Pat The Bat Finally Finishes. And We Kind Of Don’t Mind.
No more Valtrex jokes. No more cruising the bars of Avalon, NJ, to catch the wild beast in action. No more sucking up millions of dollars that could be spent on pitching. No more LOLPats. Aye, it would seem the end of The Pat Burrell Era is upon us. The details are kind of boring, much as, when you got right down to it, Pat himself was. Is. Whatever. And while we must give up big props to Pat for pulling it out in ‘08 when, by all logic, he could have phoned it in, the facts remain. We don’t mind him leaving. He was a salary hog, always felt like he would have been more at home in the ‘roidy 1990s Phils pantheon than with the Young Turks, and Philadelphia never really liked him all that much anyway. What’s next for P The B? We know not. To paraphrase Robert Frost, the woods are lovely, dark and deep. And Pat the Bat has no more promises not to keep. Nor orange sluts with which to sleep. See ya around, buddy. Don’t Facebook me.
700Level: B Gone
December 12th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
I guess you don’t mind that the team got worse.
December 12th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
We don’t know that yet. Don’t be like that, son.
December 12th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Not trying to be confrontational, just saying. The switch to Ibanez is a pretty big screw up on Amaro’s part.
1) he’s old and getting older, five years older than Burrell
2) left-handed with significant splits; 120 less OPS points vs LH pitching
3) terrible fielder, only slightly better than Pat
4) almost as slow as Pat
5) too much money
6) too many years
7) he was offered arbitration so he costs us our first round pick in the draft
I’m sure he’s a class-act guy and a good tipper, but that’s not enough. This isn’t just bitterness over losing Burrell, either. I’m a Burrell fan but understand why others might not be. Offering Burrell arbitration would have been the safe play; he’d probably make 16 million this year, but have the same solid production that made them WFC.
Still, I wasn’t perturbed that they didn’t offer him arb as I assumed they were pursuing a creative solution. Possibilities included:
1) Trading Jason Donald for Delmon Young
2) Signing Adam Dunn who is younger and better than Ibanez, much much better against LH, and wouldn’t cost us a #1 pick
3) Milton Bradley
4) Mark DeRosa trade
5) etc.
Instead we get Ibanez, who is a solid hitter, but at 36 is practically guaranteed to fall off a cliff in one of the next three years. AND we lose the pick, which is a pretty big deal. So we risk 20M in Ibanez the two years after next season to save ~6M on Burrell this year. And now Werth is our only good right-handed hitter.
Every baseball writer around – Neyer, Sheehan, Law – is in consensus that this is a terrible move. Not because Raul is a bad player, but because he’s the wrong player for this team right now.
December 12th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Preach it, brother.
There’s truly no logic to this move, and that fact scares me about the direction this team will head with new management. I know they’re world fucking champions, but damn it I can’t help but be pissed about this stupid move.
I’m just glad I’m not in Philadelphia and can’t listen to the idiots on WIP lauding this piece of news.
December 13th, 2008 at 2:51 am
Yeah, the team is definitely worse without Pat. Letting him go was a bad move. He was a better fit with the Phillies than people give him credit for, and you can’t really argue with the season he just had. You can nitpick, sure, and say he was playing for a contract, but in the end W’s count more than your general disposition in life.
I’d rather have a good player that Philadelphia doesn’t like than a mediocre-to-terrible player that Philadelphia adores. If likability translated to wins, we’d have nine Sal Fasano’s on the field.
December 15th, 2008 at 9:55 am
Come on, he’d have a good half season and then start hitting the bars again. Even in his contract year he couldn’t keep it together after the All-Star break. I don’t like Ibanez, but taking a chance on another 3-year commitment to Pat (which is reportedly what he wants) would be foolish; that lifestyle is going to catch up to him.