1. The Phils couldn’t have done any better. Considering what was available on the free agent market (very little) and what Gillick was willing to part with (not much) this is a pretty good deal. Brad Lidge was once one of the game’s premier closers and has shown that he still can be.

The most important thing about this trade is that the Phillies dealt three guys with little potential for one guy with HUGE potential.

Who knows? Michael Bourn may one day be a star, but the best case scenario has him morphing into Juan Pierre, while the more realistic scenario has him becoming the next Endy Chavez.

I don’t know much about 3B prospect Mike Costanzo, but here’s what Baseball America has to say about him, via http://phuturephillies.com/category/players/mike-costanzo/:

He earned comparisons to Russell Branyan for his prodigious lefthanded power and erratic play at third base, where he committed 34 errors.

Costanzo evokes Branyan also for his strikeouts (157 in 508 at-bats), and his grooved swing will continue to produce holes that pitchers at advanced levels can exploit. He has the athletic ability to adjust and the raw power to hit homers even without squaring up the ball, but he must show the ability to make more adjustments and lay off pitches he can’t hit.

Defensively, Costanzo has the tools to play third, most notably a plus arm. But he has yet to make the adjustments that would make him an average defender. He lacks consistent footwork, and scouts question his agility and infield actions.

Not an inspiring description.

Finally, there’s Geoff Geary, who was shuttled between the bigs and the minors last season. He’s a back of the bullpen guy. A throw in. Whatevs.

2. Philadelphia is a tough place to pitch. If you’re not nervous about Brad Lidge’s mental makeup, than you must know something I don’t. If Lidge thought pitching in Houston was tough, wait until he gets to Philadelphia. Lidge is going to need to get off to a good start, or he might not last long.

3. More work to be done? More good news today, as the Philly Inquirer reports that the team is close to resigning setup man J.C. Romero. Romero was a force for the Phils down the stretch last season.

Romero went 1-2 with a 1.24 ERA in 51 appearances last season for the Phillies, who signed him to a minor-league contract after the Boston Red Sox released him.

So that’s welcome news. Read the rest of this entry »

Phillies GM Pat Gillick is one of baseball’s most respected front office guys. He built winners in Seattle, Baltimore and Toronto. But as the New York Times points out today, there is no greater challenge for a GM than trying to win in Philly.

When Gillick arrived in town, he said he was a man with a plan. He was going to build around the team’s young nucleus of Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard. But lately Gillick’s plan seems less clear.

Take a look at some of Gillick’s personnel moves. You’ll see what I mean:

• First, to make room for Ryan Howard, he traded Jim Thome and got Gio Gonzalez and Aaron Rowand.  He then traded Gonzalez and Gavin Floyd for Freddy Garcia, who is about to have surgery that will end his Phillies career.

• He traded Bobby Abreu for left-handed reliever Matt Smith and prospects. He traded David Bell for a guy who he later cut. He let Mike Lieberthal go. And he traded two minor league pitchers for Jamie Moyer.

• He signed Adam Eaton,  Tom Gordon, Antonio Alfonseca and, most recently, Jose Mesa.

It’s that last move — bringing back Mesa — that really has me worried. I mean, if there really is a plan, and it includes Jose Mesa … well … that’s a terrible plan!

I suspect Gillick probably views the Mesa signing, as well as the Alfonseca signing, as low risk ventures. They’re both making the minimum, after all.

And I suspect Gillick is just biding his time until he can unload Pat Burrell and his $13 million per year salary. Burrell has one more year left on his contract after this one.

But look at the guys Gillick has added: Alfonseca, Mesa, Moyer, Gordon…could these guys be any older? I understand the desire to bring in some veteran guys to mentor younger players like Utley and Howard. But there’s a difference between veteran and ancient, and I’m not sure Gillick appreciates that difference.

Sure, it’ll be nice to get Burrell’s $13 million per year salary off the books. But it would be unfair to blame all of the Phillies problems this year on The Bat. After all, the Phillies are spending just as much money on the combined salaries of  the injured Gordon and the aging Moyer as they are on Burrell.

