Phillies

Started by MDS, March 29, 2018, 04:09:31 PM

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MDS

a boy can dream

santana-machado-harper-hoskins-williams-herrera/quinn-kingery-alfaro

Zero hour, Michael. It's the end of the line. I'm the firstborn. I'm sick of playing second fiddle. I'm always third in line for everything. I'm tired of finishing fourth. Being the fifth wheel. There are six things I'm mad about, and I'm taking over.

SD

Remember Simmons/Dario/Lebron/Kawhi/Embiid

MDS

remember the nba has a max and the mlb does not
Zero hour, Michael. It's the end of the line. I'm the firstborn. I'm sick of playing second fiddle. I'm always third in line for everything. I'm tired of finishing fourth. Being the fifth wheel. There are six things I'm mad about, and I'm taking over.

Don Ho

Shane's dad, Mike Victorino just elected Mayor of Maui.  Guy is classic, Mr. Aloha!
"Well where does Jack Lord live, or Don Ho?  That's got to be a nice neighborhood"  Jack Singer(Nicholas Cage) in Honeymoon in Vegas.

MDS

Zero hour, Michael. It's the end of the line. I'm the firstborn. I'm sick of playing second fiddle. I'm always third in line for everything. I'm tired of finishing fourth. Being the fifth wheel. There are six things I'm mad about, and I'm taking over.

SD

Bryce Harper is AT the Novacare complex

Won't believe it till he's holding up a Phils jersey


ice grillin you

GET

QuoteMagic​ and Bird never played together.​ Mantle and Mays never​ played together. Williams​ and​ DiMaggio​ never played​ together.​​ But ... Look off into the distance. Here's a pairing that could actually happen one of these years:

Bryce Harper and Mike Trout – together in Philadelphia? It isn't crazy. Is it?

The Phillies are currently the Vegas favorites to sign Harper this winter. Their owner, John Middleton, has lit up the baseball world by admitting to USA Today he's looking to spend "stupid" money. And then there's Trout.

He can't be a free agent for two more years. But you can currently find him digesting Thanksgiving dinner in lovely Millville, N.J., 41 miles up the road from that fabled South Philly corner where his Eagles season tickets are situated – and, in a related development, where the Phillies also play 81 games a year.

He's not going anywhere anytime soon, or maybe ever. But if he does ...

"Mike loves his Philly sports," said one old friend.

So let's say this again. It isn't crazy. Is it?

"I think it's possible," said one big-league executive who has passed through both Philadelphia and L.A. of Anaheim. "That city would [go insane] if that happened."

"Is that some unimaginable dream – to see two of the best players on the planet in the same outfield? Absolutely not," said Shane Victorino, former Phillie, former teammate of Trout in LA/Anaheim and former Vegas workout partner of Harper. "I've even told my wife, if that happens, I'd want to go coach. I'd come off the couch just to be part of that and help those guys with all the things that guys have to go through in Philly."

Uh, whoah, whoah, whoah there, Mr. Flyin' Hawaiian. We're a long way, and who knows how many millions of dollars, from this actually happening. Heck, we wouldn't bet Harper's shoe collection on it ever happening at all.

But is it totally crazy? It isn't. Could we see this particular owner salivating over the thought of piling enough stupid money in front of Harper and Trout to pull it off? We could. So let's take a look at this wild idea – and whether it even makes sense.

The Harper-Trout connection 
Before we get into breaking down the dollars and the baseball logic, let's review the dots that have connected Harper and Trout for years.

In terms of career achievements, is it fair to compare them to Magic and Bird, Mantle and Mays, Williams and DiMaggio? Of course not.

Trout has held up his end of the journey toward all-time greatness. Harper's path has zig-zagged through good times and not-so-good times, highlights and lowlights, injuries and inconsistencies. We get that.

But let's put it aside for the moment. It's still kind of incredible that these two men arrived in the big leagues to stay on exactly the same day – April 28, 2012. They were a massive topic then. They're a massive topic now. And it feels as if they'll be forever linked, for that and many other reasons.

