2006 Philles Season Thread

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

Go Phils.

[phattymatty]

THRILLHO

[rjs246]

This board has a member named Thrillhouse, which cracks me up.

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

The Phillies should have gotten Zito!  He's the bestest!

[SunMo]

that's actually a true statement

[phattymatty]

he was definitely not the bestest last night.

[SunMo]

no, he wasn't

[MDS]

[PhillyPhreak54]

WTF?

[Father Demon]

Shut up jerks...   JR has no chance.

And while you're reading this, bow down to the Excellence that is called The Cardinals.

[stalker]

I had never seen Joely before. She is hot. I went googling for more pix of her and ended up here: www.jimmya1.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/SexyBrits.html

Some nice photos.

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

Lucy Pinder.  Wowee.

[Rome]

Abi Titmuss??

Greatest (not to mention apropos) name ever.

[henchmanUK]

Lucy Pinder.  Wowee.

A friend of mine works for the Daily Star "newspaper", who discovered the glorious Ms. Pinder. Unlike most tabloid "glamour" girls, Lucy will not GET THEM OUT. For this, I am sad.

[BigEd76]

Paul Hagen article

Anatomy of a drought
Why have Phillies gone so long between playoff appearances?
By PAUL HAGEN

First in a series

EARLY ON THE morning of Oct. 1, 2000, in his room at the Marriott Marina in Fort Lauderdale, Terry Francona got the call he had been expecting. Club president Dave Montgomery and general manager Ed Wade wanted to see him before the Phillies played their final game of the season against the Marlins at Pro Player Stadium. It didn't take long to get to the point. After 4 years as manager, Francona was fired.

Since both executives liked the skipper personally, idle chit-chat filled the awkward moments that followed. Somehow the conversation turned to what had gone wrong. As Francona recalls the scene, he casually mentioned that some things would have to change if the Phillies hoped to win. Montgomery was curious. Would he be willing to share those thoughts? It was agreed that the club president would visit the now ex-manager at his Bucks County home.

The meeting never happened. Montgomery said he isn't sure why. Francona said he thinks that he simply forgot. At any rate, an opportunity was missed to explore a fascinating question:

Why haven't the Phillies won?

The basic facts aren't in dispute.

• Since 1983, the Phillies have been to the playoffs once. Of the 26 teams that were in existence at that time, 23 have been in postseason play at least twice. Only the Brewers and Expos/Nationals have been shut out in that span.

• In those 22 years they have finished above .500 just six times and won as many as 90 games just once.

• Since they made their last postseason appearance in 1993, 22 of the current 30 big-league clubs have made it to the playoffs at least once. The only other teams to be blanked are the Brewers, Pirates, Expos/Nationals, Devil Rays, Royals, Tigers and Blue Jays. That's not exactly the kind of company they want to keep.

• The Marlins, an expansion team in 1993, already have won a pair of world championships, twice as many as the Phillies in their 123 years of existence.

• The Arizona Diamondbacks, who didn't play their first game until 1998, have been to the playoffs three times and won the World Series once.

But why? Some of the explanations for how a big-market team has had such remarkably little success over such an extended period of time are pretty straightforward.

• A once-proud farm system was allowed to lapse into disrepair in the 1980s, including the disastrous decision to abandon Latin American scouting.

• The progress Mike Arbuckle made in rebuilding the system after his arrival in October 1992 was ultimately undermined by a series of go-for-broke moves that cost the team prospects and compensatory draft picks in an ultimately futile attempt to capture a playoff berth.

• The Phillies were well behind the curve during the stadium boom that began when Oriole Park at Camden Yards opened in 1992, changing the economic face of baseball.

• The team's financial situation was worsened by the extended lockout of 1994-95. According to chairman Bill Giles, then the club president, that cost the franchise $30 million.

All are valid points. Still, that doesn't seem to completely address the issue. After all, some teams that didn't have well-regarded farm systems made multiple postseason appearances in that era. Every team was impacted by the ruinous work stoppage. Some teams with lower payrolls won pennants and even world championships during that time.

The Minnesota Twins, playing in the dilapidated Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, have won the World Series twice since 1987. The Marlins also have won twice despite playing in a renovated football stadium. Since 1983, the Athletics and Cardinals have played host to eight postseasons each in round, multipurpose facilities that resemble Veterans Stadium. The Braves began their streak of 14 straight division titles at another cookie-cutter park, Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.

So, again: Why haven't the Phillies won?

To find the answers, the Daily News interviewed more than two dozen people who have a knowledge of the organization's inner workings. Several themes emerged from the conversations with insiders who agreed to share their opinions, most only on the condition of anonymity. They painted a picture of a sometimes out-of-touch front office in which:

• Winning baseball games isn't always the first priority. Said one respected baseball man: "The place is too intense on too many things that don't help the baseball side."

• Decisions are sometimes made for the wrong reasons, such as how popular a player is with the fans.

• Dissent is discouraged and the corporate culture is marked by suspicion, secrecy and an unrealistically sunny view of the short-term outlook. "It's too secretive. Everything is like the CIA there," one former executive said. "If you don't trust us, fire us. Like trades. The players know. The agents know. It's paranoia. They need to get more out in the open, be a little more honest with people."

• There has been virtually no turnover among non-baseball executives. "They depend too much on their Phillies good-old-boy network," said the executive. "And I'm not talking just about the people in uniform, or who were in uniform. It's a stagnant organization. It's almost like somebody's got to die before they leave... It's the same bleepin' faces every year, from the parking-lot attendants on up."

What follows is an attempt at taking an even-handed look at the factors that have contributed to all those empty Octobers.



Bill Giles points to the only sustained period of success in franchise history - five division titles, two pennants and the only world championship the team has ever won, from 1976 through 1983 - as the beginning of the downturn because it meant they were drafting toward the bottom in most of the years that followed.

That situation was exacerbated after Paul Owens and his top lieutenant, Dallas Green, took on new roles. Green, after managing the Phillies to their only world championship in 1980, left 2 years later to become general manager of the Cubs.

Giles also concedes that he should have acted more quickly in making changes when it became glaringly obvious that the developmental system was faltering. "We weren't running our farm system very well," he said. "When Paul Owens started to manage [in 1983], we didn't do very well acquiring young players.

"[Former general manager Woody Woodward] wanted to fire [farm director] Jim Baumer and [scouting director] Jack Pastore [in 1988]. And looking back, he was probably right."

Giles fired Woodward instead.

At the same time, the team was overrating prospects such as Juan Samuel and Jeff Stone, who they thought would become the headliners of the next generation after the Wheeze Kids in 1983.

"I think in '83 we were clearly a veteran club," Dave Montgomery said. "We thought we had some emerging young players. And we did, Sammy being the most notable of them. We had traded for Von Hayes. I think there was a recognition that we couldn't live with that same group and we had to get younger. And we didn't do that, frankly, with the success we thought that nucleus would bring."

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