This is the 3,456th time I've written about the Phillies bullpen since spring training started, but this afternoon I had a chance to talk with Phillies assistant general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. about their chances to improve it.
Amaro would not confirm it, but the Phillies would have been interested in lefthander Ron Villone had he become available. Villone had a clause in his contract that if the New York Yankees didn't promote him from triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre by today he could become a free agent. The Yankees weren't going to just let Villone walk, so they promoted him. So that means there's very, very little left for the Phillies to pursue. Dustin Hermanson? Not interested. Rheal Cormier? Weren't interested. (Cormier signed a minor-league contract Sunday with Atlanta.)
"We're still pushing to try to get some bullpen help," Amaro said. "And we've been looking at every avenue."
But everybody is looking for the same thing.
And the market is dry.
"Oh, it's dry," Amaro said. "You'll see very little movement, unless people are deciding to send two or three of their best prospects in their system for a middle reliever. I don't think you're going to see a lot of movement at all. Because, you know, it's supply and demand. And I think one reason why you won't see much at the trade deadline is there are so many teams that are actually in it. And the teams that are in it are teams that usually have pitching. And those guys aren't going to move pitching. They're looking for more. Now if there are teams that drop out that have some surplus in that area and might be able to gain some prospects or improve in another area on their club, then maybe there will be teams to deal with. But when there are 29 other teams doing the same thing we're doing? And there's probably five or six really solid bullpens in all of baseball? You can do the math."
So how does this trade market for bullpen help compare to previous years?
"It's always been tough," Amaro said. "We had to trade (Placido) Polanco to get (Ugueth) Urbina, which ended up being a great trade for us at the time because we would have never been able to get close to that race. Sometimes you to have give up quality to get quality. We didn't necessarily want to move Polanco. We knew what kind of player he was, but we felt it was necessary at the time. And a lot of these trades are time and circumstance."
Interestingly, the Braves made a similar trade this offseason. They traded Adam LaRoche, who hit 32 home runs with 90 RBIs last season, to Pittsburgh for Mike Gonzalez.
"Pat (Gillick) has talked about that before," Amaro said. "You've got to send quality for quality, and sometimes, especially in pitching, you have to overpay. Now, we didn't have a 30-home run guy that we were going to be able to trade who was not under a huge contract. It just wan't going to happen for us because we didn't have the same resource that Atlanta had at the time."
Will help come? Possibly. But it's more likely to be Ryan Madson and Tom Gordon returning from the disabled list than a stud from somewhere else.
Comments (3)
You can't tell me that guys like Colter Bean in NY or Jose Capellan in Milwaukee aren't available. The Yankees have more RH relievers right now than they know what to do with and if Gillick had gotten even one of them when he moved Abreu then maybe they wouldn't be in such dire straits. Farnsworth, Whelan, Bean, Brunney, Humberto Sanchez, Proctor, any one of these guys could help the Phils pen. Granted not all of them were there last July but the fact remains that the Phils could have gotten more just for Cory Lidle last year had they not been so desperate to move Abreu's contract as to just throw Lidle into the deal. That was a big mistake, not as big as letting Wagner go to the Mets and replacing him with an older pitcher in Tom Gordon, or giving Polanco away in the Urbina deal, but a big mistake nonetheless.
Posted by Terry Martin | May 16, 2007 2:18 AM
Posted on May 16, 2007 02:18
The Phillies will always trail the Braves and Mets simply because they don't know how to make the big moves and bring in the right personnel like the Braves and Mets do.
When our only southpaws out of the bullpen are Fabio Castro and Matt Smith, and you at-least have the oppertunity to sign a veteran in that position (like Rheal Cormier), you gotta make that move. We can have a Catcher making $2.5 million to ride the pined-poney but we can't pay a veteran lefty reliever when we really need one. If I was Carlos Delgado, Barry Bonds, Adam Dunn, etc., I would love to face the Phillies Bullpen because there's no one in there who would intimidate me. Yet we have trouble getting Utley and Howard going because teams are constantly bringing in their left-handed relievers to face them late in the game. Think about it. Why do we blow so many late inning leads and why can't our team rally in late inning games(although we have been doing so in the past week) It all becomes a chess match in the late innings and the phillies don't have all the pieces. Geary and Alfonseca are good enough pitchers from the right side late in the game, sometimes all it takes to improve your bullpen is to add a veteran lefty to get out the big hitters and really the phillies need at least 2 lefties in their bullpen ( one being a veteran) to play that chess game. Until then, expect more blown leads from the bullpen and don't be upset when it happends because I told you so!
Posted by BF | May 16, 2007 9:12 AM
Posted on May 16, 2007 09:12
Amaro can pontificate until he's blue in the face that "there's nothing out there" but overshadowing his comments are Gillick's offseason behavior in acquiring TWO starters, including a whopping $8 million a year on Adam Eaton when he could have acquired one and used that money for a quality free agent reliever who wasn't named Alfonseca...Had the need to move Myers to closer still been there, he could have inserted Justin Germano as his fifth starer, instead of releasing him. Germano pitched superbly in his first two starts for San Diego recently and has an ERA of 0.69. With the jury still out on Freddie Garcia and a strong possibility Gillick was sold damaged goods, isn't it fair game to also mention Gio Gonzalez is lighting it up in the minors?
Posted by Don/University City | May 16, 2007 10:31 PM
Posted on May 16, 2007 22:31