Despite how it may have felt, the Eagles did not get eliminated from playoff contention this afternoon. They can still get in, as hard as they've tried not to, if they beat Dallas and Tampa Bay loses to 4-11 Oakland at home. I wouldn't bet on either, but at the very least, even if Tampa wins, we need to beat Dallas to keep them out of the playoffs.  Now on to today's game, and I'm going to keep it short so that people can talk about what they saw. I think that the main theme of everyone's … [Read more...]

One of the things that made me want to start a blog was the fact that I spent entirely too much time playing around with statistics and then only had disinterested friends to share them with. Now I have the disinterested masses on the internet. Much, much better.  Here are some cool Phillies stats that I've calculated recently...  Ryan Howard had 8 more HR and 16 more RBI than any player in baseball last year. Only 6 times before has a player won both these titles by that margin. Babe … [Read more...]

Note: Chart is clearer in Firefox or Google Crome. If you only have IE, click on the linked picture.  With the Phillies roster more or less set, I wanted to look at how the team has transformed over the years and compare this squad to the recent ones. I put together this chart of the opening day rosters for the team since 2004. The only players that will be on the 2009 roster from that one are Jimmy Rollins, Ryan Madson and Brett Myers. I figured this would provoke some interesting … [Read more...]

Ruben Amaro just announced that the club has re-signed Jamie Moyer to a 2-year deal. The terms have not been disclosed, but I would guess it is around $14-$15 million in total.  I have said several times that I was hoping that Moyer would ride off into the sunset, and that if the Phillies did want him back, they should only offer him a one-year contract so I can't say I'm entirely pleased with this move.  It's nothing against Moyer personally, but I believe that he is much closer to the … [Read more...]