[SCUDSBROTHER]

Originally Posted by Cannon Shell

From Baseball prospectus:

"Meh. Credit the Phillies for paying about the right price, and having a good sense of the virtues and limitations of the players they were giving up. It's the question of whether or not Joe Blanton's the sort of starter they should want that I wonder about. He's not an overpowering pitcher, so losing the Coliseum's foul ground is going to hurt, and going to a ballpark where both corners and the power alleys are ludicrously nearby could be especially devastating. As durable as Blanton is, what good is durability if it translates to a guy who's getting pasted every fifth night? He's had a bad year despite drawing more home assignments than you'd expect, 14 games in Oakland againt six road starts, and the results from those six have been ugly: a 5.73 ERA, six homers in 36 2/3 IP (half his season total), and a drop from 4.8 strikeouts per nine at home to 3.3 on the road. Skip Brett Myers or Jamie Moyer, this might be the Phillies' rotation “horse” who really has trouble denting bread with a gale-force back wind. Add in that Blanton gets pulled slightly more often than other pitchers, and how well do you think this is going to work out in Citizen's Bandbox?

While you might think this is a way to get the Phillies to some happier place where they get to pick between Myers and Adam Eaton for the fifth slot in the rotation, the problem is that Blanton only gives them variety and not improvement, still leaving them with three good starters and two slots they have to worry about, if now three bodies to move in and out of those slots. When you take into account that they also just dealt two of the best prospects in a poorly-stocked organization, and it isn't like they're going to be able to re-repair this, and that they're also going to have to decide what to do about Blanton's pair of pending arbitration-eligible seasons, it turns uglier still. I thought that expensive non-solutions that generate almost immediate regret were the province of the economy these days, so I guess we can credit the Phillies with being hip to the age."

Being a lifelong fan of a team that has kids that aren't playing up to expectations, I can see (each night) just how much people overrate young talent that just can't hit enough at the major league level. He isn't having a great year, but he has shut down the REDSOX, CHISOX, and Phillies(probably is why they wanted him) this year. It's not nearly as bad of a trade as the other one, though. FCK young players that can't hit. Poo on them golfers n' fisherman.