Phillies Preview, Part Deux

It's baaack.

3rd Base, or: What Exactly Is So Bad About David Bell?

I still think most of David Bell's perceived suckitude comes from two sources. One would be his initial season in Philadelphia. He'd definitely been publicly wooed by Ed Wade, he was coming off a World-Series year in San Francisco, and he batted .195. Wow. Basically, he was hurt all year, but you can't "play hurt" if it makes you hit .195. The second reason he gets pigpiled upon is that he just looks HELPLESS at the plate. He's a weird personification of all of us in Philly; a little pallid, bleary, unshaven, overmatched by major-league stuff. There's also some talk going around that he's a subpar fielder (see above image). That's not really true - although I've certainly seen him botch a fair number of plays, but in this case, anecdotal evidence doesn't really hold up against facts - bad back and all, David Bell is a actually really good third baseman.

Also - how did we completely lose sight of the fact that he had a career year in 2004?

533 AB, .291 BA, .363 OBP, 18 HR

Aaron Rowand will probably put up a similar line this year, and people will be 90 times more excited about it. Why? Because he won't look like grim, joyless David Bell when he does it. So yeah, basically, Bell isn't as hopeless as he might seem. There's a shot that, if he gets really healthy, his defensive contributions could offset his offensive shortcomings and add up to a replacement-level third baseman. Yes, he was terrible at the plate last year; yes, he grounded into double plays with tremendous resolve; yes, he looks like he has a vitamin deficiency. With all that, the universal chorus of "David Fuckin' Bell" that he stirs up isn't really warranted; he's just a weak link in an otherwise strong lineup.

Catcher:

As is this guy. I actually think Lieberthal has been one of the key links of the Phillies organization for a long time; he seems like a good guy, is moderately funny in local car commercials, and has even had a couple of stellar seasons for a catcher (dude hit 30 home runs in 1999? Jesus.) Along with Bell, he formed the 7-8-9 "black hole" in the lineup spot; essentially, the Phils had power, plate discipline, and (sometimes) clutch hitting at 1-6, and then none of those things at 7-9. 34 is old for a catcher, and I don't see Lieberthal getting any better; hopefully the Phillies will be able to get prospects Carlos Ruiz and Jason Jaramillo some time late this year or next year. I can't really speak for Lieberthal's catching impact; he doesn't throw a lot of guys out, but doesn't make a lot of mistakes, either, and his handling of the pitchers (minus Padilla and Floyd) has seemed pretty solid. Sal Fasano, another old catcher, will be backing up Lieberthal, and will probably hit as many home runs as Lieby in 1/4 the at-bats. Fasano will also hit .250 or below, so there's that. Anyway, if Lieberthal gets hurt, I don't actually see the Phillies being that much less productive.


Left Field:

Ah, Cousin Pat. The Pat Burrell face has been one of the simultaneous joys and despairs of my time in Philly. Pat was #7 in MVP voting last year. That's really weird. Obviously, he was really good for the Phils in 2005; .281, 32 HR, and 117 RBIs was the kind of season the team was expecting after he signed his humongous contract. His .313/.429/.598 line with runners in scoring position was pretty solid, too. He has a good outfield arm. He says all of the right things and seems finally to have his head screwed on right. He's got a good outfield arm, and is more capable of making a big play defensively than his counterpart in right.

So why is it that I have NO CONFIDENCE AT ALL IN HIM?

Once a player has a breakout year (in 2002), signs a long-ass contract, and then hits TWO-OH-NINE for an ENTIRE SEASON, it's hard not to think anything can happen. Burrell's 2003 season was one of the worst 500-AB seasons in recent memory; yes, he still hit 20 HRs, and his on-base numbers weren't bad considering, but man, was he awful. You take more than two years to get over a season like that. I'll believe in Burrell one day, and I think he's one of the better outfield options in the game, but for a while, at least, he'll stil be The Guy Who Fell Apart. Sorry, Pat. Keep at it, friend.

Center Field:

Center field wasn't really the problem for the Phillies last year, but they went out and solved it anyhow. You're telling me that either Kenny Lofton, a solid player who hit .335 last year doing part-time work, or Jason Michaels a .400-OBP guy, couldn't have brought in a solid middle-reliever on their own? Or that Thome wasn't worth a solid middle-of-the-rotation starter to a pitching-rich AL team?

Look, we've seen all of the "Aaron Rowand will play great with Phily fans" articles; good guy, plays the "right way" (read: is white), fantastic fielder, is "scrappy"...the list of Dykstra comparisons goes on. But - he hit .270 last year, with poor power and OBP numbers, and doesn't really strike fear into the hearts of anyone. Not that Lofton or Michaels ever did either; we just could have kept one of them on and filled a more important hole in the rotation or bullpen.

