28
2011
Have The Phillies Become The Yankees Of The National League?
An article by 
As if I didn’t dislike the Yankees enough, now it appears that there are two of them. I know the Phillies are not quite the Yankees, but at this time they are the closest thing the National League has to offer. In recent years the Phillies have opened a new Ballpark, won a world series, lost in another, all while winning 4 consecutive NL East titles. The constant winning seems to have padded their pockets allowing for big signings in the marketplace and taking on big salaries at the trade deadline.
Philly has become the place to be, and coming into the 2011 season the Philadelphia Phillies had a budget of 165 million. Going into this season they had the second highest payroll, just ahead of the Red Sox at 163M and behind the Yankees 207M. They have been giving out money at will in recent years, mostly in the form of lucrative contract extensions. Ryan Howard and Chase Utley were given contract extensions ranging from Utley’s 15M, to Howards 20M which eventually raises to 25M a year. They have been the most aggressive team in the trade market over the past few seasons, seemingly plucking Ace’s from other teams at will. They acquired Cliff Lee via trade, then shipped him out and re-acqiored him again in Free Agency. They traded for Roy Halladay and then picked up Roy Oswalt in the last two seasons as well. This past trade deadline they acquired Hunter Pence for a package of prospects and now have solidified right field for the next few seasons.
The part that makes them similar to the Yankees is not just the large sums of money they are handing out, it’s the trades they are making. They seem to have adopted the “win at all costs” motto the New York Yankees abide by, and are willing to deplete their farm system in an effort to win now. Yes, the Yankees have not done this as much in recent years with an eye towards the future, but don’t think for a second they won’t deplete that farm system if the right trade comes along. At this time the Phillies are not of the mindset of holding onto prospects, they are considering them all as trade bait. They boast a star studded lineup and probably the best pitching rotation ever assembled. Judging from what their staff did this season it appears that they can be talked about amongst the greatest pitching staffs ever. Every season they are able to re-load at the trade deadline and make a major acquisition for their stretch run. They have shown they will do anything to win, so much so that players such as Cliff Lee are willing to leave 30M on the table to join them.
I know that the Mets are having financial issues right now, but I never saw this coming. I never saw the Phillies being this juggernaut, wheeling, dealing and free spending. The Mets are in the much larger market and should have a higher payroll because of that. But this is just a prime example to what winning can do. The Phillies attendance has been through the roof, coming into 2011 selling out 123 consecutive games at home. The Phillies revenue has sky rocketed due to their recent success, allowing them the opportunity to splurge as they have.
I don’t know if the large spending will last, but I do know that Phillies General Manager Reuben Amaro Jr will continue to be aggressive in the trade market. Once a team reaches this success level it’s hard to bring them down. Lets hope for our sake that Sandy is able to build a winner in Flushing, and we are able to knock Philly off their pedestal just as the Red Sox did to the Yankees. When it happens, I just hope that it is as heart wrenching as losing that 7 game lead was.
About the Author: Dan Valis
I am a staff writer for Mets Merized Online. I am a Mets team analyst with a focus on the minor league system, as well as the major league club. I am a lifelong New Yorker who was born and raised to be a Mets fan. The ups and downs of being a Mets fan is what makes following this team so much fun, but at times so frustrating. You can follow me on Twitter @BgAppleMetsTalk.
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well, let’s see.. the phillies have won 5 straight division tittles, not 4. also, they spend $ and have gotten lucky because ed wade is somehow the GM of the awful astros and have given away the best players houston have had the past few years for absolutely crap, lidge in 2008, oswalt last year and pence this year, also the only free agent worth mentioning is lee that has gone to the phillies, other than that what other free agent has gone there? ibanez? please… what they did was they drafted well, lock up the good players and got rid of whatever baggage they had, pile up the minors and after years of sucking they became good, with that being said, once howard becomes a $25 million albatross for them (kinda like this year) for the next 4 years they be strapped for $. give them props, but to say they become the yankees is a stretch, like boston yes, nobody is like the yankees, the yankees spend at will, and don’t mind paying someone $50 million to be in triple A while replacing it with someone with another $100 million. i wouldn’t be surprise if the yankees get bounced out in the first round they’d go after CJ Wilson. nobody like the yankees..
I don’t care if the Phillies are now the free spending Yankees of the NL.
At some point, it’s going to be one too many long term and/or big bucks contracts.
They Yankees spending still have them beat by a mile, they don’t care about paying a luxury tax, and if the Steinbrenner sons follow tradition will just spend more to cover any problems they did create with bad contracts. Not that they were exactly smart this off season but they missed out on Lee, Sox picked up Crawford and AGonz and look who is sitting on top of the AL east?
Sometimes guys, it’s all about the guys you didn’t sign. It’s not always all about the $$ and ‘free wheeling’ spending.
spending and luxury taxes huh? Again, everybody is now more of a financial planner than a baseball fan.
Don’t worry about who’s spending what but instead just concern yourself with who is WINNING what.
It’s not your money so don’t worry about it.
And it’s ALWAYS about the WINNING. How they did it? If you don’t want to talk about the baseball players than Who cares.
