Key Questions for the Phils

This week, Phillies players from all over the country and Latin America are packing their bags and heading to Florida for the start of Spring Training.  It’s always an exciting time because it signals the return of baseball and even though I can’t quite see the light at the end of the winter tunnel, I can start to imagine what that light will look like.  I’m hear to tell you readers, that that light will be beautiful and warm.  Very warm.  In the meantime though, the arrival of the pitchers and catchers this year is especially exciting, because the team arrives as National League East Division Champions, for the first time in fourteen years.

Still, even as they go into this season with a division crown on their collective heads, they were a fairly flawed team last year and there have been some key roster changes in the off-season.  The success of a major-league baseball team generally hinges on a few key elements of that team.  The race to win a division among the two or three main contenders is comparable to a presidential election process.  There are known entities on a baseball team, just as there are voters that will vote for a certain candidate no matter what happens in a presidential campaign.  The key to winning an election is to sway the undecided voters and the key to winning a division is to have the “unknown” quantities work in your favor.  Every team has these question marks going into the season and they can’t be successful unless they get the right answers.  So what are the key questions for the 2008 Phillies?

Will the back-end of the rotation be able to keep them in games? 

Some may argue that the rotation as a whole is a question mark, but I think you have a pretty good idea, for better or worse, what you’re getting with the front three of Cole Hamels, Brett Myers, and Jamie Moyer.  The real question marks are the #4 and #5 spots.  Kyle Kendrick is the #4 man right now and he had a fantastic rookie season, but whether or not he can repeat that success is anyone’s guess.  Then you get to the fifth spot in the rotation and things really get dicey.  It’s shaping up to be an open competition between Adam Eaton, Chad Durbin, J.D. Durbin, Rule-5 draftee Travis Blackley, and the newly acquired Kris Benson.  

Eaton is the favorite to win the spot right now because he has the best combination of a track record and a healthy pitching arm.  Of course, he also has that 6.29 ERA from last season.  There is no reason to believe that Eaton will ever live up to the $24 million contract he signed before last season, but there is reason to hope that he can at least be a capable fifth starter.  Last season was easily the worst of his career, and everyone has down years, right?  I won’t claim to be optimistic about Eaton, and it’s hard to figure out what possessed Pat Gillick to give him this contract in the first-place, but if he can resemble the pitcher he was in 2003-05 with San Diego, he can handle the fifth starter role. 

Benson is intriguing, but the fact that no team was willing to give him a major-league contract (not even the Phillies, who brought him in on a minor-league deal) shows that he is probably a long-shot to be ready for the start of the season, following last year’s shoulder surgery.  He’s hoping to be in the Phillies rotation by Opening Day and if he doesn’t make the cut, he may opt to see what other offers are out there instead of going to Triple-A.  If Benson is healthy and close to what he was before the injury, he is far and away the best of this fifth starter group, which makes the decision to bring him in on a minor league-deal a good one.

How will the corner outfield situation shake out?

At first glance, the Phils appear to be adequately stocked in the corner outfield with Pat Burrell, Geoff Jenkins, and Jayson Werth.  I think there’s some reason to be concerned here though, and with Aaron Rowand gone, this group will be counted on to provide protection in the line-up after Ryan Howard. 

In right field, what can the Phils count on getting from the Jenkins/Werth platoon?  As I’ve mentioned in other posts, Jenkins has been in decline for a number of years and who knows when he will hit the wall.  The Phillies are probably hoping that the move to Citizens Bank Park will rejuvenate him and that’s a good possibility.  Guys with warning-track power can be much more than that when they take swings at CB Park.  Then there is Werth, who has been around for a number of years but can still be put in the same category as Kendrick: unproven.  There’s really not much evidence to suggest that he can duplicate what he did last season, but, of course, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.  The fact that he’ll be playing mostly against lefties will probably keep him from being exposed too badly. 

In left field,  Burrell is, for the most part, not a question mark.  He has actually put up pretty consistent numbers over the last threeseasons and there’s no reason to think he will do much better or worse in 2008.  However, with his contract expiring at the end of the year, it will be interesting to see if the Phillies consider trading him at mid-season to bolster the pitching staff.  That would only really be possible if Jenkins and Werth (and maybe even Pedro Feliz, as well) are producing, but if they are, it may be tempting for Gillick to look into Burrell’s trade value.  Burrell will be 32 next season and probably will be looking for a 4-5 year contract worth at least $10 million a year.  If the team decides they won’t be interested in re-signing him, it would make a lot of sense to see if there’s any teams in need of a power hitter with some starting pitching to spare.  A couple of possible trades would be to the Angels for Jon Garland or to the Indians for Jake Westbrook.

Will the bullpen be able to hold leads?

With all the focus on the starting rotation’s deficiencies, the bullpen has become an overlooked question mark for this team.  However, I do not see the most important member of the bullpen, closer Brad Lidge, as a question mark.  There has been a lot said and written about Lidge “breaking down mentally”, or however you want to word it, after giving up that monster home run to Albert Pujols in the 2005 NLCS.  It’s not completely baseless.  Lidge did follow up that home run with a dismal performance in the World Series and then a not-so-great 2006 season.  But even in a “bad” year for Lidge in 2006, he still held opponents to a .238 batting average.  Then, after a rough start to his 2007 season caused him to lose his closer job, he recovered to finish the season with a 3.36 ERA and a .219 opponent’s average, both only slightly above his career average.  He was also went back to closing games and picked up 19 saves after the All-Star Break.  All along, he has remained one of the most prolific strike-out pitchers in all of baseball, striking out 192 batters in 137 innings over the last two seasons.  I don’t know if he’ll reach the heights of dominance he did a few years ago, but I am very confident that he will be a good closer. 

So, why is the bullpen an unknown?  Well, the main set-up man, Tom Gordon, turned 40 in November and is coming off a season in which he spent considerable time on the disabled list and wasn’t all that great when he was healthy.  That’s a crucial role on the team and it seems very dangerous to be counting on him so much at this point in his career.  Another key member of the bullpen is Ryan Madson, who pitched excellently last year, but was lost for the season in July with a shoulder injury.  Will he feel any effects from the injury and will he possibly revert to his 2006 form, when he posted an ERA well over 5?

Meanwhile, after Lidge, Gordon, Madson, and J.C. Romero, the rest of the bullpen spots will be filled by guys that could be described as question marks at best: Clay Condrey, Fabio Castro, Joe Bisenius, Scott Mathieson, and Francisco Rosario are among the candidates.

So, as it strange as it sounds, the Phillies season may not depend on guys named Rollins, Utley, and Hamels as much as guys named Benson, Jenkins, and Madson.  That’s not a bad thing, that’s just baseball.