All of that having been said, I'm mildly excited for the Rowand era. Even if I think it was a little bit of a shabby return for Thome and a chunk of Thome's salary. At least one of the prospects that came with Rowand (Gio Gonzalez) has pretty great stuff; but if Thome hits 40 home runs this year (I don't think he will), this trade looks pretty stupid.

Right Field:

Now we come a real point of controversy - why try and trade Bobby Abreu? Why would you ever try to trade your team's most consistent offensive producer, a Phillies-size version of Pujols or A-Rod? A guaranteed 20-20 (and perhaps a 30-30) guy? A guy who hit home runs in, what, 9 out of ten games at one point when the Phils were floundering last year? Oh, yeah...

He's a great Latino player in Philly.

Abreu probably isn't really "clutch" if you restrict the definition of the term to "last guy to bat in the ninth with the team down a run." From an anecdotal perspective, very few Phillies fans can remember him coming through in a situation like that...although to be honest, I've been to about 20 Phils games in the last two years, and the only "clutch hitting" performances I can really remember are two by Ryan Howard and David Bell. However, the Phillies always get shellacked when I attend ballgames - they should probably thank their lucky stars that I'm too broke to buy tickets this year.

Okay, enough irrational ranting - despite some lapses in the field, Abreu is the Phillies' most important player coming into 2006. There's just an incredible dishonesty in the way he's being treated. Grrr.

Bench:

Yikes. Most teams really don't have great bench options overall, and the Phils are far from an exception to that rule. The Yankees bench sucked for the last 8-10 years, and they've won the AL East just about every one of those years.

However, if players at key positions (2B, SS, RF) get hurt, the Phillies are fucked.

Abraham Nunez is a passable replacement for Bell at 3rd, as is Alex S. Gonzalez, who wasn't completely awful last year and is a plus defender. Basically, both of their lifetime numbers look like David Bell's 2005, which is not good but means that they'll be serviceable replacements.

Shane Victorino is the fourth outfielder, without much major-league experience. He's old for a prospect, but played pretty well last year, and I think he'll be okay if Rowand or Burrell goes down.

The Sportsline Phillies depth chart shows the delightful 2nd option the Phillies have if Abreu goes down: nobody. Great. So TRADING him would have been an awesome idea, right? Fortunately, Abreu has never, ever been really hurt. Wait - forget I said that.

I can only hope not to see Tomas Perez out of the dugout during a real, live baseball game this year. But I'm probably not going to get that wish.

OK, enough for now. Next time: Pitching, or why the Phillies have 6 0r 7 #3-5 starters instead of an ace. Trust me, it makes sense.

Sigh....

I'm a Phillies Fan this Year, or: Have I Lost My God-Damn Mind?

After a long, long time as a Yankees fan - basically since I've had a fully-formed consciousness of sports and a desire to piss off my family - I'm switching to my adoptive-hometown Phils this year. Yes, this is a dubious choice. While the Yankees have essentially been baseball's dominant team since the 1920s, the Phillies have essentially lost more contests than any other sporting franchise in history. (I THINK this is true...) However, something should be said for the fact that I LIKE the Phillies players. Like most longtime Yankee fans, I hate having to be put in the awkward position of defending Jason Giambi (a cheating meathead), A-Rod (an overpaid, Republican empty suit), and the delightful Gary Sheffield (who plays really hard, fills the "batshit crazy outfielder" role well, but must undeniably be viewed as a jackass.)

Nope - give me the quirky, young (except for David Bell's 120 year-old back), dicey 2006 Phillies. I have them contending for the wild card again this year, probably with whoever loses the Braves/Mets shootout and the Cubs. But seriously, who knows?

Without any further ado, your 2006 Phils...

1st Base: So - this year, the Phillies could have rolled the dice with the possibly lousy health, shoddy fielding, and increasing age of Jim Thome at 1st; or, they could roll the dice with the relative inexperience and questionable plate discipline of Ryan Howard. The funny thing is that the two guys are definitely similar players; Howard often gets compared to Cecil Fielder, Mo Vaughn, or David Ortiz because he's a large, black first baseman, but he's really more similar in makeup to the Adam Dunns and Thomes of the world. Thome and Howard could both easily hit 45 home runs this year while striking out 180-200 times - Howard managed to reach the 100K mark last year in a mere 312 at-bats. Howard could also slump horribly, melt under the pressure, or get depressed by Philly's ambivalent fan base and eat himself out of the league (see: Vaughn).

I don't think he will, though. Sometimes not rushing someone before they're ready turns out to be the right choice; this will be Howard's first full season at age 26, and I think he's now ready to maximize on his sack full 'o power against big-league pitching. He'll still strike out a lot, yes - but probably at a lower rate than last year, which was compromised by a crappy start, and his knowledge of the league, the pitchers, and the parks will develop at a more natural pace. This goes without saying that he's a solid defensive first baseman, whereas Thome was creaky and uncoordinated in the field.

