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The deaths of more than 75,000 people due to natural disaster is too epic a tragedy to comprehend fully, so forgive me if I stick with more trivial matters and offer some mourning for a true show-biz legend who passed this week. He put Baby in the corner, he cracked wise as street-smart cop Lennie Briscoe on Law & Order, and he was unforgettable in a guest shot on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century way back in 1980. Rest in peace, Jerry Orbach.
'Tis the day before Christmas, and all across the radio dial, stations are prepping for 24-hour holiday playlists. Two local stations have been all-Christmas, all the time, since Thanksgiving, yet, inexplicably, it wasn't until this week, with just a handful of days remaining, that I heard the best of the modern tunes, the Waitresses' "Christmas Wrapping." Sure, there's been the usual mix of Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra (classic), Vince Guaraldi (neoclassic), Harry Connick Jr. (retro), and Anne Murray and the Carpenters (boring), but for my money it's not Christmastime until "that Christmas magic [brings] this tale to a very happy ending." Merry Christmas, all!
Placido Polanco's unexpected acceptance of the Phillies' arbitration offer has been hailed by several bloggers as a sign that the team's underwhelming offseason had perhaps changed for the better. Polanco, after all, is a talented, unselfish, and highly versatile player who brings a lot of skills to the table. Unfortunately for the Phils, he's also going to bring a far higher price tag than Chase Utley, his replacement at second base.
Clearly the Phillies had no intention of bringing Polanco back; their offer of arbitration was meant solely to secure draft picks if/when he signed somewhere else. But, oops, that didn't happen, and now the Phils are stuck with an expensive benchwarmer with no obvious place to play. Oh, yeah, and he isn't exactly thrilled to be coming back, either. The problem is that that there are no obvious solutions here. Calls to trade David Bell and install Polanco at third, while understandable, are futile. Bell, you'll recall, had to be overpaid to come to Philadelphia two years ago because of the team's longstanding failure. Like Pat Burrell, his contract renders Bell all but untradeable. If the Phils were going to go over budget -- and if they keep Placido, they will -- they should have used that money to buy more pitching. Ed Wade may grit his teeth and spit out that he's happy to have a player of Polanco's caliber return to the team, but even he knows that, once again, the Phillies couldn't get out of their own way.
As a Phillies fan, is there anything to say about this except "Damn it"?
The title above doesn't refer to the Phillies' efforts to improve themselves this off-season, though you're forgiven for thinking so. No, I'm talking about my professional and personal lives requiring more attention than usual, which is why posts here have been more sporadic of late. Hang in there, and keep checking back, for there will be more regular submissions soon.
In the meantime, if you see The Amazing Race's Jonathan in your journeys, feel free to dole out a savage beat-down. After watching last night's episode, I'm more convinced than ever that his verbal abuse of his wife, Victoria, is only the tip of the iceberg. So if you run across him, pummel at will.
Well, it was nice while it lasted.
For two off-seasons the Phillies acted like an honest-to-God major league team. They spent real scratch on real players, and they identified and stitched up holes with uncommon and very welcome boldness. It was if they had awakened to realize that, whaddya know, Philadelphia is a top 5 media market -- and not Milwaukee. It didn't add up to anything, of course, but at least you had the feeling that the organization had turned the corner.
Uh, not so fast. This was Ed Wade in yesterday's Inquirer:
We'll show on the field what we're capable of doing. We believe in the guys we had at the end of last season. We believe that they were capable of doing more. But we haven't played any games since then. A year ago, we felt very strongly about the rotation with Eric Milton and Kevin Millwood the top two guys in it.Now if you look at where we are, we've replaced them with [Jon] Lieber and [Cory] Lidle. If Lidle pitches like he did from the point that we got him in the trade, then he can be very effective and really help us and match up pretty well for us. Certainly we feel very strongly about what Lieber can do... . I'm hoping we're a better club. I'm hoping we're better from a standpoint of the players that we have here performing at levels they've performed at in the past. [Emphasis added.]
And there's your general manager, ladies and gentlemen. The last two seasons have seen performance levels drop, and still Wade believes the trend will reverse itself. We'd all better hope that Charlie Manuel's can-do attitude can help Pat Burrell lay off the slider low and away, because ownership's back-to-the-future cheapness and Wade's throwback patchwork approach do absolutely nothing to inspire me.
