Phils make offer to Lowe

by PhillyFriar on Dec 4, 2008 11:29 AM EST Comment 38 comments

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Primary source, Boston Globe)

As I commented on Neduol Caz's fanpost regarding the Burrell arbitration issue: "I’ll hold up my hand and say I was wrong if Amaro uses the money saved to sign a free agent starter." Well, Lowe is far from signed, but I can now give Amaro credit for having a plan.

I know it will cost a 1st round pick and a 4-year deal in the neighborhood of $60 million, but Derek Lowe would be the perfect addition to this rotation. He'd slot in at No. 2 behind Hamels and give the Phils a formidable rotation going forward. And with Myers likely leaving at the end of the year, Lowe would also give the club some security in their rotation beyond next season.

Hopefully the Red Sox are focused on Teixeira and the Yanks on Sabathia, and the Phils can steal a march here. And at the very least, it will hopefully drive up the price if the Mets decide to get involved.

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I like this move. We only need to add a few pieces to have a repeat.

I think we have one more season before alot of the younger phillies salary wishes blow up in our face, so my only wish is that if we sign Lowe, get him on a contract that would favor a trade in year 3 or 4 for a salary dump.

by Clyde Simmons on Dec 4, 2008 12:18 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

He certainly does a nice job keeping the ball in the park; however I am reluctant to cough up a draft pick for a guy who we’re likely to get declining returns from late in his contract. Especially if it means they’re “done” and we wind up with a severe LF downgrade as a result.

http://www.thegoodphight.com
WHY CAN'T US?

by WholeCamels on Dec 4, 2008 12:38 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

It’s nice to see they’re trying, but on balance I think I’d rather have

Happ + 2 draft picks + Burrell

than

Lowe + -1 draft picks + Burrell’s replacement

by taco pal on Dec 4, 2008 1:57 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Wait, I guess that isn’t right. If we’d offered arb to Burrell and he accepted, it would have been Happ + 0 draft picks + Burrell.

by taco pal on Dec 4, 2008 3:02 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

this is good

i like the ambition. instead of rolling over and dying after winning the world series, they’re gunning for another….IMMEDIATELY! luv it.

www.WorldF-ingChampions.com
www.VintageUnis.com

by sixrfan on Dec 4, 2008 3:13 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

I like it, as long as he learns to handle the Philly crowd this time… heh.

by Travis Hughes on Dec 4, 2008 3:15 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Well I’m sure he’d be counting on their support rather than their scorn in this case…

World F*ckin' Champions, indeed...

by foos05 on Dec 4, 2008 3:24 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Lowe is a good fit for the Phils, at the right price… I just have no idea what that price might turn out to be. But he’s another guy who can be counted on to throw a lot of innings; a front four of Hamels, Lowe, Myers and Blanton is probably good for upwards of 750 innings, absent injury, at a cumulative ERA below 4. That’s terrific.

As for LF, I just can’t get that worked up about it yet. It’s not very hard, or shouldn’t be, to find a righty bat who can produce an .850 OPS as the short half of a platoon. And if they don’t have that guy in April, they probably can go get him in June, though it’ll certainly cost more and they’ll have lost ground in the meantime.

by dajafi on Dec 4, 2008 4:06 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Agreed on the LF situation. I’m a big advocate of signing Juan Rivera, who looks like he can be had for a 2-year deal worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $6 million to $8 million. And if we’re brutally honest here… no matter who replaces Burrell in LF, the Phils will wind up saving themselves some runs in the field, which means you don’t have to replace Burrell’s offensive production precisely in order to hold your ground.

by PhillyFriar on Dec 4, 2008 4:26 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

As .850 OPS vs. lefties is a fairly significant step down from Burrell’s production, and while it’s possible that Jenkins and Stairs could replicate Burrell’s production vs. righties, that would be a best case scenario. Anyway, I’m not saying I dislike Lowe. But Amaro is taking a high-risk approach here, and I don’t think the potential upside to what he’s doing is high enough to justify that risk.

by taco pal on Dec 4, 2008 7:38 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I could be misinterpreting him, but I think dajafi means that we need to find a righty who can post an .850 OPS versus lefties, and then use some combination of Dobbs/Jenkins/Stairs against righties to hopefully post an OPS of around .850 or so from that side of the dish.

