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There has been a lot of talk on this site, and several other places, about whether or not the Phillies’ ownership really cares about winning and is putting up the amount of money they should to make the team better.

We’ve heard this forever, but I’ve seen very little to actually back up the claim or at least show that we are different from other MLB teams. Since we don’t write anything on this site without doing our research, I did some with the help of one our readers, “Tommy O.”

I mentioned in the Holliday/Fuentes post that we know we make significantly less ticket revenue than some other clubs, but I wasn’t sure about the other revenue. Well, Forbes.com has data for all the 30 MLB teams for the 2007 season. It shows their total revenue and also all revenue spent on player salaries. Below, I am going to rank the teams in 2 categories. The first will be “Revenue earned, but not spent on players,” and the second will be “The percentage of total revenue spent on players.” I will do them in reverse order, so #1 will be the least cheap and #30 will be the most cheap.

2007 Revenue Earned, But Not Spent on Players

1. Toronto Blue Jays, $56 million
2. Kansas City Royals, $57 million
3. Baltimore Orioles, $63 million
4. Boston Red Sox, $64 million
5. Detroit Tigers, $66 million
6. Minnesota Twins, $68 million
7. Arizona Diamondbacks, $68 million
8. Oakland Athletics, $69 million
9. Seattle Mariners, $74 million
10. New York Yankees, $74 million
11. Cincinnati Reds, $75 million
12. Milwaukee Brewers, $77 million
13. Pittsburgh Pirates, $78 million
14. Philadelphia Phillies, $79 million
15. Houston Astros, $81 million
16. Los Angeles Angels, $81 million
17. Florida Marlins, $84 million
18. Texas Rangers, $84 million
19. Chicago Cubs, $84 million
20. Chicago White Sox, $85 million
21. St. Louis Cardinals, $85 million
22. Tampa Bay Rays, $86 million
23. San Francisco Giants, $86 million
24. San Diego Padres, $87 million
25. Los Angeles Dodgers, $92 million
26. Colorado Rockies, $95 million
27. Washington Nationals, $96 million
28. Atlanta Braves, $98 million
29. Cleveland Indians, $99 million
30. New York Mets, $105 million

Analysis: You’ve got 2 teams at the top, the Orioles and the Blue Jays, who are leaving less left-over revenue in an effort to keep up with the Yanks and Red Sox. Also, you can see that the Royals, Twins and A’s aren’t really cheap teams, they just don’t have a lot of room to improve their payroll. It’s clearly interesting that the Mets are at the bottom of this pile, with $105 million in revenue not spent on players. The Phillies are right in the middle, slightly in the “less cheap” half of the list.

The Percentage of Total Revenue Spent on Players

1. New York Yankees, 77%
2. Boston Red Sox, 76%
3. Toronto Blue Jays, 65%
4. Baltimore Orioles, 62%
5. Seattle Mariners, 62%
6. Detroit Tigers, 62%
7. Chicago Cubs, 61%
8. Los Angeles Angels, 60%
9. Los Angeles Dodgers, 59%
10. Philadelphia Phillies, 59%
11. Arizona Diamondbacks, 59%
12. Houston Astros, 58%
13. Kansas City Royals, 56%
14. San Francisco Giants, 56%
15. St. Louis Cardinals, 56%
16. Chicago White Sox, 56%
17. New York Mets, 55%
18. Oakland A’s, 55%
19. Minnesota Twins, 54%
20. Cincinnati Reds, 53%
21. Milwaukee Brewers, 51%
22. Texas Rangers, 51%
23. Atlanta Braves, 51%
24. San Diego Padres, 48%
25. Cleveland Indians, 45%
26. Pittsburgh Pirates, 44%
27. Colorado Rockies, 44%
28. Tampa Bay Rays, 38%
29. Washington Nationals, 37%
30. Florida Marlins, 34%

Analysis: The Yankees and Red Sox are at the top of this list because the larger the revenue, the higher percentage of it you can spend on players and have enough left over. For instance, a team with $300 million in revenue can spend 75% of it on players and still have $75 million left over for the other stuff, but if a team with $100 million in revenue spends 75%, they will only have $25 million left over, which might not be enough for the other expenses of running a team. There are a couple teams with a high percentage at the top, a couple with a low at the bottom and a bunch with around the same in the middle. Once again, you see the Jays and Orioles pushing their limits to try to keep with the Yanks and Red Sox. You also see that the Phillies are tied for 9th on this list, putting them in the top third in terms of “least cheap.”

Final Thoughts

What this data shows me is that while the Phillies might have some wiggle room to up their payroll by $5 million or so, they can’t really make a drastic increase. The numbers on here are from 2007, and with the Phillies playoff run and increased attendance in 2007, their payroll went up about 9 million to this year, so I imagine their %’s would look very similar with the increased revenue. For the record, the raw numbers on the Phillies were $192 million in revenue, $113 million on players (includes bonuses, draft picks, traded players partial salaries, etc…, not just opening day 25-man roster).

