It’s been an interesting 24 hours for the Phils, as top prospect Domonic Brown was called up yesterday morning, made his major league debut against Arizona last night, and this morning news broke that the Phils and Astros have agreed to a deal that would bring Roy Oswalt to Philadelphia, if he waives his no-trade clause and approves the deal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"dom](\"http:\/\/media.lehighvalleylive.com\/sports_impact\/photo\/dominc-brownjpg-f824fb7737f321f8_large.jpg\")
The lanky Dom Brown\u00a0crushed a low change-up off the wall in right for an RBI double in his first at-bat, and he later turned on an up-and-in 95 mph fastball and lined a single to right.\u00a0 He also had great poise in the post-game interview, and was clearly thrilled to be in the big leagues.<\/p>\n
It’s hard to believe that his debut might be overshadowed, but with the Oswalt deal pending, that seems to be the case.\u00a0 It’s hard to believe because last night I was thinking that Brown’s debut had created more buzz than any Phillie rookie that I could remember.\u00a0 Obviously, with all the talent that has come up through the Phils’ farm system over the past decade, there have been other much-anticipated debuts, but what made Brown’s perhaps the most\u00a0 <\/em>anticipated?\u00a0 Here are the 3 main reasons:<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0 <\/strong>The team is actually good<\/em>:\u00a0 It’s becoming more and more a memory left in the past, but it wasn’t too long ago that the Phillies were an annual cellar dwellar or, at best, an also-ran.\u00a0 Back-to-back NL pennants and a World Series title have ensured\u00a0that everything that happens with the team will get more “buzz” and attention\u00a0than it did\u00a0from roughly 1985-2007.\u00a0 The only number\u00a0you need to know to prove this: 90.\u00a0 That’s how many consecutive sellouts there have been at the Bank following\u00a0Wednesday night’s win.<\/p>\n Think back to other\u00a0hyped debuts\u00a0for Phillie prospects.\u00a0 Scott Rolen was first called up in 1996 and played for a team that finished in last place in what was really Year One of a dark period between the ’93 Phils era and the emergence of the current squad in the early part of the following decade.\u00a0\u00a0I\u00a0remember well the\u00a0debut of Brett Myers in July, 2002, but that was a team that regressed from 2001’s breakthrough and finished with a losing record.\u00a0 Chase Utley\u00a0first played in the bigs\u00a0in 2003, and though his hitting ability\u00a0was evident right away, he was still raw defensively and had trouble with lefties.\u00a0 He wasn’t an everyday player until the Phils traded Placido Polanco halfway through\u00a0the 2005 season.<\/p>\n Ryan Howard and Gavin Floyd (a big-time prospect, remember?)\u00a0were September call-ups in 2004, but the Phils were basically playing out the string for the team that got Larry\u00a0Bowa fired because they couldn’t get over the hump.\u00a0 The last big debut is the only one that can rival Brown’s, and that was when Cole Hamels took the hill in May, 2006.\u00a0 He was a 1st-round pick with electric stuff, and he fired 5 innings of 1-hit ball in his debut.\u00a0 The Phils challenged for a Wild Card that year, but fell 3 games short.\u00a0 They were\u00a0the\u00a0definition of also-rans, but no more.\u00a0 Dom Brown just stepped into a pennant-race, with a team expected to win that race.<\/p>\n 2<\/strong>. He’s been tied to numerous trade rumors<\/em>:\u00a0 In the past, if you were a casual fan of the Phillies, you\u00a0probably didn’t hear all that much about a prospect until he was on the big league roster, or close to it.\u00a0 Scott Rolen, Jimmy Rollins, and Chase\u00a0Utley were never discussed much while they were toiling in the minors, even though they were all high draft picks on the fast-track to at least a stellar big-league career, if not more.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u00a0started to change as the team started contending with the arrival of Jim Thome and Kevin Millwood in 2003.