I think there s a time and place for winning championships and a time and place for restocking/cultivating. The phillies seem to be in the middle ground at least a little bit.

I do agree the team signs veterans for longer then is needed (Moyer for 2 years and 6.5 mil/yr, Blanton for 2 yrs  and 8 mil/yr when, Ibanez, etc) The team could have kept players for shoter periods and traded raw players for major league ready players during this run.

I don’t think you should judge his trades over the past few years as being a fan of vets over youth.  I think it’smore of a current “window of opportunity” with this team right now and I think you’ll see that after 2012, they’ll be looking to replentish thru the farm system and unloading some vets for prospects.  Just my 2 cents.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/02/1758429/howard-to-have-injured-ankle-examined.html

Christopher Kissock, righty reliever has been promoted to Reading from Clearwater.  Drastic improvement in his numbers over a year ago in Clearwater.  25, tall, lanky, 6-3, 2.17, WHIP down from 1.3  last year to 1.0 this season.  9th round, 2007 draft.

May or may not ever make the big club.  But he’s what we need.  A kid good enough to draft that shows good year over year improvement that we can at least develop inexpensively, and either bring him up at low pay, or trade.  Success stories like that reduce big buck deals to free agents.  Kissock, at the least, fits the profile of promotable.

If he is a kid on the rise (no clue how true that might be), he offsets the mistakes (so far anyway) like Aumont.  So far is important, but it is what it is.

On Werth, John Mayberry, after all this time in the minors is not at all putting numbers together that you’d think of replacing Werth with him.

Ran across this on a tweet exploration.

<<Roy Oswalt is not very good vs NL East opponents. He’s 0-6, 7.46 era, .305 opp avg, 12 HR allowed in 13 starts. >>

Could be skewed, including against Phillies.  Doesn’t phase me, but doesn’t excite me, either.

Who’s the most important Phil in 2010?  Results weaighed quite heavily to Cole as I recall.  Did you vote for Cole and is he still your guy, or is it someone else.

I abstained, unable to disconnect the Cole bone from the Hallday bone, which connects to the Werth bone, which touches the Rollins bone, etc.

If I had to vote now, I wonder how I could vote for anyone but Lidge, which is really sad, because it concedes to an expectation he will finish the year which is as ultra as depressing gets.

But who would the rest of the voting populous vote for now?

Well, ya know that is a pretty nice list.  Lee speaks for himself.  It’s being picky to find any fault with Halladay, I’m open to Oswalt not being quite what’s expected this year, but suspect he’ll be a major contributor by the time he leaves, Ibanez did make a major splash for half a season, and he has played well since the all star break, and Polanco may have been signed for too long, but nary a sign of it yet.

What younger options exsisted in those particular instances?  I liked Kevin Kouzanoff from San Diego, but we might be complaining aout his strikeouts had we acquired him. 

Another thing about Ruben.  Last night, I read a piece that quoted him talking about the young pitchers and how at some point they have to perform so we can fill in gaps with low cost guys and not need to depend on free agency (a la Baez).  Its what they want to do, go with youth, they just don’t think they have better in the system than what they have acquired in free agency and trade.  Would you prefer John Mayberry to Ibanez?  Andrew Carpenter to Halladay?  Drabek to Cliff Lee? Maybe there should be a compromise and Mathieson should be up here.  And maybe they are handling Lidge all wrong.  But by and large, they know what they are doing, and at least we’re in the hunt.  Players have underperformed in varying degrees, and injuries have been a factor, but you can’t say Amaro hates youth when he bent over backward to keep DB, and made some nice acquisitions of terrific players that have kept us at championship level play for a while.  Personally, I think youth is a priority of his everyday, but he likes to win.  Everyone of us does. 

While I don’t necessarily think you are wrong. Charlie doesn’t make the call-up decision, RAJ and co. do.