Phillies Sign Ross Gload To Fill Out Bench

Ruben Amaro finished his extreme bench makeover last night with the signing of Ross Gload to a 2 year deal.

Gload will be primarily used as a pinch hitter, as he led the league in pinch hits last year. He can play outfield and first base as well.

Gload is a solid hitter for the bench with a career .736 OPS. He doesn’t hit for a ton of power, but he also doesn’t strike out much. In fact, in 1,432 career ABs, he only has 186 strike-outs, a number Ryan Howard would love to be at for a single season.

Since the start of last year, the Phillies have traded out Eric Bruntlett, Matt Stairs, Chris Coste and Miguel Cairo for Gload, Brian Schneider, Ben Francisco and Juan Castro. Only Greg Dobbs remains from the 2009 opening day roster. We saw in 2008 how important good bench play can be for a National League team, and we saw in 2009 how poor bench play can be very frustrating. These are all small moves, but I really like what we’ve done with the bench, and it has a good chance to go back to being an asset for us in 2010.

Updated 25-man roster prediction after the jump

25- Man roster prediction (sorry for crappy formatting)