Just when you think that Steven E. Landsburg's amusing Everyday Economics column in yesterday's Slate is nothing more than a trifling little Scrooge satire, he slyly switches gears and makes a compelling case that saving (or miserliness) is as philanthropic as donating to charity, and should be treated as such in the tax code:
In this whole world, there is nobody more generous than the miser -- the man who could deplete the world's resources but chooses not to. The only difference between miserliness and philanthropy is that the philanthropist serves a favored few while the miser spreads his largess far and wide. ...
Saving is philanthropy, and -- because this is both the Christmas season and the season of tax reform -- it's worth mentioning that the tax system should recognize as much. If there's a tax deduction for charitable giving, there should be a tax deduction for saving. What you earn and don't spend is your contribution to the world, and it's equally a contribution whether you give it away or squirrel it away.
As someone who stashes more scratch into his 401(k) (well, technically, his 403(b)) than gives it to noble causes, my response is: Amen, brother! Maybe George Costanza really was onto something with his Human Fund idea ... .
The Phillies blogosphere has reacted to the Jon Lieber signing in a not unexpected lukewarm fashion. After all, when the team is putting its chips on guys who are, well, nearly my age, it's hard to get excited. Nevertheless, Phillies City-State is perhaps too close to the situation for a fair evaluation, so it's worth checking in with outside observers to see what they thought of the deal. Alex Brath thinks the Yankees made a mistake in letting Lieber walk in favor of Jaret Wright and, probably, Eric Milton. David Pinto likewise thinks the Phils got a decent hurler for the money, but adds:
Still the Phillies seem headed in the wrong direction. They're adding expensive old players, instead of developing young, inexpensive talent that can be signed cheaply for the long term.
Well, once upon a time the front office told us that the plan was to mine the farm system for promising, affordable youngsters who would be around for a while. But with the chronic underachievement that clung to Larry Bowa's teams in singular fashion came increasingly desperate efforts to patch holes in order to find something -- anything -- that might work. So Ed Wade traded prospect after prospect in order to stockpile ... sucky middle relievers. Meanwhile, the young guys who have stuck around are, with few exceptions, nowhere near as productive as they were projected to be. And so that one-time long-term winner has turned into an aging playoff wannabe that must play for today only, since yesterday was a disappointing failure and tomorrow looks grimmer and grimmer.
With last night's arbitration deadline passed, the Phillies' efforts to reshape their roster should heat up. Ken Mandel's story at Phillies.com provides a nice overview of who might be back (Doug -- sigh -- Glanville), who's definitely gone (good riddance, Kevin Millwod, Todd Jones, and Roberto Hernandez; wish they'd found a way to keep you, Eric Milton), and who was offered arbitration strictly in hopes of snaring compensatory draft picks when he inevitably signs elsewhere (really wish you'd been able to stick around, Placido Polanco).
Brad Radke re-signed with the Twins last night, but the Phillies were reportedly "close" to inking the Yankees' Jon Lieber to a three-year deal. Lieber has had a generally decent career, including a 20-win season with the Cubs a couple of years ago. His best attribute is that he doesn't walk many. Alas, Lieber isn't the top-of-the-rotation guy the Phillies desperately need, and it seems at this point that the team will again enter the season with a true No. 1 starter. Not exactly what I want to hear as a higher-paying season-ticket holder.
In his first major move of the off-season, Ed Wade yesterday landed ... Kenny Lofton. Paul Hagen's description of Lofton as a "much-traveled veteran" with declining skills probably tells you all you need to know about Lofton, who will platoon with Jason Michaels in center. Marlon Byrd, who really looked like a ballplayer in the second half of 2003, will start next season in Scranton and seems destined to join the depressingly large ranks of hapless Phils draft choices unable to make it in the Show.
I guess the deal fills a hole, as Michaels isn't capable of everyday production, but it's hard to get real excited over it. The Phillies look more and more like an aging team being patched together for one final run at a title, unlike the long-term contenders they always said they wanted to be. Any production out of the platoon will be more than they got out of centerfield last season, so I guess that's an improvement. Among the bloggers, All Things Baseball shrugs his shoulders over the trade, Balls, Sticks, & Stuff is generally okay with it, Berks Phillies Fans lifts a cup of hot cider, and the Philling Station is cautiously optimistic.
It's rather a shame that Felix Rodriguez, the reliever headed to the Yankees for Lofton, didn't get a chance to show his stuff here for a full season. I generally liked what I saw out of him in his brief stint in Philadelphia. Here's hoping Ryan Madson's impressive 2004 was a harbinger of things to come and not the all-too-typical Phillies flash in the pan.