The resulting platoon (of an .850 OPS, naturally) wouldn’t be far off from Burrell’s .875 OPS last year, and when you factor in the improved defense and the money saved, it wouldn’t be a bad trade-off at all. Well, that’s the hope, anyway.

by PhillyFriar on Dec 4, 2008 9:51 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

No, that’s what I understood him to be saying too. I guess the more salient point would be that I’m skeptical that those guys can get to .850 at this stage of their careers. Off the top of my head I’d estimate something in the high .700s or so. (Does PECOTA do splits?) I don’t think they’d be such a huge improvement on defense either.

Another thing to keep in mind is that if the lefty half of your platoon hits .850 vs. righties and your righty half hits .850 vs. lefties, your overall OPS isn’t going to be .850. Each half of the platoon is going to be pressed into service against the “wrong” pitchers every now and again so the overall figures will be a little bit lower than that.

What’s a fair point going the other way is that even a substantial drop in production vs. lefties won’t make a huge dent in overall production since you face so many more righties over the course of a season than lefties.

by taco pal on Dec 5, 2008 11:30 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Ten minutes of running splits on espn.com suggests to me that it actually could be hard to find an outfielder who can hit .850 against lefties.

by taco pal on Dec 5, 2008 11:48 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Oh come on – are you saying it’s hard to find a player that is as good as pat burrell against lefties?

That’s unpossible, as I understand it from various fan blogs and newspaper sources, pat isn’t that good and isn’t worth more than 9 million dollars a year, max

by jemagee on Dec 5, 2008 11:53 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

You love the straw man, don’t you.

by taco pal on Dec 5, 2008 12:00 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Yeah, cause what I wrote was serious

by jemagee on Dec 5, 2008 12:08 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Well, straw men can be used to mock as well as to attempt to make a straight argument. Neither usage is really legitimate.

by taco pal on Dec 5, 2008 4:43 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Mockery isn’t supposed to be legitimate – if it were it probably wouldn’t be called mockery…man

by jemagee on Dec 5, 2008 5:09 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Your point about the platoon is well-taken. I’m probably letting my “big picture” view skew my individual points, but I guess I’m of the mindset that we can afford some offensive drop-off from the LF position for several reasons: (1) the defense will be that much better without Burrell; (2) we can use the money saved to bolster the rotation; (3) we shouldn’t experience down years from both Howard and Rollins again.

by PhillyFriar on Dec 6, 2008 4:57 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Lowe’s a perfect fit. He never gets hurt, he keeps the ball in the park, and he could potentially be a downballot Cy Young candidate with Rollins and Utley behind him.

Sacrifice the draft pick. If the Phils are going to win another championship in the foreseeable future, it’s going to be in the next 3 years, max. A pitcher of Lowe’s quality and reliability is a much, much, much rarer commodity than an adequate LF.

by SethC on Dec 4, 2008 4:19 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Money

I’m concerned that the amount of money being talked about here is going to be ahead of the curve this year. The economy is clearly affecting free agent signings (who’s the highest profile guy signed so far? Doug Brocail?), and could bring relative savings to clubs who wait a bit. Clubs out front might spend way too much as the market is still being set. I’d like to see Lowe join the Phils (but for 3 years instead of 4, but that’s quibbling), but not for an outrageous price that is going to be beyond this year’s market.

by David S. Cohen on Dec 4, 2008 5:00 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

I wouldn’t get all bent out of shape over a draft pick. Lowe is the kinda guy you give up picks for. (Not the David Bell types). A durable starter who throws lots of innings, keeps the ball in the park and who is good year after year is very rare.

His ERA plusses are 114; 124; 118 and 131 over the last 4 years. He is a 200 + innings guy as well. That’s really hard to find.

He is 35 and he has enjoyed pitching in Dodger Stadium. But he looks pretty good to me right now. I don’t like a 5 year contract. I don’t really like a 4 year contract but if that what it takes this could be a WFC type signing.

The LF solution is the key. A solution that revolves around Mayberry; Jenkins and Dobbs is pretty frightenning. Finding LFers who can hit shouldn’t be that hard though. Getting one who can run some and field the position would be kinda cool too. This is one of Amaro’s big tests in my view.

by smitty99 on Dec 4, 2008 5:01 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Those are good ERA+s and I realize ERA+ incorporates ballpark effects. But I’m still slightly worried by the fact that Lowe’s home/road splits seem to be much larger than what ballpark effects alone would predict. Maybe Dodger Stadium helps him more than it helps other pitchers. I dunno.

by taco pal on Dec 4, 2008 5:32 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I was wondering about this too

My first thought was that maybe Lowe had an inordinate number of starts in Coors or the BOB (or whatever the AZ park is called now), but looking at his 2008 gamelogs, that doesn’t seem to be the case — he only had one start at Colorado and one at Arizona.

