"Tommy John surgery" is surely the most chilling phrase a pitcher can hear. Randy Wolf faces the prospect of not pitching again until 2007, and as much as I'm rooting for a stand-up guy to pick up the pieces, my chief concern now is with the mates he leaves behind. Wolf, of course, had been sparkling over the last month; his departure will have the Phillies patching the hole with the unproven Rob Tejeda. Should he falter, the team will have to decide whether to promote Gavin Floyd, who fell apart in Triple A after a disastrous start in the Show. Ryan Madson has been deemed too valuable a bullpen arm to slide into the rotation, while Cole Hamels found his progress retarded because he was stupid. In other words, the timing on this really sucks.
The other big news this week has been Jimmy Rollins's highly lucrative contract extension. I can understand where the Phillies were coming from: J-Roll is a homegrown talent, a guy who can field his position well and who brings speed and excitement to the table. He's a two-time All-Star and is regarded as one of the league's better shortstops. Letting him walk at the end of 2006, when his contract was set to expire, would have been a public-relations downer. Yet I'm reluctant to endorse the deal. For all of his skill, Rollins is a misplaced player; as a leadoff hitter he strikes out way too much and maintains an abysmal on-base percentage, but dropping him to sixth or seventh in the order would be a waste of his wheels. Forty million clams is an awful lot of scratch to give a guy who's had one really good season and a couple of pretty good half-seasons.
Meanwhile, the sizzling Phillies were cooled off by the Mariners last night, and are down, 3-1, tonight in the sixth as I write this. The realist in me sees no karmic possibility of Wolf's bad news causing the Phils' balloon to pop with alarming suddenness; the longtime fan in me isn't so sure.
if padilla and tejeda both falter or padilla gets hurt, they may have to go to madsen. they simply have no other options and a healthy worrell might make that move slightly less costly to the bullpen. there are no bob walks or marty bystroms in the minors at this point. none.
Posted by: gr | Thursday, June 16, 2005 at 05:57 PM