Trout ranks first among all active players in career OPS (.990). Harper ranks seventh (.900). The only other player under 30 in that .900 OPS Club is Giancarlo Stanton. But we would argue that if you took a survey of casual sports fans from coast to coast, it is Trout and Harper who would emerge as the two most recognizable, move-the-needle baseball players on earth. And ohbytheway, they're both younger than Whit Merrifield or Joey Wendle, among others.

HIGHEST CAREER OPS, PLAYERS UNDER 30

PLAYER   AGE   OPS
Mike Trout   27   0.990
Giancarlo Stanton   29   0.905
Bryce Harper   26   0.900
Nolan Arenado   27   0.886
Freddie Freeman   29   0.875
(min. 3,000 PA; source: Baseball-reference.com)

So you can tell us all day long and all winter long that Harper is not the second-best position player in baseball, that Mookie Betts, Joey Votto, Nolan Arenado, Paul Goldschmidt, Christian Yelich, Aaron Judge, Kris Bryant, etc. have all out-achieved him, or have passed him by, or pick your favorite rationale. Cool. Not our debate topic of the day.

In a sport that is desperate for transcendent faces and personalities, Bryce Harper has "it," in a way that even Trout doesn't have "it." So why are we even going down this road? That's why.

Harper's future
What are the chances of Harper landing in Philadelphia this winter? We're all just guessing on that. It's still more than two weeks until the winter meetings arrive in Harper's hometown (Las Vegas). And by all accounts, his agent, Scott Boras, is taking his time on this one. So the Harper market has barely taken shape.

But it's amazing how many people inside this sport almost assume that the Phillies will be the highest bidder in this auction. And if you've studied the history of "Scott Boras" and "highest bidder," you'll have a good feel for how this is likely to wind up if that's the case.

There is still a lot of sentiment that Harper's first choice is to stay in Washington if the dollars are there. While the Nationals' front office has made plans to move on without him – with an attractive Juan Soto/Victor Robles/Adam Eaton/Michael A. Taylor outfield no less – remember this: No matter where this man ends up, it will be an ownership decision, not a front-office decision. And the Nationals' owners, the Lerner family, are "in love with him," said one exec who has known them for years. So for now at least, Washington remains in play.

But as purely a baseball fit, Harper and Citizens Bank Park have always made for a cute couple. Check out Harper's numbers in Philadelphia. You'll get the picture.

HARPER'S HIGHEST CAREER OPS BY BALLPARK

PARK   OPS   GAMES PLAYED
Coors Field   1.116   20
Citizens Bank Park   0.930   50
Nationals Park   0.912   472
Citi Field   0.877   56
Great American Ballpark   0.861   21
(min. 20 games played; source: Baseball-reference.com)

To look at those numbers and to assume this pairing is inevitable, though, would be a gigantic mistake. In the end, the only numbers that really matter will have a $ in front of them. And if you've read the comments of Phillies general manager Matt Klentak and team president Andy MacPhail this winter, they've all but recorded their own podcast in an effort to get the word out that they're not real comfortable with the years and dollars this is going to take.

Even Middleton acknowledged, in his USA Today interview, that MacPhail has repeatedly delivered that message to him personally, saying: "As Andy likes to tell me, 'John, we are playing baseball after 2019, so, you can't spend every last dime after this year. You got to have something in the tank for future years.'"

Eloquently stated. So, hmmmm. What (or whom) would they be saving all those dimes for? Let's just say we have a hunch. And it just might involve ...

Trout's future
There is no more common misconception in baseball these days than this: Mike Trout will be hitting free agency after the 2020 season.

Not so fast. The first question we'd have, and that many front-office types would have, is as basic as a 3-and-0 fastball: Why the heck would the Angels – and owner Arte Moreno – let that happen?

"I would bet," quipped one exec, "that Arte would spend $10 billion not to have to read the sentence: 'Arte Moreno was the owner who let Mike Trout walk away.'"

