The other day when I said the Phils put forth a good effort in their Friday afternoon loss, I really did mean it. Everyone's giving the Phils a hard time for starting three rookies in this series, but what else can they do? Today they called up yet another rookie, Anderson Garcia, for the bullpen. They acquired some guy named JC Romero, who hasn't been horrible yet. They were forced into starting Durbin and Happ and today they start Kendrick. I'm not saying any of these ideas are necessarily good, but they're ideas. In spite of themselves, they're trying. I'm not sure what else they can do, at least not at this point. The correct answer is that they should have a real front office, real scouts, a real GM, all of whom should have seen this coming and spent the offseason improving this wretched bullpen. In all seriousness, it really appears that this team has exceedingly, dangerously poor talent evaluation skills. It causes them to give $2.5 million to Rod Barajas when Chris Coste is cheaper and better. It causes them to sign Wes Helms when he's obviously terrible. It causes them to trade Rheal Cormier to the Reds for Justin Germano to dump Cormier's salary, then to cut Germano because they think he's roughly the same as Clay Condrey, and now Condrey has been released and Germano is kicking ass in San Diego. It causes them to trade Floyd (who, admittedly, I don't really like) and Gio Gonzalez for Freddy Garcia, who lasted past the 6th inning exactly once in his brief, disastrous Phillies career. Does anyone working for this team know how to tell between a good player and a bad one? They'd better figure it out quickly, because this weekend we've seen what happens when you have a bad pitching staff: it catches up with you, and you stop winning.
I'm really pissed off that everyone's making a big deal about this 10,000 losses thing. Not just because it's embarrassing, but really, who cares? It's not clear to me what we're all supposed to be feeling about this, or the media's intention in constantly pointing this out. Is it some kind of masturbatory, "let's all feel sorry for ourselves because we root for a bad team" thing, like the Cubs and pre-2004 Red Sox fans do? Is it supposed to make us sad? Angry? Amused? What in the world is the point? Are Ryan Howard and Chase Utley supposed to start believing that they're horrible because they wear Phillies uniforms? The team has a winning record since they've been on the team, so why should they care how bad Putsy Caballero was? Are the rookies supposed to be filled with despair and hate because they're doomed to failure? Is this supposed to shame the team into being better? What does it all mean? This is why it's so annoying: it doesn't mean anything, and I'm supposed to believe that it does. Well, I don't. The team was very horrible many, many years before I was born. Before my dad was born, in fact. With some finagling on b-r, I was able to figure out that since I was born at 7:36 pm on April 24, 1976, the Phillies have gone 2503-2468. That's a winning record, people. Am I supposed to be ashamed to root for a team that was so bad before that? Look, baseball history is cool, and yes, in sports there's a sense that the teams of the past are connected to the team of today... but on the other hand, I honestly don't care that the 1942 Phillies went 42-109. There's nothing that I or Cole Hamels can do about it. The only record I care about 41-40: their record right now, with a game against the Mets in three hours. Let's trying winning that one. After all, we're only 1,125 away from 10,000 wins!