Pat, I know you’ve got credentials. I know you’ve got World Series rings. So I’m gonna have faith. But if you could, just give me a sign that you’ve got this all under control. Just give me some indication that there is still a plan. And for the love of god, tell me it doesn’t include Jose Mesa!

Toronto Blue Jays general manager J.P. Ricciardi and Philadelphia GM Pat Gillick are dirty, stinking liars.

First Gillick lied about the severity of closer Tom Gordon’s shoulder injury, claiming in spring training that there was no injury and after a couple of reporters ran into Gordon on his way to the doctor.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Clearly, the Phillies’ 39-year-old closer was not right during spring training. As it happened, he flew home from Florida for a medical exam on the very same day a couple of reporters, including The Inquirer’s Jim Salisbury, were flying north to attend the memorial service for John Vukovich.

If the reporters hadn’t seen Gordon in the Tampa airport that day, no one would have known about his trip to Philadelphia.

The Phillies clearly planned to pretend it never happened. When they got caught trying to sneak Gordon to their team doctor, they pretended it was not a big deal.

More recently, Ricciardi revealed the Jays were not up front with the media and fans about closer B.J. Ryan’s injury, which he suffered during training camp. Ryan is now on the 60-day DL. When he was first diagnosed, the team claimed he had a back problem. Now, the story has changed.

From the Winnipeg Sun:

“First of all, it wasn’t B.J. Ryan’s back that was bothering him,” Ricciardi said on the radio. “It was his elbow that was bothering him. So we said it was his back so we could have a bit more time.

So what’s up with teams inventing stories to mask their players’ injuries? What’s to be gained?

In the Phillies case, it may be that they felt they needed to honor a promise to Gordon to give him every chance to close.

The Phillies promised Gordon he would be their closer when they signed him to a three-year contract that now appears a tad over-optimistic. If you break promises like that, word gets around. Future free agents might be less willing to come here if they don’t think they can take your word.

In the Neverland of guaranteed baseball contracts, no one seems to factor in harsh realities such as sore shoulders and diminishing returns. The Phillies felt obligated to honor the code until Gordon, following his own code, stopped trying to pitch through his physical problems and admitted he was hurting.

But why not tell the media that, yes, Gordon is hurting, but he’s going to try and pitch through it. Why lie?

Why did Ricciardi lie about the nature of Ryan’s injury?

Moreover, why do fans get upset when general managers lie? Do we feel we have a right to the truth? Why? Because we pay tickets? Because we pay taxes on stadiums?

All I can think of is, fans want teams to be honest about player injuries so that they can know how loud to boo when that player struggles. If a player is pitching through an injury, we’ll boo less heartily than if the player sucking for no good reason. If we boo a guy really loud and it turns out he was playing hurt, we feel bad. And GMs should do their best to spare us that guilt.

Is that too much to ask?

Pulling off a trade to get Gavin Floyd and a player to be named from the Phillies in exchange for Freddy Garcia left White Sox GM Kenny Williams physically and mentally exhausted.  So exhausted, in fact, that he accidentally divulged the name of the player to be named when announcing the trade:

Williams let slip during the announcement that the other player in the deal is pitcher Gio Gonzalez — traded by the White Sox to Philadelphia a year ago in the Jim Thome deal.

“It’s 11 o’clock at night, what do you want?” Williams said.

But as exhausted as Williams was, his trading partner, Phillies GM Pat Gillick, was in even worse condition, so drained and emotionally battered that he lost command of his voice and had to be replaced at the announcing by Phillies assistant GM Mike Arbuckle.

But the Winter Meetings were the toughest on Cubs GM Jim Hendry, who was under so much stress from his efforts to sign Alfonso Soriano, Aramis Ramirez, and Mark DeRosa that he suffered a mild heart attack, was rushed to the hospital to have an angeoplasty, and had to complete his four-year, $40 million dollar deal with pitcher Ted Lilly from his hospital bed.

In other news, Mets GM Omar Minaya suffered a ruptured spleen in a very physical late-night bargaining session with superagent Scott Boras, and A’s GM Billy Beane was hospitalized for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after his maniacal, week-long pursuit of free agent DH Mike Piazza.