{"id":1161,"date":"2010-11-15T12:49:56","date_gmt":"2010-11-15T16:49:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=1161"},"modified":"2010-11-15T12:49:56","modified_gmt":"2010-11-15T16:49:56","slug":"contreras-and-sandberg-coming-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=1161","title":{"rendered":"Contreras and Sandberg Coming Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The first real news of the Phillie offseason came this morning with the reports that the Phils are “close” to a deal with Jose Contreras<\/a>.\u00a0 Right now the reports are saying 2 years\/$5 million for the soon-to-be 39-year-old right-hander.<\/p>\n

This looks like a nice signing.\u00a0 Yes, he’s old and 2010 was his first full season as a reliever, but he did a great job.\u00a0 With the injuries and inconsistencies that Lidge and Madson faced early in the season, there were long stretches where Contreras was the most dependable member of the Phillie pen.\u00a0 He’s also a proven postseason performer.\u00a0 He pitched four scoreless innings in the playoffs this year, allowing just one base-runner.\u00a0 Back in the 2005 postseason,\u00a0he was 3-1 as a starter while helping the White Sox to a World Series title.<\/p>\n

Ruben Amaro has a lot of bullpen spots to fill this offseason, so it’s nice to act quickly on a proven commodity.\u00a0 Obviously, keeping the contract to just two years for a guy as old as Contreras is crucial.\u00a0 Amaro will have to hand out a multi-million dollar deal to at least one other reliever, because this team is currently in desperate need of a proven left-hander.<\/p>\n

Sandberg Returns<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Phillies announced today that Ryne Sandberg has been hired as the new manager at Triple-A Lehigh Valley.\u00a0 The irony of Sandberg’s return won’t be lost on any long-time Phillie fans.\u00a0 He was drafted by the Phillies out of high school in 1978 but traded to the Cubs before the ’82 season in exchange for Ivan DeJesus.<\/span><\/p>\n

The rumor has always been that the Phillies thought he was too big to play second base.\u00a0 Well, all he did was win 9 Gold Gloves at second for the Cubs, and make 10 All-Star appearances in a Hall of Fame career.\u00a0 As a young fan of really bad Phillie teams in the late-80’s and early-90’s, the trades of Sandberg and Julio Franco were described to me in tones that were probably similar to stories of the Great Depression a half-century earlier.<\/p>\n

Sandberg badly wanted the Cubs manager job this year, but this time it was the Cubs who deemed him not good enough, and it’s the Phillie organization who have welcomed him with open arms.\u00a0 It still seems unlikely that he’ll be the manager of the big league club in Philly, though.\u00a0 Charlie Manuel doesn’t sound like a man who’s ready to leave any time soon, and Sandberg hasn’t sounded like a man who’s willing to wait his turn in the minor leagues for too many years.\u00a0 But who knows, maybe in a year or two Sandberg will take the job as Charlie’s bench coach and really be groomed as the successor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first real news of the Phillie offseason came this morning with the reports that the Phils are “close” to a deal with Jose Contreras.\u00a0 Right now the reports are saying 2 years\/$5 million for the soon-to-be 39-year-old right-hander. This … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[382,1031,16,395,1095],"class_list":["post-1161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb","tag-charlie-manuel","tag-jose-contreras","tag-phillies","tag-ruben-amaro","tag-ryne-sandberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1161"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1162,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161\/revisions\/1162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}