You’re missing the point. Or maybe we’re saying the same thing. I can’t really tell from your comment.
It’s not about the free wheeling spending. It’s how you spend any and all dollars – how smart you are with your investments – that determines a contending team.
Crawford. Seems to be a Bay level bust so far.
I see a lot about the Phils (living in SJ), and they really are taking advantage of theri golden age (a core that clicked, and a full ballpark) to go for it all, and that meant ramping up payroll. But, the team execs even admit they pretty much blew the wad at this point, and Payroll is not going up. And if the team falls apart (as old guys sometimes do), and attendance/ratings tail off (happens too!) they could easily start running a deficit.
Bottom line, don’t expect them to keep doubling down on more expensive guys. But they could keep in the range they are for a while. At least until the first missed playoff year!
If you want a key difference between the teams? No Way the Yankees trade Lee to be able to bring in Halladay. They would have kept both.
The Phillies also didn’t really spend any money to speak of before they actually won a World Series. Then they started adding salary and giving out extensions. This is really the complete opposite of what we did. We ramped up the spending in order to begin competing and that took away from our farm system as well so when the players we brought in, left, we didn’t have enough good one’s coming in.
During the build up to hopefully winning we gave up three #1 picks, two 2nd rounders and a third rounder. Prospects for Delgado, La Duca, El-Duque, Church, Schneider and Santana. We didn’t get burned in any of those deals either but we didn’t have those prospects in the farm to get us over the hump. We had already spent them.
Philly also got two everyday players that cost neither a prospect or even an average salary in Werth and Victorinno and got great seasons out of them. Werth was let go for two high draft choices and Victorinno may be too and the biggest thing of all was that Philly didn’t trade their ace to be away for a mediocre starting pitcher. If they had Hamels wouldn’t have led them to their World Series championship. Kazmir’s run was all too short but if he had the kinds of seasons in 2006, 2007 and 2008 for us that he did for Tampa things could have been different. Trading away a young ace out of your farm is just such a stupid incredibly naive thing to do.
Relying on salary dumps and free agents for every need on your 25 just inorder to GET competitive only guarantees you a very short window. If you develop the nucleus first you can add to it and keep it going for a period of time but if the farm can’t replace what you need eventually your going to run out of players. That’s what happened to us. We ran out of players every year.
Your article made me think about Reyes and how awful it would be to see him in a Phillie uniform. UGHHHHHH that would kill me. As far as the Phils being the yanks of the NL I’ll buy that for now but who knows what is around the corner. If they are able to retool their offense this year then I will have to sa yes they have become that team. If they stand pat then all bets are off. It is interesting to compare the Phils and the Mets during the past 8 years or so and watch how both teams attempted to build a winner. The Mets really did try to buy a winner to jump start the market and become the super franchise unfortunatly it didn’t work but we are now rebuilding from the inside and will be ready to kick some Phillie tail in the next year or two.
Ed Wade gave them a huge gift in Pence. Helps this year, and fills a big hole for next year.
damn guy has done way more to make Philly good as the GM of the Astros than he ever did as the Phils GM. I find it hard to believe that the phils make the best offer for every good player on the Astros.
Reminds me of the marlins and the Mets.
how?? the marlins salary dumped delgado and loduca.. how did they helped us???
Pence and Oswalt were salary dumps too and Atlanta got a pretty good player from Houston in Bourne and paid a lot less than Philly did.
You must have missed Doc Gooden’s tweet where he’s must have some inside info – saying Pujols to Miami if he doesn’t resign with the Cards.
I can’t see it. Loria is just too cheap.
They do have a new Stadium with luxury box rev. You never know. I read they were thinking of going after Prince or CJ as well.
I saw that, thought Doc needed to call Dr. Drew right away.
“damn guy has done way more to make Philly good as the GM of the Astros than he ever did as the Phils GM.”
Agreed.
This article is a testament to the ineptness of the Wilpons. For everything the Phils have done right, the Mets have done the opposite and reaped failure. It is sad that as a Mets fan, I have to witness the fall of the Mets and the rise of the Phillies to perennial excellence and leadership. Ruben Amaro Jr and the Phillies ownership have take their franchise to consistent success at the head of the NL. That is very sad and it points out the ineptitude of the Wilpon organization. The Phils built a new park the right way and we have Citi which is a disaster. The Phils have assembled the best pitching staff in MLB. Most of those starters were available to us, but we passed and let the Phils take the Championships away from us. The Phis assembled a professional team capable of top performance from top to bottom. We assembled a team of misfits from broken arm pitchers to retreads. Chris Young leads the list followed by such losers as Carrasco. Paulino was our big catching acquisition even with his history of PED’s. The Phillies now typify excellence, while the Mets are a collection of dregs. And we constantly have to hear a litany of why we have to let the few excellent player that remain go elesewhere because of affordability issues.