That "$10 billion" part is an official exaggeration. The other part? Totally true. In a perfect world, the folks who run the Angels would vote not to have Trout play a single game in his life in any other uniform.

You should also remember this: Trout has never, for one second, expressed any unhappiness with any aspect of being an Angel. So if you think he's on the verge of forcing his way out, just so he has an easier commute to Millville, you don't know him very well.

"This," said the old friend quoted earlier, "isn't Jimmy Butler we're talking about."

Still, we've asked some questions of friends and people who have known Trout for years. They all tell us there's one thing that gnaws at him, and we bet you could guess what that is. At some point, if he doesn't play on a team that wins a postseason series (or at least looks like it's on the verge of winning), he is likely to consider his options.

If he does make it to free agency in two years, the line will be long and the price tag might make a MegaMillions jackpot look like your monthly savings-account interest. But the tug of playing for his hometown team, in front of his family and lifelong pals, could be a powerful magnetic force – assuming the dollars on the check are large enough.

"You know, Mike doesn't consider himself to be from Philly," one longtime friend reminded us. "Mike considers himself to be from Millville. He's all about Millville. But he does love Philly."

Victorino says he and Trout used to talk about Philadelphia "a lot" – since Trout was 16 when the 2008 Phillies were rolling toward a World Series. So Victorino can't help but recall that Trout idolized Chase Utley and measured himself against the stars on that team.

One night that sticks in Victorino's mind was Oct. 2, 2015, a game in which Trout led off the ninth inning of a must-win game in Texas with a triple, then jumped to his feet and let out a roar they could probably hear back in Orange County. Moments later, he scored the winning run to keep the Angels' playoff hopes alive.

"His locker was next to mine," Victorino said. "So we were talking after the game. And I said, `You know what, Mike? As much fun as you said you had watching my teams in Philly ... I played with some of the baddest dudes on the planet. But I can't tell you how much I love playing with a guy who's that much better than every other person on the field.' I looked at that guy, and he was better than every one of us. And I wanted him to know that."

It's three years later now. And nobody should have to explain to any of us how much better Mike Trout still is than everybody else. But what happens if the Phillies sign Harper this winter and then Trout becomes a free agent in 24 months? Is there really enough room for both of them – in the same outfield and on the same payroll?

The Phillies' future
Now that John Middleton has let the world know this is the Phillies' time to spend, think about the messy spot he has put Matt Klentak and his front office in. No matter what they do now, how can it possibly turn out right?

If they don't sign somebody in the Harper/Manny Machado strata, they look like failures. If they do sign one of those guys, for 300 million bucks or so, we'll all be asking: "Who's worth that kind of money?" And the answer is probably: "Nobody." So, good luck to them.

From a baseball standpoint, there is no argument that the Phillies are a one-player-away kind of team. They have many needs. They have many places to upgrade. And there's an excellent case to be made that their money would be better spent filling those needs with multiple players – and saving up the big bucks for a 2020 run at Mike Trout.

But you know what the Phillies do need? Stars. Attractions. A reason to watch. A reason to spin through the turnstiles. And why do we think that's been on the owner's mind?

Did you know the Phillies didn't have a single two-win position player, according to Baseball-Reference's Wins Above Replacement computations? They weren't just the only team in the sport without a player like that this year. They were the first since the 2004 Arizona Diamondbacks – and that was a juggernaut that lost 108 games!

So, why would the Phillies be interested in Bryce Harper? Because every darned night, he has a chance to do something that makes you say, "Wow. Did you see that?" That's why.

The question is: If they sign Harper, for what is likely to be the largest free-agent contract in the history of professional sports, how much money would they have left? And by that, we mean: How could they possibly turn around and sign Trout, too, in a couple of years?

Whew. Really good question.

We can only guess how this front office would answer that. But the guess would be that they'd say they can't. They've discouraged the popular thinking that they can afford to sign both Harper and Machado this winter. So, they'd be just as likely to argue that, in reality, as they contemplate how to approach their present and future spending options, their choice comes down to Harper or Trout, not Harper and Trout.