I have a bit of a soft spot for the guy; I think I was at his coming-out party in July when he was hitting about .201 as Thome's replacement and striking out at least three times a game. Wagner gave up a run to put the Phils behind in the top of the 10th; Burrell doubled to kick off the bottom of the inning, then Howard comes up, I look down at my watch 'cause I can't stand to see the guy miss another pitch by 2 feet, and he absolutely cranks a pitch into the second bullpen at Citizens. It was like everything changed instantly; instead of ending up another failed Phils prospect, a young, newly minted star was chugging around the bases.

That'll be my longest one. I promise.

2nd Base: The bizarre Utley/Polanco platoon ended early on last year, which was a good thing. Nothing makes me more pissed-off than to see two above-average major-leaguers platooning at a position; when there are about 10 good second basemen in the entire league, it's just beyond idiotic to keep two of them on your team. Unless you're going to trade him for a guy who sets other guys on fire. Whoops.

That notwithstanding, I think Utley's going to have a similar season to last year, and anyone who follows the game will recognize that 30 HRs and 100 RBIs is pretty dynamite for second base. Utley's also above-average defensively, although his defensive skills can be overestimated if you're only looking at his numbers; I've seen him lose focus a little in key defensive situations, and during one game against the Red Sox he literally looked like he was drunk on the field. Nevertheless, what you're looking at with Utley is essentially Jeff Kent with a better glove and less dickishness.

Shortstop: J-Roll and his still-standing 36-game hitting streak will be a major, major story coming into the 2006 season. The Phillies should hope it goes on forever. It's hard to remember how much Rollins sucked at getting on base at the beginning of last year; there were debates about how the Phils needed a genuine leadoff hitter, etc. When his streak started on August 23, he'd been hitting a scorching .151 in the month of August. Something about him seemed to ease into a rhythm in the last couple months of the season - he wasn't trying to knock anything out of the park, which is a good move for someone who's 5'8". I think The Streak will provide him with some additional motivation at the beginning of the season, and he'll certainly start off better than last April.

I like J-Roll a lot, but - obviously - he frustrates me. I would love to see him really get in touch with his inner Ricky, but I think he hasn't quite got Ricky's instincts or Ricky's crazy. A good reference point for him might be David Eckstein, another tiny shortstop who works counts, uses his size to get walks, and generally concentrates more on being an annoying high-OBP tablesetter. The main difference is that Eck has approximately .0002 % of Rollins' talent.

Need to actually work now, so I'm taking a break and coming back with part II (of III?) later today.

The Deep Breath Before the Plunge

Well, work is about to get hectic beyond belief - here are a couple of quickies to tide you over, dear reader.

• I went to see the excellent, hilarious Tristram Shandy tonight, which features Steve Coogan playing the best "Steve Coogan" role of his life as the title character, the title character, and as "Steve Coogan", a preening, insecure British actor. Michael Winterbottom - director of the similarly unhinged 24 Hour Party People, also with Coogan - keeps things lose, cutting away from the book to show the ego trips and fuckups that constitute the making of the film. Coogan has a baby in the film, and the neuroses surrounding fatherhood in Sterne's book nicely mirror Coogan's own ambivalence and awkwardness about his son, aging, and his wife. Wait 'til you check out Shandy's birth scene, as rehearsed by Coogan, suspended upside-down in an 8-foot high model of a womb.
• Finished Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex on Monday, after a bit of a struggle. I know I'm pretty much alone in this opinion, but I thought it was good, not great - the most impressive achievement seems to be a narrative voice that is believably gender-indeterminate. We already know Eugenides' genius narrative tricks from The Virgin Suicides; it just seems like the tightly wound ambience of that novel is more his thing than the sprawling epic-ness of Middlesex.

Ramblin'

A few things before I really get to work today:

• Kirby Puckett died last night at the age of 45, which is immeasurably sad. Puckett and Tony Gwynn were two of my favorite players when I was really young (say ages 8-10), and obviously they had a lot in common as high-average, hot-fielding African-American superstars in the outfield in the late '80s and '90s. Puckett had an unfortunate post-baseball life; one gets the feeling that it's pretty tough to come up from absolute poverty, make it really big, and then have your career end because you're going blind. It should be emphasized though, that while he was in a Twins uniform, Kirby was always, always mentioned as one of the finer individuals in the game, and he seems to have loved the fans back like few players do now.

• I got Kings and Queen in from Netflix this weekend and had the necessary time (2 hrs 30 min !!) to check it out last night. It's a really awesome approach to its kind of narrative - not slow, but talky, with believable yet fascinating characters and some genuine tension that rises and falls over the course of the film. The writer and director, Arnaud Desplechin, is infuriatingly talented with a camera, and has a keen ear for the kind of dialogue that makes cliched situations new again. Literally, no one in the entire movie says what you expect them to say. Coming up are "Junebug," "Head-On," and "The World" - all part of my ongoing "best 64 films of 2005" project.

Back with more tonight, I hope...