[geisterhome]

Quote:

Of course a total rebuild including shipping all their last assets like Cole Hamels and giving up on year one seems like the most logic way of approach here. BUT taking a closer look at how their (injury free!) roster shapes up to my surprise I figured that the Phillies could in my opinion even still be a contender this year. Pitching The Phillies have an ace in Cole Hamels and a very good number 2 starter with Cliff Lee. Then there are a bunch of guys who could make a solid number 5 or depth starter on a contender. So what we need would be 2 middle of the rotation pitchers. Looking at the free agent pool (I'm using osfm v1 rosters) I found Jhoulys Chacin, signed him to be my number 4 starter. 1 more pitcher was needed to make a very good rotation out of an imo already above average one- I found Josh Collmenter to be a very good option for that porpose, so I traded Aron Harrang plus 2 Porspects (T. Windle -B 63 and M. Imhof- C 60) to the Diamonbacks. Now there was the Bullpen: Pappelbon still is a legit Closer, some decent MR were also there, all I needed to add was actually some depth, that Ifeel I overachieved with signing Rafeal Soriano and aquiring David Hernandez in the Collmenter trade. At catcher the Phillies have veteran Carlos Ruiz who is still one of the best Catchers in the game but no decent backup for him. Again and not I looked at the free agent pool and found J.P. Arencibia. The infield looked ok to me, both on defense and offense, no need to change much there. The outfield was another story, I signed FA Dayan Viciedo as RF and moved Revere to CF. Domonic Brown to LF. Grady Sizemore an alright 4th OF. For sure not the best OF defensively but Citizens Bank Park doesn't have the largest dimensions so it could work. After that transformation I'd say the Phillies have one of the better Pitching rotations and BP, are mediocre on defense overall, have a lot of power (playing in a HR friendly Ballpark) and slightly below average speed and contact hitting. Sure they still aren't the best team in baseball by any means but if things go right and barring any major injuries to their key players they could make a run for a wildcard spot. And with some big contracts to veteran players coming of the books some nice additions could be made during the next FA period.

That is what I did with them; no real rebuild but anyways thought it would be worth the try!