But, of course, their friends in the agent community don't see it that way. They see a franchise that has spent way below its means for the last four years, a franchise with one of the biggest local TV deals in the sport and a franchise with vast potential to increase its revenue streams if it can just recapture the attention of its fan base.

"They are so awash in money," said one agent who represents neither Harper nor Trout, "they can do anything they want."

They'll feel intense pressure to stay under the luxury-tax threshold, naturally. But by the time Trout is eligible for free agency in two years, the threshold will be up to $210 million. And, as of today, the Phillies have exactly $15 million in guaranteed money committed to their entire roster for that season.

Jake Arrieta will be off the books by then. Carlos Santana will be off the books by then. Rhys Hoskins will merely be in his first year of arbitration eligibility. Only Aaron Nola, who would be a year away from free agency, would figure to command a significant payday.

Meanwhile, we count 11 teams that currently have multiple players they'll be paying an AAV of $21 million or more for next season and beyond – even before any of this year's free agents have signed. And if the Nationals were to sign Harper, just for perspective's sake, they'd have three:

PLAYER   AVG. SALARY   TOTAL CONTRACT
Max Scherzer   $30M/yr   7 years, $210M
Stephen Strasburg   $25M/yr   7 years, $175M
Bryce Harper   $30+M/yr   ???

What would be different in the Phillies' case, obviously, is that they would be looking at potentially paying Harper and Trout $35 million-$40 million a year – for seven to 10 years. At the same time. And no team has ever done that. So, what are the chances the Phillies could be the first?

"No baseball person would ever advise any owner to do that," said one executive we surveyed. "The owner has to decide that for himself."

So, what, realistically, are the odds of Bryce Harper and Mike Trout ever playing in the same outfield? Don't ask them. Don't ask Matt Klentak. And don't ask Andy MacPhail.

You should only ask John Middleton how much stupid money he really wants to spend – to do what no owner not named Steinbrenner has ever done.
i can take a phrase thats rarely heard...flip it....now its a daily word

igy gettin it done like warrick

im the board pharmacist....always one step above yous

QB Eagles

It's gonna be real sad when they don't get Manny or Harper, and we're cheering on a washed-up Andrew McCutchen.

At least with Trout we have some indication that he would open to coming to Philly.

MDS

the good thing about trout is youll never before it gets there whether or not you have a shot

if hes not extended by next winter the trade market will be ON
Zero hour, Michael. It's the end of the line. I'm the firstborn. I'm sick of playing second fiddle. I'm always third in line for everything. I'm tired of finishing fourth. Being the fifth wheel. There are six things I'm mad about, and I'm taking over.

MDS

gonna go on record and say a segura for jp crawford trade is a good thing

will see what other youngins are going to seattle, but segura is a good one
Zero hour, Michael. It's the end of the line. I'm the firstborn. I'm sick of playing second fiddle. I'm always third in line for everything. I'm tired of finishing fourth. Being the fifth wheel. There are six things I'm mad about, and I'm taking over.

SD

Hopefully Santana's part of the deal

smeags

If guns kill people then spoons made Rosie O'Donnel a fatass.

Quote from: ice grillin you on March 16, 2008, 03:38:24 PM
phillies will be under 500 this year...book it

ice grillin you

anything that gets rhys out of the outfield is a great thing....farg everything else
i can take a phrase thats rarely heard...flip it....now its a daily word

igy gettin it done like warrick

im the board pharmacist....always one step above yous

Rome

It's not his fault that the Phillies stuck him where he doesn't belong.

As for Harper, farg him.  I want him nowhere near my team.  He is a franchise killing cancer and he'll be miserable in Philly.  That said, if they do sign him, they have to sign someone else with a similarly grotesque contract just to take the weight off his narrow shoulders.

I'd give the Angels anything they'd ask for Trout too.  They don't have enough for him but I'd still ask.