What do you guys think?

Note: Link to entire Forbes.com article here

Since the news of Curt Schilling’s likely career-ending injury, many have speculated as to whether he has the credentials to make it to Cooperstown. Since he is one of the top pitchers in our team’s history, it would make sense for us to make some discussion about it here.

Schilling is the definition of a borderline candidate. A couple dominant years, a couple so-so years. Great post-season success, many big starts, but not quite at the regular season marks that make you a shoo-in.

Here is the bottom line data for his career:

The biggest number against him are his 216 wins, the biggest for him are his 3,116 strikeouts.

I personally think he should be in, but probably in a Goose Gossage situation where it takes awhile for him to actually get there. Here are a couple basic points to consider:

- Schilling had 6-7 HOF caliber, top-5 pitchers in baseball, years. 1996-98 with the Phils, 2001-03 with D-Backs and 2004 with the Red Sox
- He finished 2nd in the Cy young 3 times, and 4th once and had 6 all-star appearances
- Only 16 players have had 3,000+ strikeouts in their career, Bert Blyleven is the only one that isn’t in (or is a shoo-in) for the hall of fame
- Among the 16, Schilling had the 4th highest K/9 ratio behind Ryan, Unit and Pedro
- Wins are important, but in my opinion, wildly overrated. If he had been playing for a half-decent team during his years at the Phillies, he would have 230-240 wins
- His post-season success helps put him over the edge

If he gets in - this is where the real question comes into play - what hat does he wear? Jayson Stark suggested he might wear a Red Sox hat, which would be an atrocity. ESPN can have it’s love affair with the Yankees, Red Sox and Mets, but if the HOF falls victim to the new, over-bearing, 24-hour sports media and ignores actual history, i’ll be really upset. I personally think he should be the first player to go in with a Diamondbacks hat, because each of his years there was HOF caliber and he got a World Series co-MVP with them. Below you will find his stats by team, in the regular season and post-season.

Regular Season

Post-Season

So what do you guys think? Should he definitely be in? Maybe be in? Not be in? And if he’s in, what hat should he wear?

In this day in age, where the media is all around us 24/7, people are always over-hyping players, games, teams and rivalries in an effort to out-scoop the competition and make their stories sound more important and interesting than they really are. As fans, it has become tough to differentiate between the stories where the hype is justified and stories where the hype is more or less imaginary.

There is always an “up and coming rivalry” that sportswriters are trying to push on us, most of which have no chance for longevity. See examples here and here. 99% of the time these rivalries never make their way to the upper echelon of Sox/Yanks, Duke/UNC, Michigan/OSU, Dodgers/Giants and so on. These are games where the rivalry is so strong and the teams so consistently good, that it becomes a national event, not just something talked about within certain cities. The Phillies and Mets are nowhere near that point, but they have a chance, and I think it would be great for baseball. Here’s what makes their rivalry legit:

1. The Players Care - This is not always the case in the big rivalries. For instance, Red Sox v. Yankees is a HUGE game for the fans of each team, but for many of the players, they don’t see it that way. Case and Point - poster boy for the 2004 champs Johnny Damon leaving town for more money with the Yankees. With the Phils and Mets, we’ve had players on either team calling each other out the last two years. Last year, Rollins declared the Phils “the team to beat” in a division that was clearly the Mets to lose. This year, soft-spoken Carlos Beltran fired back, saying “this year, tell Jimmy Rollins WE’RE the team to beat,” to which Shane Victorino responded “Let’s get it on.”

2. The Fans Care, and hate each other - This isn’t terribly shocking - but the level of hatred and intensity for the fans has risen dramatically the last year or so. If you ask any Phillies fan who their least favorite team is, I’d bet 90% say the Mets. I know I would - I worked for the Phillies for 2 years, and far and away, the Mets fans were the most obnoxious - much, much worse than Red Sox or Yankees fans. From the Mets side, after their collapse, the Phillies surge, and the Phils beating them 8 straight times at the end of the year, I would say that after the Yankees, the Phillies are probably the team they hate the most as well. In today’s home opener, they weren’t just booing Jimmy Rollins, but every decent Phillies player who stepped to the plate.

3. Both Teams Have Young, Charismatic Talent - Rivalries die pretty quickly when one team becomes plain awful. But the nucleus’ (nuclei?) of these two teams are full of young and/or exciting players. The Mets have David Wright, Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran and Johan Santana and the Phillies boast Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Ryan Howard and Cole Hamels. Right there you have arguably the best 1B, 2B, SS, CF and SP in the NL. All of these players are locked in the for next several years and it is likely they will be in contention for the NL East title for the next 3-4 years, if not longer.