Life is not fair and the state of Mets fans is very sad. We have a pitchers park without the benefit of a pitching staff that can utilize it. We have a left field wall and spacious outfield to frustrate our own right handed hitters. We can’t afford to sign quality players. Ownership doesn’t understand that seats fill when there is a quality team on the field. The Mets have given up their birthright in the New York market because of mgmt and ownership incompetence. The Phillies are the dynasty in the division while we are fighting for rights to the cellar. It takes real dedication to be a Mets fan these days.
wrong… very wrong.. again, the phillies sucked big time for many years, traded away their big stars for prospects after prospects, + kept drafting a bunch of guys, THEN ed wade went to houston and started to send to philly the missing pieces they needed, to get halladay the phillies traded top prospects, to get a bonafide closer, a really good RF and a really good SP they gave away absolute CRAP. in terms, yes they made good moves, but they got EXTREMELY LUCKY to have ed wade on their side..
People seem to have a vested interest in tearing down how successful teams become successful.
Philadelphia has had winning seasons in 10 of the last 11 years. The only exception was 2002 at 80-81.
Since 2001 Philly has won 86, 80, 86, 86, 88, 85, 89, 92, 93, 97 and 101. A huge part of why they’ve done this is because of the work Ed Wade did in Philly when he was the GM. They missed the playoffs in 2005 by just one game. Wade was fired after that game and Gillick took over.
Wade’s the guy though that acquired Rollins, Utley, Hamels, Howard, Victorino and Ruiz along with a lot of guys Gillick used to upgrade in other areas. Gillick reshaped things mostly by subtracting guys off the Major League roster like Thome, Rowand and Abreu and did a tremendous job himself but the heart of the team is still guys that Wade acquired even years later. Amaro Jr. has basically been able to tinker with the roster and take on salary because of the success they’ve had.
I don’t know that Wade ever gets the Phillies over the top but he certainly had a big hand in getting them close and some of his deals with Philly have reeked a bit but the Pence one is potentially a huge win for Houston and his mandate there isn’t even to win. It’s to get the payroll down so the team can be sold.
Even Philly fans who hated Wade have to admit years later he laid the groundwork. Who knows, maybe everyone will someday be saying the same things about Minaya. Wade built up the Philly farm but also took away from it with numerous free agent signings. The similarities are there.
Eleven years now with only one season under .500 and that one was 80-81. Five Division titles, three World Series and a World Championship and their “extremely lucky.”
We should be so lucky.
This sounds like every single post you do hear every day. Praising the operations of another team and dissing the Mets. Seriously why don’t you change your name or go root for another team so you can be content.
Tomorrow another GM will make news and then you’ll be gushing over his history and then complain about the Mets.
All your posts are the same just with different characters depending on the flavor of the day. Earlier it was SF who was the model and the Mets should be so lucky, then most of the year it was the Braves who the Mets should emulate but we suck, now Ed Wade makes a move and now you’re reviewing his past history. I guess you can do the same for any succussful GM in baseball and there’s plenty. So why don’t you do that? Oh wait, you already do.
We all know what’s next in line if St. Louis wins it. It will be the next few weeks about how the Mets should do things like the Cardinals.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that SF’s scouted, drafted, signed and developed young players had a huge amount of impact on their winning the World series last year.
It’s also true that some of their older free agents (Huff, Renteria and Uribe) played a huge part as well as did a waiver wire acquisition (Ross) but without Lincecum, Cain, Bumgarner, Wilson, Posey they don’t sniff the playoffs.
Developing your own All Stars, ROY candidates and Cy young award winners, and filling in behind them is far and away a better plan than signing someone else’s former All Stars, ROY candidates and Cy Young winners.
bayonne, i see this loser now is praising the phillies, wouldn’t be shocked to see him drooling over them… is there anyone more pathetic on this mets blog than him!??
No where in that post was there even the hint of dissing the Mets. All that was done there was point out what Ed Wade has on his resume. That’s it.
How does pointing out good work done by a rival GM equate into “dissing the Mets?”
Does this mean that you think we should ignore pujols cause he’s a Cardinal? Lincecum cause he’s a Giant? Ted Williams because he was a Red Sox?
See this what people mean when they say you never address the substance of what anyone writes, you only complain that they write it. You can’t dispute it so you complain about it.
No discussion of whether or not drafting Rollins in the 2nd round was a good move, Hamels in the 1st round, Victorino in the rule 5, Werth as a non tender, Ruiz as an IFA or Utley as a first rounder or how a perennial doormat has now had an eleven year run with just one sub .500 year.
Can’t address the topic so you discuss the fact that I responded to someone else’s post with a different point of view.
Not what I said, just the fact that I said it.
Ed Wade Ed Schmade, that’s all BS. The Phillies have assembled a team that is light years ahead of the Mets. However they did it is irrelevant. What is relevant is the disparity between the teams. It will be a long time before the Mets will ever be competitive vs Philly again. And that is a damn shame considering that it is NY that we’re talking about. I hold the Wilpons responsible for this sad state of affairs.
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yes they are spending and winning but at what cost to the future with all the big money tied up in Howard, Utley, Halliday, Hamels, Lee and re-signing Rollins plus the fact they are getting old and don’t have anyone in minors to replace aging stars.
I say just wait to see how far this spending goes while sacrificing future