Phillies Offseason Talk

[MDS]

Yea I said that. Abreu for an ace I do. Keep Lofton/Michaels/Victorino sorta platoon for two positions, split up at bats that way. I like it, fine. But thats it. Abreu is so good. Like, can be MVP good. So I want to keep him.

My best best:
1. Victorino
2. Rollins
3. Utley
4. Abreu
5. Burrell
6. Howard
7. Beltre
8. Catcher

Sick lineup.

[BigEd76]

Thome would never agree to a trade to the northwest...

[MDS]

We'll make him agree.

[SunMo]

what's with all the Victorino nob-hobbing?  they got the guy via rule 5 draft.  that basically means they have the guy's rights if he can make the major league club, if not he goes back to the team that they took him from.  well, he couldn't make the big league club out of spring training (Jose Offerman anyone) and then the team who had him (Dodgers i think) didn't even want him back.

he's a september call up and hits one big home run and everybody thinks he can play full-time at the big league level. 

for shame....

[PhillyPhreak54]

Thome would never agree to a trade to the northwest...

Maybe he would -- his best friend Richie Sexson plays on the M's.

[MDS]

what's with all the Victorino nob-hobbing?  they got the guy via rule 5 draft.  that basically means they have the guy's rights if he can make the major league club, if not he goes back to the team that they took him from.  well, he couldn't make the big league club out of spring training (Jose Offerman anyone) and then the team who had him (Dodgers i think) didn't even want him back.

he's a september call up and hits one big home run and everybody thinks he can play full-time at the big league level. 

for shame....

2 big pinch hits and being the player of the year in the international league help his cause turdburgler

[PhillyPhreak54]

what's with all the Victorino nob-hobbing?  they got the guy via rule 5 draft.  that basically means they have the guy's rights if he can make the major league club, if not he goes back to the team that they took him from.  well, he couldn't make the big league club out of spring training (Jose Offerman anyone) and then the team who had him (Dodgers i think) didn't even want him back.

he's a september call up and hits one big home run and everybody thinks he can play full-time at the big league level. 

for shame....

Not really suckin him off, but he's going to have a shot to win that CF job and he very well might do that. I don't see Lofton coming back, do you?

It's either Victorino or Roberson. One of them is going to win the job, IMO.

[Sgt PSN]

I'd much rather see them move Loserthal than Abreu but I think I'm just stating the obvious on that one. 

We couldn't trade Mike Lieberthal to the Yomiyuri Giants for a bag of rotten fish guts.

Have the tried?  Because that would be a steal.......





....for the Phillies.

[PhillyPhreak54]

From the Inquirer today:

I want Gerry Hunsicker as the top choice. I hope its him.

Possible candidates to replace Ed Wade

Jim Duquette (Mets)

Duquette is senior vice president of baseball operations for the Mets, after a one-year stint as their general manager in 2003-04 after Steve Phillips was fired in 2003, following several years as an assistant GM. The Mets hired Omar Minaya as GM on Sept. 30, 2004. The Mets went 71-91 in Duquette's only season at the helm.

Gerry Hunsicker (last with Astros)

Gerry Hunsicker, a Mongomery County native and St. Joseph's graduate, was the Houston Astos general manager from November 1995 to November 2004, and was voted The Sporting News Executive of the Year in 1998. Hunsicker helped the Astros win division titles in 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2001 and a wild card berth in 2004.

Theo Epstein (Red Sox)

Epstein, 31, was the youngest GM in baseball history when he was named to that position at age 28 by the Boston Red Sox in November 2002. His contract expires this year, but don't hold your breath. Red Sox ownership is expected to begin negotiations with Epstein as early as today on a new contract, the Boston Herald reported today. Epstein helped assemble rosters that qualified for postseason play in three consecutive seasons for the first time in franchise history.

Brian Cashman (Yankees)

Cashman, the Yankees' GM since 1998, has said little about his plans, but his contract expires at the end of the season. He also is likely to be pursued by other teams such as Baltimore and, perhaps, Washington. But Cashman also was 19 when he joined the Yankees as an intern in their minor league and scouting department in 1986 and he's never worked for another organization.

Mike Arbuckle (Phillies)

Arbuckle is the Asst. GM for scouting and player development. He entered professional baseball as a scout in 1979, took over as the Phillies' scouting director in 1992 before being promoted to his current role in 2000. In January, he finished third in an ESPN.com poll of baseball executives about potential GM candidates.

