This is just great news for anyone hoping for sustained success of the Phillies. By way of comparison, I was watching a Pirates/Yankees spring training game on MLB TV with my kid, and the Pirates guys sounded like they were having a telethon for public radio. The gist of it was "Please, god, let someone buy our tickets". They are at the complete other end of the spectrum, having suffered 17 (?) consecutive losing seasons. Even a great park doesn't help when you are at AAAA for over a decade.

I'm half posting this to use the bad pun in the title. But Dukes is a once top prospect whose career/personal life has been a train wreck. However, he's only 25 and if he could be gotten for a Minor League contract or sub 500k offer, could be worth a flier to give the Phillies an option close to Major league level in the event of injuries. If he works out, you have a very good Left Fielder for years to come, if he doesn't cut him loose after the season.

Hey Comcast! Show us the money! We want free cable too!

Very funny piece from the foul ball event of the year in 2009.

I've played fantasy baseball for many years. (My first team's rotation featured rookies Jason Bere and Aaron Sele. Jay Buhner and Mo Vaughn anchored my lineup.) But I haven't played it well since 2003 or 2004. My excuse? Kids.

No, it's not that I fill my rosters with unproven youngsters. It's that my wife and I have too many. Too many to allow me the time necessary to have success in a competitive fantasy baseball league.

I've thought about hanging up my fantasy spikes but I really like playing it -not to win necessarily- but really just to keep an eye on good and great players from around baseball. Players like Adrian Gonzalez or Josh Johnson who of course come up on the each team's schedule sporadically throughout the summer but then seemingly disappear. I like knowing about those guys and I like being able to talk to other baseball fans about those guys. So I play fantasy baseball. And I'm gonna continue to play.

...As long as at least two or three of you folks wanna join the rest of us in my new league: S(a.N.D)B.O.K.X. Fantasy Baseball.

The SAND is the tautologically redundant part of the acronym: Simple (and Not Difficult)

The BOKX explains just how simple (and not difficult) this league's scoring system will be: Based Only on Ks (strikeouts) and Xs (extra base hits).

* * * This league's scoring system has two only statistics: strikeouts and extra-base hits.* * *

Hopefully, this keeps things simple (and not difficult) and will thus require only a few minutes each week to seek out good hitters and good pitchers to replace not-quite-as-good pitchers and not-quite-as-good hitters. (And hopefully, I'll have Ryan Howard on my team.)

We'll probably use only players from the National League and unless things change for some reason, it'll be a points league. It's gonna be on Yahoo! so it'll be free and unless things change for some reason, we'll just be playing for bragging rights (and something to do).

I've had some help from Red Reporter's sabermetric higher-ups and I think I know how to weight things so that the NL's good, better and best strikeout pitchers are going to be worth roughly what the NL's good, better and best sluggers will be worth on draft day. But I've never seen or heard of a league like this so I don't know quite what to expect and if anybody can think of any reason that this format might go beyond just being quirky and we'll like end up ripping a hole in the space/time continuum, help us out, eh?

So, if you wanna play and/or if you have any questions, let me know below.

We had the draft set for Wednesday, March 31st at 8:30pm EST. But I'm almost certain that we're going to change that date. I think we'll need to settle on a date and a time and I think we'll need to do it sooner rather than later so as soon as we can get our ninth and tenth owners we'll restart that conversation.

I'm gonna go ahead and post an email address so that if there are any lurkers who wanna play they don't necessarily have to create an SBNation account in order to do so. Just let me know what you're thinking: SANDBOKX.at.Gmail

Ive been ranking each team and decided to rank the Phillies since there my favorite team. Take a look....or not

Doesn't he know that due to cost control concerns, he'll be kept from getting MLB experience till the last possible moment? It's early, but he just keeps hitting. Also had an outfield assist the other day, IIRC.

Obviously, he's trying to get our attention. He's got mine. The link is to the box score posted at MLB on 3/7/10.