinion. A quick summary of any major moves or losses and a standard letter grade, we'll start with the team at the top The Philadelphia Phillies and the NL East.
As they very impressively showed this past October the Phillies are a well rounded team that is deep in talent in almost every regard. From its star-studded infield to their superb bullpen and stellar front line of starting pitchers of Cole Hamels and Brett Myers, its a team that is not lacking in talent. But as the last decade as showed us it is not easy to repeat for even the deepest team and I think its fair to say the Phils are not as complete as they were on that fateful day in October.
The most glaring area of concern is the loss of Pat Burrell and the addition of Raul Ibanez. Signed for a 3 year 31 million dollar deal the Phils really overshot the market and grossly overpaid for a guy that isn't nearly as valuable as the guy he's replacing. He's 37 to Pat's 32, a left handed hitter, something they already have too much of, and he's not nearly as a prolific power hitter as pat the bat is. Still worse, they didn't offer arbitration to Burrell so they lost a draft pick for that and then they signed Ibanez and lost a draft pick for him! Indeed, paying for an extra year for a guy who's considerably older with at best similar prowess with the bat is a curious move.
In addition the Phillies lost JC Romero for 50 games to a banned susbtance which is also a considerable blow. While he is going to be back as this postseason showed he is vitally important to the success of that team and the bullpen, tossing 59 innings striking out 52 for a pretty tidy 2.75 ERA. While its nothing earth shattering, his absence for nearly half of the season will hurt them.
In sum, while they made a pretty dubious move in Ibanez, this team is still young talented and only getting better. Hamels as he showed in the posteason seems ready to take off and become a prennial cy-young candidate and with 3 MVP candidates in the infield they're not lacking pop. That said they didn't do much to really improve themselves so I find it very hard to believe they'll be hositing another trophy this year. I'm projecting they'll be in line with about how many games they won last year and be in contention for the playoffs
Grade B
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