4. National Attention - One writer making some random assessment of an up and coming rivalry is one thing, but the Mets and Phillies have gotten a lot of national press, and are finding their way to the front of the online sports sites. See here and here. Not to mention the ramp-up in attention when the inevitable brawl takes place. I feel like people are finally tiring of the droning Sox/Yanks coverage that has smothered us this decade - and the media outlets might be looking to move to another New York related rivalry. Furthermore, as I mentioned above, there is a PLENTY of star power to make this an exciting match-up to watch for a casual baseball fan.

5. They play 19 times a year, and are 100 miles apart - Nearly every great rivalry has a geographical aspect to it. Auburn/Alabama, Pitt/West Virginia, USC/UCLA, Pick-A-State U v. Pick-A-State Tech. Phillies fans flock to Shea and visa versa. Not to mention these are fans that are already trained to hate each other with the Eagles/Giants and Flyers/Rangers meetings.

Whether this becomes a big national rivalry or not - I guarantee you both of these teams and fans know exactly when they face each other next and are thankful there are 19 meetings so there will be no season series tie.

Any other reasons you guys think this could be the next great rivalry? Or reasons why you think it won’t?

OK - so I came up with a little bit of a ridiculous system to do my baseball predictions this season. I wanted to give each team a score from 1-100 by assigning point values to different aspects of the team. The most important was #1 starter (10 points), least important was minor league system (1 point).

The entire system went like this:

1st starter - 10 points
2nd starter - 9 points
3rd starter- 8 points
4th starter - 7 points
5th starter - 6 points
Closer - 4 points
Bullpen - 6 points
Best hitter - 8 points
2nd best hitter - 7 points
3rd best hitter - 6 points
4th best hitter- 5 points
5th best hitter - 5 points
6th best hitter - 5 points
7-9th best hitter - 5 points
bench - 3 points
team defense - 5 points
minor league system - 1 point
Total Value: 100 points

I tried to weight it as best I could towards what is most important. For instance, pitching takes up 50%, hitting 41% and intangibles 9% of the total score. Starting rotation is 40%, but the top 2 pitchers are 19%. The 3 best hitters are worth 1% more (21%) than the rest of the bunch (20%). I included the minor league system only because there are always players called up that make a difference.I figured with such a fool-proof, complex system I would come up with definitive playoff teams. Right? Of course not. After hours of rating every player on every team, all I figured out was there are 16 teams that might make the playoffs, and 14 that probably won’t.

What I’m going to do is write a small capsule for each team with their scores in my rating system (and league rank) what their strengths and weaknesses are, their key player for the season and my outlook. I will post them all as soon as I write them. Hopefully about 1 a day until opening day. Since the point system was so close and is forcing me to actually use logic and sense to pick the playoff teams, I won’t be revealing my final picks until I’m done the capsules, because I haven’t decided all of them yet (if I have, I’ll say so in the capsule).As they are done, I’ll link to them down here

(alphabetical, NOT ORDER OF PREDICTED FINISH)-

AL EAST

1. Baltimore Orioles
2. Boston Red Sox
3. New York Yankees
4. Tampa Bay Rays
5. Toronto Blue Jays

AL Central

1. Chicago White Sox
2. Cleveland Indians
3. Detroit Tigers
4. Kansas City Royals
5. Minnesota Twins

AL West

1. Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
2. Oakland Athletics
3. Seattle Mariners
4. Texas Rangers

NL EAST

1. Atlanta Braves
2. Florida Marlins
3. New York Mets
4. Philadelphia Phillies
5. Washington Nationals

NL Central

1. Chicago Cubs
2. Cincinnati Reds
3. Houston Astros
4. Milwaukee Brewers
5. Pittsburgh Pirates
6. St. Louis Cardinals

NL West

1. Arizona Diamondbacks
2. Colorado Rockies
3. Los Angeles Dodgers
4. San Diego Padres
5. San Francisco Giants

Previous Analysis: C, 2B

Opening Day Starter (2003-2008)
            2008- Ryan Howard
            2007- Ryan Howard
            2006- Ryan Howard
            2005- Jim Thome
            2004- Jim Thome
            2003- Jim Thome

2007 Recap

          Following his historic MVP season in 2006, Ryan Howard clearly started off 2007 with a bit of a hangover from the constant media attention and award dinners’ circuit in the off-season. He quickly got back to his old self though, leading the NL in HR and RBI after the all-star break.
          To put in perspective the 2 years that Howard has had with the Phillies, here are some stats.                      