\u00a0 Suddenly the Phils were semi-contenders,\u00a0with any and all talent in the farm system libel to be dealt for help at\u00a0 the big-league level.\u00a0 Howard and Floyd were often involved in trade rumors, which raised their profile.\u00a0 Many Phils\u00a0fans in 2004 were convinced that\u00a0Floyd should be untouchable because he was a future ace.<\/p>\n As the Phils have become legitimate contenders, this has gone to another level.\u00a0 Kyle Drabek and Michael Taylor are well-known names among Phils fans, even though they never played a game for the team.\u00a0 Over the past year, Domonic Brown’s name has\u00a0been thrown around in numerous\u00a0trade rumors, usually in relation to Roy Halladay.\u00a0<\/p>\n Phils fans who had never seen him swing the bat (like myself) had plenty of opportunity to throw around opinions on him, and to argue\u00a0what the\u00a0Phils should do with him.\u00a0 He’s kind of like an NBA player that played in college rather than one that went straight to the pros from high school.\u00a0\u00a0The fans feel like we know him, and we have a bit more ownership over him than we would have if he’d never been mentioned in a trade.\u00a0<\/p>\n 3<\/strong>. He’s the first\u00a0glimpse of the “future” that we’ve had in a while<\/em>:\u00a0 Sure, this\u00a0argument could be made about most\u00a0Phillie prospects.\u00a0 It’s not too often that a prospect of Brown’s caliber comes along, for any team.\u00a0 A player that you can say, “This guy will be our right fielder for the next\u00a0ten years”, and not sound like you’re using\u00a0hyperbole.\u00a0 But two things make this a little different.<\/p>\n One, the Phillies have been very stable over the last few years.\u00a0 Yes, they’ve added key players like Halladay,\u00a0Cliff Lee, Brad Lidge,\u00a0Raul Ibanez, and Placido Polanco, but there’s a nucleus of guys that have been there\u00a0together for about five years now.\u00a0 We’ve become very\u00a0accustomed to this team in a way that\u00a0hasn’t happened in my lifetime, so it makes the arrival of a guy like Brown, who will lead the way for a whole new Phillies generation in the\u00a0not-too-distant future, a\u00a0bigger deal than it could be if circumstances were different.<\/p>\n The other reason is tied back to #1.\u00a0 In the past, I’ve referred to a “snowball effect” that can happen to a franchise like the Phillies.\u00a0 They’ve never had an overly wealthy ownership, or at least not\u00a0one that is willing to lose money to win.\u00a0 But, being in a major sports market, there was always that opportunity to become a high-payroll team that is out there trading for guys like Halladay, Lee,\u00a0and Oswalt, and able to sign long-term deals for guys like Howard and Utley.\u00a0 They just needed to get\u00a0a certain level of success on the cheap, with the farm system, and things would start to snowball.\u00a0 Well, that’s exactly what has happened, as the World Series title got the ball rolling at max speed, and\u00a090 sellouts in a row later, the team is awash with the money they need to be an\u00a0annual contender.<\/p>\n So what does that have to do with Dom Brown?\u00a0\u00a0Well, he’s not only the first glimpse of the future that we’ve had\u00a0in a while, he’s the first glimpse of a\u00a0new<\/em>\u00a0 future for the franchise.\u00a0 We know that, as long\u00a0as Brown is productive, he will be a Phillie.\u00a0 Remember, it was just in 2006 that Bobby Abreu was shipped to the Yankees for a\u00a0bag of used balls.\u00a0 And we can also feel pretty confident that the team will surround him with\u00a0talent capable of winning more championships.\u00a0 Dom Brown, welcome to the Phillies.\u00a0 Phillie fans, welcome to the new era.\u00a0 It was a long time coming.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s been an interesting 24 hours for the Phils, as top prospect Domonic Brown was called up yesterday morning, made his major league debut against Arizona last night, and this morning news broke that the Phils and Astros have agreed … Continue reading