They had incredible resources to trade to get that rebuild working.
There is no way you can compare those situations...
Huh? Outside of Dickerson, who exactly was an "incredible resource" that they traded?
And they got TB's 27th ranked prospect plus a veteran middle RP for DIckerson.
Stewart was meh. The other trades were ancient history (i.e. before they started building this team).
Most of the Rockies' moves were small potatoes, the real key was drafting well in the first couple rounds (Story, Arendo, Blackmon, Freeland, Anderson) and a smart LA signing (Senzatela).
The lesson to be learned from Colorado, SF, St Louis, KC and so on is you don't have to throw around megabucks, you do have to have good scouts and good development, and make smart acquisitions around the edges.
That is, Phillies need to do better than Randolph, get players like Crawford turned around, be patient with Cozens (who should repeat AAA unless he finishes really strong), and so on.
They need to do better than Morton, Buchholtz, Saunders, et al, some of that was bad luck, some of that bad decisions - on the other hand, 5yr/$70M for Desmond is a gross overpay.
There's no one they can trade for or sign that will do more for them than fixing Herrera and Franco, and no pitcher they sign that will help more than getting their own young pitchers on track.
That's why I was glad to see them hire Stairs, who has a clue.
I'd like to see them land a first rate pitching coach and improve instruction throughout the minor league system.
But they also have to focus on the right players, not just talent, but coachability. No more drafting/signing hitters who just want to mindlessly hack, and power pitchers who think overthrowing is how you pitch.
Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers and Angels aren't good comparables.
The Phillies have money, but not that kind of money (I expect Middleton to spend, but Phillies is really a 2nd tier market and lacks the media advantages of NY and LA - and it's not the first choice of the mega-rich)
We've seen the Yankees and Dodgers use money to overcome mistakes, we don't have quite that margin for error.
There's a middle ground, we can spend more than Colorado, KC, and probably a little more than SF and St Louis, but we also have to be smart and make that money count. Like Epstein did.
I thought the Herrera deal was a good move, even with his struggles, the cost is low enough to make him a viable trade candidate unless he totally tanks, and even then it's affordable.
Using money to lock up your own players early (and through their late 20s when they'll have maximum value) is worth a couple "misses."
I think we can afford a couple solid role players as FAs the next couple years, but I'd stay away from bidding wars for "names," unless it's someone like Trout who'd actually want to come here.
Face it, the premier FAs are going to choose NY (media and if you have $200+M, Manhattan is a lot more fun than Philly) or S California (media, hedonistic playground).
And overpaying for over 30 FAs is just stupid. See Pujols, etc. You can buy that kind of production a lot cheaper.
There are guys available every year at a reasonable cost who can fill holes at a slight overpay without locking you up for a decade.
To make this work, you have to be smart.
As the Angels have shown, if you use money to overcome the deficiencies in your farm system, it doesn't work for long. Despite winning the draft lottery (i.e. late 1st rd pick that surprised) with Trout.
And while the LA overpay opportunity has passed us by, throwing money at scouting and player development is always an option.
To me the real issue is whether we're drafting/signing/developing players at a higher rate than most teams.
If not, no amount of spending will make/keep this an elite team.
We are on par with those teams from a financial perspective. They are comparable but what I was discussing is we didn't have a group of high profile players to trade like the Yankees.
We did. We just waited too long.
Had we traded players after the 2013 (it would have been gutsy doing it after 2012), Utley, Rollins would have garnered a haul, Ruiz would have had value.
Lee and Papelbon could have anchored big trades.
Hamels at age 29 would have landed a king's ransom.
We are in the ballpark financially (but still below) but not as a FA destination, I mean be realistic, if you were looking at $300M, would a few million more make a difference compared to a destination where you could really enjoy that money?
We wouldn't have gotten anywhere near what we saw the Yankees got in exchange for their talent. Selling off in 2012 would have been an extremely hard pill for the fanbase to swallow.
