Summer in November

You’ll have to forgive Phillies fans if they feel stuck in July. Roy Halladay to the Phillies rumors are back on the front-burner. Jim Salisbury in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

As in the summer, there are serious hurdles to the Phillies’ pulling off a deal for Halladay. Toronto is looking for a premium package of young, major-league-ready players and prospects. The Phillies balked at the Jays’ request of pitchers Kyle Drabek and J.A. Happ and outfielders Domonic Brown and Anthony Gose this summer. If the Jays’ price has come down - and it may have with Halladay due to become a free agent after next season - the Phils might be open to more serious talks. Drabek, as was the case last summer, remains an untouchable.

Our thoughts: To us, the price has come down significantly. There’s no plausible justification to trade that high of a package when you would only have Halladay for one post-season instead of two. Basically, that’s why you’re getting him in the first place. Plus, the Phils would have to clear $15.5 million in payroll space. Remember, last year, it was Halladay OR Cliff Lee, so the increased salary would be offset compared to now since Lee would not have been here too.

So there seem to be some obstacles. I imagine the Phillies will be very careful and likely won’t give up a big package of prospects for what could be a rent-a-player. The only way to make it work and keep the prospects might be to include Cole Hamels (and no more than one of those mentioned above). But that, to us, makes little, if any, sense. Which brings us to:

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There were thoughts about trading Cole Hamels. Ruben Amaro dismissed those, rightfully. Here’s a great take from Baseball Prospectus.

I know that his ERA jump appears ugly, but bear with me for a minute. At this point, most sabermetricians have learned that a pitcher’s peripheral statistics (strikeout rate, walk rate, and ground-ball rate) are far more persistent and indicative of his true skill level than his BABIP and his home runs per outfield fly ball. Both BABIP and HR/OFFB are far more vulnerable bad luck than K/PA, BB/PA and GB/BIP. Cole Hamels appears to be a victim of this as we look at these sets of numbers for 2008 and 2009.


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This entry was posted on Friday, November 13th, 2009 at 9:29 am and is filed under General Baseball, Past BlueClaws, Phillies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Summer in November”

  1. Nick Gagalis Says:
    November 13th, 2009 at 12:19 pm

    I agree that there’s no need for the Phillies to raid their farm system for one year of Halladay, and if it meant trading Hamels too, it wouldn’t be worth the entire package. It’s hard to tell where Hamels and Halladay will stand a few years from now, when Hamels might be cheaper, and the Phils could still keep their prospects.

    On the other hand, maybe Cole’s “unfair” numbers have a reason behind them. When you compare them to some of his other stats, it seems like he should be better, but in the case of homers per fly ball, he could be getting hit harder because of bad pitch selection or location.

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