Ruben Amaro, Jr. (Phillies)

The Phillies Asst. GM is considered a potential candidate for the vacant GM position in Arizona. The Philadelphia native went to Stanford before an eight-year major league career as a utility outfielder, including five years with the Philles.

Chris Antonetti (Indians)

Antonelli, 31, has degrees from Georgetown and UMass and currently is an assistant GM in Cleveland. Another well-educated, well-prepped assistant GM, Antonetti has assisted Mark Shapiro for a couple years, overseeing a rebuilding program that's beginning to bear fruit. The Indians, like the Phillies, were eliminated from postseason consideration on the final day of the season.

Josh Byrnes (Red Sox)

Byrnes, 33, is an Epstein protege in Boston who graduated from Haverford College. he's worked for three different organizations — Cleveland, Colorado and Boston — and was Cleveland's scouting director. He'll be on the short list for a lot of teams.


Wayne Krivsky (Twins)

A strong candidate for the Reds GM job in 2003, Krivsky, 51, has 28 years of professional experience and still is considered top-shelf executive material after negotiating contracts for young stars like Johan Santana, Doug Mientkiewicz and Torii Hunter with the small-market Twins. He previously was the scouting director for the Texas Rangers.

[Rome]

If we can't get Epstein, then Hunsicker is the best alternative.

After last night, Cashman might be available after all.  Unbelievable but true.  That said, he had resources no one else did and still couldn't buy a Series.   

[Rome]

Posted on Tue, Oct. 11, 2005

Bill Conlin | Fans had a voice, and it was heard


THE CUSTOMER is not

always right. But when 580,000 customers all speak with one voice, even wrong

becomes right.

The Ed Wade Era ended

yesterday and the only number that matters is the 580,000-and-change slip in Citizens Bank Park attendance in just the

expensive ballpark's second

season. All that matters is a

significant number of restive fans - said to be in the thousands - who had already

informed the Phillies they were bailing out on 2006.

If money talks, Dave Montgomery just got a $25 million earful and a grim foreshadowing of

another megahit.

The Ed Wade Era ended with limited general partner Montgomery coming down from the mountaintop with a reluctant pink slip for his handpicked

general manager of 8 years,

red-rimmed eyes and a seemingly contradictory, "I believe he has done a good job... ''

The Ed Wade Era ended with the onetime Phillies public-relations department intern lashing out at critics during a bitter rant where he all but said he had been lynched by a small segment of a hostile media.

Asked about the criticism, Wade responded: "I think the personal attacks, obviously... anybody who is in my position and received some of the personal attacks from people who never came to the ballpark, never asked a question, never did an

interview, but yet seemed to know the pulse of the ballclub and have a feel for what I do in my job, people whose frame of reference goes back into the

early '80s and before, and think they know what a 21st century general manager's responsibilities are, obviously that created an environment where attacks became personal, and I did not appreciate it.''

I looked around the media

conference room in the bowels

of the Money Pit. The only one I could find there who went back to the "early '80s and before''

besides me was Phillies PR vice president Larry Shenk. I don't think Wade meant The Baron.

The pulse of the fans came to me unsolicited. After the Phillies folded for the second straight season and Wade fired manager Larry Bowa, I started getting a new kind of e-mail. These were not mindless rants filled with bad grammar and obscenities. These were complaints from a broad spectrum of literate fans upset by the general direction of the ballclub under Wade. Many said they would not renew their season tickets in the wake of Bowa's firing. I began forwarding this long laundry list of

grievances to Shenk and

Montgomery.

Others, involving personnel matters, I sent to Wade. As the offseason lengthened into winter, the e-mail volume increased.

I found myself responding to

upwards of 200 a week. I could no longer keep up with the

avalanche after the interviewing process to hire a new manager ended in the Charlie Manuel

dog-and-pony show. Fans were outraged that ready, willing and able candidate Jim Leyland was passed over for the likable but hardly high-profile batting coach who came to the Phils as an obvious pot-sweetener when Indians protege Jim Thome was signed.

The Phillies never indicated they took this steady drumbeat of fan outrage seriously, choosing to regard it as a small but loud percentage of WIP callers and Internet forum yahoos. But the e-mails never let up. They continued through the season, peaking around the July 31 trade deadline. I did not start the FireEdWade.com Web site, by the way. Nor have I ever visited it. Since Oct. 1, I have answered more than 100 Phillies-related e-mails and was in the process

of replying to a fan dropping out as a season ticketholder after 19 years when word of the 4 p.m. news conference clicked into my mailbox.

