They fucked the pooch on this one.  Pods might not be the best LF in the world, but I would rather slot him in at LF and bat him second, move Mayberry to first and bat him 4/5 instead of putting Mayberry in LF and Wigginton at 1B for a sizable portion of the year.  

Just imagine what the batting order is going to look like this year.  It’s the stuff of nightmares:

Rollins
Polanco - ugh. 
Pence
Mayberry
Victorino - ugh
Wigginton - more ugh than I can care to ever imagine again.
Ruiz
Galvis
Pitcher 

Tell me this doesn’t look slightly better:

Victorino 
Podsednik
Rollins
Pence
Mayberry
Polanco
Ruiz
Galvis
Pitcher

Former Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon took a shot at the Fenway faithful Thursday, telling a Philadelphia radio station that Phillies fans “tend to know the game a little better” than fans in Boston, who he said were “a little bit more hysterical when it comes to the game of baseball.”

 I’m calling shenanigans. 

As a longtime Phillies fan, I’m going to have to disagree with Paps on this on. The current generation of Phils faithful (the kind that would’ve said ‘phaithful’, because substituting PH for F is rad) is largely comprised of band-wagoners that don’t understand what it’s like to support a team that struggles on the field.  
 
Part of me dreads the time late in Cliff Lee and Ryan Howard’s contracts, when we don’t have a farm system to replace missing pieces because our GM traded it all away and can’t move old, ineffective players because said GM handed out some ridiculous contracts. Phillies fans won’t blame Ruben Amaro, Jr. for trading Lee to the Mariners because we got him back, but the package we received from Seattle leaves a lot to be desired. If Amaro wanted Halladay as bad as he did (as evidenced by the fact that Kyle Drabek wasn’t as untouchable as he initially suggested), why didn’t the Phils go after him in ‘09 instead of Lee? They could’ve saved some prospects, maybe not studs, but perhaps they could’ve kept one of either d’Arnaud or Gose somehow. And if they had to go the route of trading for both pitchers like they did, why trade Lee and let him establish his free-agent market value for Seattle and Texas instead of keeping him and negotiating a long term deal while he was still under contract? Guaranteed, if he opened the year in the exact same fashion as he did in Seattle, the Phillies would’ve been able to get sign him for less than what they ended up paying him in free agency. I’m not even going to touch on the fact that if they’d kept Lee, they wouldn’t have needed to trade for Oswalt, shipping out more prospects in the process.  
 
Part of the reason the organization felt they had to move Lee was because Amaro paid Joe Blanton and Jamie Moyer like they were stud free agents after the WS in ‘08 (I don’t even think Blanton WAS a free agent, but he certainly got paid like one). Does the average Philly fan know that? Maybe. Amaro has a habit of making questionable decisions in terms of contract length and salary, but I doubt most of my fellow Phillies brethren know who Travis d’Arnaud or Anthony Gose is.

Besides, he hasn’t even pitched in a Phillies uniform IN Philadelphia yet.  Jumping the gun much?  

Early indicators suggest there will be an extra wildcard spot added to each league sometime soon.  Bad news for Giants fans?  They’d still miss the 2011 Postseason. 

After seeing the logo, I’m looking forward to seeing the uniforms.  They could rival the old school 1975-1979 Houston Astros rainbow fatigues. 

vancevancerevolution:

And by at first, I mean until Game 4 of the 2009 World Series

mightyflynn:

With five games remaining versus the Red Sox—including the final three of the season, to be played at Camden Yards—the Baltimore Orioles Trolls are in a perfect position to play spoiler.

Rich Dubee (via vancevancerevolution)

fightinphils:

5 years and counting!!

(via vancevancerevolution)

That flag will be better when it changes to Red.

(via vancevancerevolution)

oldtimefamilybaseball:

These are the shoes that Brian Wilson wore last night. These are also the shoes from the future (2015 to be exact) meaning that Brian Wilson’s beard is also probably from a time that is not our own. 

Even better, if one was to go through and investigate the 1,500 eBay auctions, one should be able to determine which account is Wilson’s and discover just how deep his love for Golden Girls memorabilia really is. 

(via user Jonathansayreallen/Reddit)