And how much harder a pill have the fans actually had to swallow as a result of several (losing) seasons in which they got to ride the nostalgia express. Apparently, the only spending AF countenances as 'efficient': signing second and third tier FA to fill holes for a year and be flipped for prospects is actually the most financially inefficient method possible. What did we get for Morton and what will we get for Buckholtz. Even if they play half-way decent from here to trade deadline, what sort of prospects can we reasonably expect to acquire for Saunders, Kendrick, Benoit? We've invested tens of $millions in them. Does anyone really belief we'll get even $5 million worth of prospects back. We could have added to our LA signings for less than $5 mill and had better prospects. We could have added more future value than the vets we signed for same or less $ on the over-23 international market. We've followed this flipping vets strategy for several years now. What have we gained from that? Not an anywhere close to a competitive MLB team, not a respectable MLB team. Quality of prospects for anyone we flipped in that time? How is this remotely efficient? It seems like money down the toilet to me. Far better to spend in international market or for FA who can contribute for a number of years or take-on-salary trades to get prospects or guys who can contribute for years. Those who always push for financial efficiency, seem to be pushing the least financially efficient way to run a rebuild. It isn't a rebuild strategy at all. It is an inferior patch and fill strategy -- the sort of hopeless game the Sixers played pre-Hinkie.
Many of the teams you list as the ones we can match spending with are baseball's 'official poor' -- teams who get extra charity draft picks and a larger international allocation to compensate for their poverty. If we just spend like them and don't get the perks of not spending, we have no chance to succeed. We are a large revenue team. We have been effectively penalized for years as a large revenue team. If we don't use those $ to compete, then we are at a disadvantage compared to virtually everybody. And we are currently sitting as close to the absolutely worst MLB team, so we have a lot of catching up to do. In our own division, the Braves have both a better MLB team and the highest rated farm. So, surpassing them with our existing strategy doesn't exactly compute.
Well, they did well in a baseball sense. We kicked Domonic Brown out of RF to accommodate a guy whose career was already bust and who had just assaulted an elderly Jew in a hotel lobby not long before we signed him, so we don't base all our signings on personal virtue.
So basically the Phillies aren't interested in winning because they'd rather spends their allotment every year vs. signing a high priced lottery ticket?
The Phillies will spend the money when they have some semblance of a contender to build around. This isn't about being cheap.
In the case of the under-23 international market, these are 16-18 year olds we are talking about. It makes no sense not to trade for extra allocation and spend 50% more. You don't need a contending nucleus to do that. This is how you build a contending nucleus. And yes, we do want to sign more of the highly regarded LA kids. That's the source of a lot of the LA stars in MLB.
The Phillies missed the boat on LA signings in the past.
Last year, they probably couldn't have spent a large additional allocation, who was available (i.e. wasn't locked up in advance).
They signed a large number of guys, and spent up to their 5% overage.
Given they traded for allocations in the past, I'd be surprised they didn't test the waters.
Next year it should be easier to trade for allocations, a number of teams are limited to $300K signings and might find more effective to trade allocations for prospects, but even then, they're gonna want real prospects, since instead of trading for marginal prospects they could just sign 4 guys for a $1M total. So it's going to be a tough allocation v opportunity cost decision.
I'm not against hitting the FA market next year or the year after (though given this season, 2019 probably makes more sense), I just don't think we have a shot at the top FAs (I wouldn't sign with the Phillies if I could go to Hollywood and sleep with the stars), and I don't want to pay $30M a year for a 31 or 32 year old pitcher on a 6-7 year deal (see Lee, Halladay, et al). But each year there are a half dozen FAs who are solid starters who sign fairly reasonable deals that won't cripple the team going forward. It's just a matter of identify the right guy at the right position and closing the deal.
Trading for a bad contract is also a good use of money, you can get a solid player, get his team to throw in some money and a prospect to boot by taking that contract off their hands (i.e. a 2-3 WAR player making $25M with 2-3 years left on his contract).
But we're not going to spend our way into contention, you still have to do it the old fashioned way, develop players and make good trades.
You are kind of like Trump on this. There is absolutely no evidence that they could not have spent an additional 50% allocation and you really should stop repeating this. There were a dozen Cubans that became eligible throughout the year.
They CHOSE not to trade for additional allocations. This does not mean that their current class is not good. But they chose not to add a $2 million addition to the class which they easily could have. But it was not because there were not available prospects. And Trump's inaugural crowd was not the largest in history.