Attendance figures backed up the groundswell of fan displeasure, despite a better and healthier team than 2004 and exciting new stars in Chase Utley and

Ryan Howard. The weather was never better for baseball.

For one of the few times in my career, what I wound up writing in many cases was what the fans were all but begging me to write. Anybody with a media forum is vain enough to believe they can influence things. This was one case where the opposite was true. The tail of a very large,

angry dog wagged me.

Ed Wade can make of that

anything he wishes.

The job Montgomery now must fill is a big-time, desirable plum in a major media market. There is a strong nucleus in place and an urgent need to

fine-tune that nucleus with some creative and informed thinking. Montgomery says there is no timetable because he wants to get the right person.

Naturally, there is a built-in Catch-22. Wade plunged into the offseason with the energy and work ethic that marked his stewardship. Nobody ever accused the man of taking a day or a play off. The day after the Phils' elimination from the wild-card race, he announced manager Charlie Manuel and his entire staff will be back. Wade also set up a meeting with closer Billy Wagner for tomorrow in Richmond, Va. Montgomery said he and acting GMs Ruben Amaro Jr. and Mike Arbuckle (both candidates

themselves) would keep the

appointment.

Montgomery gave Manuel a strong endorsement yesterday, adding a shaky caveat that the new GM will have final say on his field staff.

It is hard to imagine a circumstance where possible high-profile candidates such as former Astros GM Gerry Hunsicker

or current Yankees GM Brian

Cashman would agree to inherit somebody else's manager.

Despite Montgomery's assertions that the most difficult decision of his career was prompted by nothing more than eight

seasons without a postseason

appearance, this was a business decision. It was impelled by the specter of a continued money hemorrhage in the Money Pit,

a costly slippage bracketed by

a shaky economy and mutinous fans.

To those giddy over Wade's

firing, I would caution that the new GM will have the Jim

Thome/Ryan Howard dilemma to solve, $70 million in guaranteed contracts next season and one little legacy the outgoing GM failed to mention:

The only team with a higher payroll than the 2005 Phillies to not make the postseason is the Mets.

You got what you asked for. Just don't expect a quick fix.

[PhillyGirl]

Asked about the criticism, Wade responded: "I think the personal attacks, obviously... anybody who is in my position and received some of the personal attacks from people who never came to the ballpark, never asked a question, never did an interview, but yet seemed to know the pulse of the ballclub and have a feel for what I do in my job, people whose frame of reference goes back into the early '80s and before, and think they know what a 21st century general manager's responsibilities are, obviously that created an environment where attacks became personal, and I did not appreciate it.''

Yeah, like...um....winning??   

[MDS]

Exactly what I thought. Wade was pleased with simply making this team competitive, and thought that he could justify keeping his job from the total crap that was on the field before he got here. The only reason Montgomery made this move was because of the fan pressure. He loves Ed, and didn't think he should be fired after the Phillies missed the playoffs by a game, and the 2nd best record in the NL by 2. But since so many fans, and especially season ticket holders, threatened to jump ship of Slick Ed came back.....he grew a back bone and a set of balls and made the move.

I have no clue who would make the best GM, but figure Hunsicker and Cashman (i presume will be top options) have to be better than Wade. At least they can come in here, size up the roster and realize that Tomas P. sucks and has no business playing major league ball. I hope. Nobody but Wade can be that dumb, even Manuel got the memo by september.

[Rome]

I gave him a pass for the first 4 years because the Phillies were horrendous.  However, he was partly responsible for that mess because he worked directly under Lee Thomas as his assistant GM.

That said, when the payroll was increased in 2001 and he was given another three years to get to the playoffs and didn't make it, his excuses ran out.

Given the fact that he's now whining about being picked on by the media and fans, it's pretty clear he was never up to the task of running a major league team, much less one in a major market like Philly.

Good luck running the A.C. Surf because that's about the extent of his future in baseball.

[SunMo]

the Twins and Athletics managed to have playoff ballclubs with low payrolls, i don't give Wade a pass on that...


as for the new GM, I'm almost tempted to go with one of the young guys.  Hunsicker sounds promising, but he's just another recycled GM.  it might be beneficial to just get a young guy with fresh ideas