It doesn’t make intuitive sense that Dodger stadium would help him more than other pitchers — as a groundball pitcher he should be helped less by a big park than a flyball pitcher, and you would think he would be a perfect fit for the Phillies with their small park and good infield defense (excluding 1B, of course).

by phatj on Dec 5, 2008 10:42 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Yeah, hard to know what to make of it. Baseball’s weird sometimes.

by taco pal on Dec 5, 2008 11:01 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Baseball IS weird

It’s also complicated. I really believe that some players benefit more by their home parks than others. And park effects vary from year to year. And infield and outfield defense varies from year to year. So iti gets hard to pin down. I remember years ago when Jamie Moyer had a great year at Safeco and was horrible on the road — just a huge home/road split. And Safeco is Safeco huge and a pitcher’s park for sure. So we should conclude that he was all done and only survived because of his home park. Yet he moved to CBP — which is not a pitcher’s park and is not Safeco huge — and he did just fine.

I really believe in the rule of thumb to be cautious regarding hitters friom hitters’ parks and pitchers from pitchers’ parks. But on the other hand, I think you can look at a guy and determine if he is a quality pitcher regardless of home park. And if he is indeed a rare high-quality, durable pitcher, you worry less about home/road splits.

I just took a quick look at his home/road splits when his home park was Fenway and he normally had a much lowr ERA at home then too. Maybe he just likes his home park regardless.

by smitty99 on Dec 5, 2008 3:28 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Phillies should go after Fliepe Lopez…He should come cheap and could also fill a hole at 2nd…should it arise.

by Clyde Simmons on Dec 5, 2008 8:34 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Finding 2 month sub is probably one of the lesser worries right now

by jemagee on Dec 5, 2008 10:10 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

who also happens to play left? and bat righty?

by Clyde Simmons on Dec 5, 2008 10:51 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

yeah but he also kinda sucks

by taco pal on Dec 5, 2008 11:32 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

None of that changes the fact that he sucks – right?

Put Donald at second for 2 months – he can’t be any worse than Felipe Lopez and he won’t cost as much since the phillies seem all budget conscious – signing lopez would be a poor (stupid) use of limited funds

Which probably means they’ll do it

by jemagee on Dec 5, 2008 11:33 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Anyone hear anything about how likely it is he actually signs?

by FuquaManuel on Dec 4, 2008 5:47 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

not a word… i would think it’s at least plausible

World F*ckin' Champions, indeed...

by foos05 on Dec 4, 2008 6:22 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

If we do somehow get Lowe, then Moyer’s got to go, right? I love the guy and all, but you can’t be paying $6 million (or whatever) for a fifth starter. It just isn’t worth it.

by taco pal on Dec 4, 2008 7:43 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

I think that’s right.

I keep going back and forth on Moyer: between being 46 next year and out-performing his peripherals, I’d think he’s due for a regression, but his stuff and approach is as close to “timeless” (ageless?) as I can imagine for a big-league pitcher. Plus I just love the guy. But Lowe would be an upgrade.

by dajafi on Dec 4, 2008 11:01 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

A bit OT, but tangentially related. As our economy tanks, does baseball feel the ripple ever? or is it so insulated that $$ in contracts, ticket prices, TV advertising, stadium names? I keep thinking of the AIG sign at CBP: The strength to be there.

How might it affect the hot-stove season? Or is this industry so awash in cash and multibillionaires that it’s all insulated?

by Wet Luzinski on Dec 4, 2008 11:11 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Well the ‘rumor’ is that all the non arbitration offers are economy motivated – i don’t buy it because the owners are inherently stupid usually – so the concept of a recession hitting them is impossible for them to fathom – their aura of invincibility will last – hell they probably think they could get a bail out from the gov’t if they needed it

by jemagee on Dec 4, 2008 11:18 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Likelihood of Lowe signing

Long-time lurker; really enjoy the site.

From KLawChat:

Carl (philly): Reports out of Boston and Philly have the Phils making an offer to D Lowe. Any chance he could land there?

Keith Law: Yes but I bet he waits till the Yankees sign a starter (or get snubbed by Sabathia and Burnett) to see if they’ll be motivated to up the price.

by gabramson on Dec 5, 2008 10:34 AM EST reply actions 0 recs