The Ibanez contract

I agree with you. But maybe it’s not realistic to expect a freshly minted GM to play the patience game and grasp that Adam Dunn would be gettable for two years, $10 million per in mid-February.

That said, this was a mistake on Amaro’s part. Probably not a killer mistake, maybe one that Gillick—who brought us some awful f/a signings, as we know—would have made as well, but a mistake. Let’s see if he learns from it.

“how many times did we all bitch & moan when he wouldn’t run into the fence for a ball that ended up being a double?”

On this blog, never.

i have also read reports that bobby was not a great locker room guy.

for one thing, this blog is clearly not the place to criticize abreu. we all loved him and any character assassination will fall on deaf ears here.

by any objective measure, he was a hard worker. it’s only the WIP attack clowns that polluted the minds of this city into thinking he wasn’t trying. what is that based on?

think critically. the reports certainly always say that he worked tirelessly, always the first guy to the cages in the morning. of the guys traded at the 2006 trading deadline, he was certainly the most notable, but the bad stories came out about the other players who had been traded— nothing negative came out about abreu. the worst thing said about him was by anyone was jimmy rollins saying that bobby was so good that the team relied on him so much. hardly a criticism. abreu was a star player that kept the phillies in the tick of the playoff hunt for years when the rest of their talent went short. he and rolen were the first superstars of the modern era in phillies, and while they were both gone by the time we won, they built up the winning that led to the revenue that led to the spending that led to the world series championship. and for that, i have to give them credit. rolen is the one who was so heavily criticized when he left town and had subsequent clubhouse problems. abreu was a class act all the way. he was never much defensively, but is offense was elite and is still fantastic enough that a smart team like the angels was able to get themselves one heck of a deal.

from the WIP perspective, they needed a target and the superstar who spoke poor english was the clear and obvious choice for them. but from a critical thinking fan’s perspective, what exactly was wrong with him? no talking points— think critically about what exactly it was that he did wrong and you might have trouble thinking of something other than putting together marginal defense.

He walks when you need a hit.

Be better if he took swings at balls out of the strike zone huh?

For the deal he signed with LA, I’m sure most of us would rather have signed him than Ibanez at the deal he signed. I don’t care how enthusiastic my players are. I want to keeping winning World Series. That makes me enthusiastic.

The Phillies won more after Abreu left in 2006, but that was mainly due to the hot streaks by Rollins, Hamels coming into his own, and Lieber returning to form. None of those things were related to Abreu leaving. The fallacy of believing that something that happens after something else was therefore caused by it is where most errant human assumptions come from. Don’t make that one.

“Walking when you need a hit” is the least logical and least fact-based criticism of Bobby Abreu at all. Pitchers pitch around good hitters with runners on base. This is well documented. Batting average on pitches out of the strike zone is incredibly low. That is also well documented. Therefore, there is no logic to blaming Abreu for the fact that pitchers were afraid of him nor for the fact that he chose not to GIDP on sliders in the dirt on 3-1 counts.

Who cares if Abreu was afraid of the wall? He played 162 games a year in Philly, most of them as our best hitter, precisely because he didn’t throw himself into walls. It’s great when your schlubs throw themselves into walls because their replacements aren’t much worse, but I’d like my superstars to watch their health more carefully.

There are conflicting reports on why Burrell left Philly. Recent indications are that he was offered a deal during the season that was more lucrative than the one he took and he rejected it. The Phillies were apparently hesitant to give him too many years. However, there is a strong sentiment that Burrell was perennially under-appreciated by Phillies management, and perhaps that’s why they didn’t make more of an effort. Raul Ibanez is not better than Abreu by most measures. I’m not sure how anyone could make a strong case that he’s better enough that it justifies the extra money and extra left handedness.