-         Over the last 2 years, his only full seasons in the league, Howard has 105 HR (16 more than anyone else), and 285 RBI, (8 more than anyone else)

-         Single Season HR Ranks – Excluding those who took steroids

1)      Roger Maris, 1961 – 61

2)      Babe Ruth, 1927 – 60

3)      Babe Ruth, 1921 – 59

4)      Ryan Howard, 2006 – 58

-         Single Season RBI Ranks since 1950– Excluding those who took steroids

            1)      Manny Ramirez, 1999 – 165

            2)      Alex Rodriguez, 2007 – 156

            3)      Tommy Davis, 1962 – 153

            4)      Andres Galarraga, 1996 – 150

            5)      Ryan Howard, 2006 – 149

-         ­­Is already the Phillies all-time HR leader for a first-baseman

-         In 2007, hit .377 and had a .568 on-base percentage with runners in scoring position and 2 outs

What We Need In ‘08
               It’s hard to nitpick with someone who owns the stats mentioned above, but one thing Howard can do in 2008 is take a little bit of pressure off himself. Last year, he was coming off his MVP season, may have felt he was playing for a contract and spent part of the year without Utley in the line-up. As a result, he pressed at times, and ended with a very high strikeout rate, and a lowered batting average (from .313 to .268). In 2008, Howard needs to get back to making contact with the ball, spreading it to all fields and bring his batting average up and strikeouts down. But even if he doesn’t, I’m never going to complain about 47 HR and 136 RBI.

First-Baseman of the Future? Let’s just say we should hope Howard doesn’t get injured. There is really no quality 1B prospect in our system.

NL East First-Baseman Rankings
1. Ryan Howard, Phillies
2. Mark Teixeira, Braves
3. Carlos Delgado, Mets
4. Dmitri Young, Nationals
5. Mike Jacobs, Marlins

Top 3 First-Basemen in MLB for ‘08
1. Ryan Howard, Phillies
2. Albert Pujols, Cardinals
3. Prince Fielder, Brewers

Top 3 First-Basemen in 25 or younger
1. Fielder, 23
2. James Loney, Dodgers, 23
3. Adrian Gonzalez, Padres, 25

Best Season By a Phillies First-Baseman: Ryan Howard, 2006 (.313, 58 HR, 149 RBI, 1.084 OPS)

Best Season Ever By a First-Baseman: Lou Gehrig, New York Yankees - 1927
(.373 BA, 47 HR, 52 2B, 18 3B, 175 RBI, 149 Runs, 1.239 OPS). Only player to ever have over 45 HR, 50 2B and 15 3B in a single season. 5th most RBI, 3rd most total bases, 2nd most extra-base hits of any season, at any position. Among 1st basemen in a single season: Highest OPS and SLG% ever, most total bases and extra-base hits, 3rd most RBI, 5th most runs, 7th best BA. And not surprisingly, he played every game.

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What’s the worst thing about the steroid problem in baseball? Well, obviously nothing can top the vomit-inducing fact that now we all get to envision Roger Clemens with his pants down getting injected by Andy Pettitte, as my cohort Pete jokingly, but dead seriously, pointed out as I tossed the idea for this post by him.

Beyond that forgettable image (sorry) is another effect the steroid problem is having on not only baseball but sports in general. A universal aggravation that impacts all fans everyday. It can be summed up in one word - Overshadow. Since I don’t want to add yet another steroids rant to the masses, I’ll just give two examples of how steroids overshadowing all other sports news has literally kept me (and probably others) up at night.

Case 1
Sunday night the #1 team in college basketball had their undefeated record on the line in a nail-biting overtime game that came down to a last second 3-pointer made by a Philadelphia native. Sadly this game was not televised (that’s another issue itself), and after monitoring the game online via ESPN gamecast, I was anxiously awaiting the highlights. To my chagrin most channels and sports news revolved around the Roger Clemens 60 Minutes interview. So instead of reporting on the real sports story of the day, Sportscenter aired at least a half-hour of this clown’s denials before I got to see the real action. At this point it’s around 11:30 p.m. on a work night (and now I sound like my mom).

Case 2
Monday night the Denver Nuggets and Phoenix Suns faced off in what was likely to be a fast-paced, high-scoring affair (again not televised - I really gotta get more sports channels). The two teams combined are averaging 217.6ppg on the season. Add the fact that my favorite NBA player, Allen Iverson, was playing and that makes my anticipation for the highlights blatantly obvious. But wait (literally). I had to wait through the painfully boring Clemens/McNamee conversation where Roger tried to rope McNamee into confessing that Clemens was innocent but in the end neither said anything significant. I couldn’t image a worse way to pass 30 minutes. And again, it was past my bed time.

As someone who personally played against Wayne Ellington and is a die-hard UNC fan and a career-long A.I. fan, you can image how pissed I was, having to wait through countless amounts of steroids talk. How many of your favorite sports teams and players have been overshadowed by this steroid crap?

Who do you blame the most for the steroid problem in baseball? Click Here to Vote

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