Phillies sailing on a flotilla of fools

Time for my mid-season rant about Vicente Padilla, and why the Phillies were fools for trading him, as it turned out, for absolutely nothing.

You might remember the deal, considered at the time "addition by subtraction." The Phillies were unwilling to pay $4 million in arbitration, so he was traded straight up for Ricardo Rodriguez, who was cut in spring training.

At the very least, Beerleaguer believed the Phillies could have used Padilla’s organization-best fastball in the bullpen to miss some bats, back when the Phils were predicting Rule 5 pick Chris Booker to be their "seventh-inning man."

Meanwhile, Texas must be thrilled to have the equivalent of a free starting pitcher this day and age, when A.J. Burnett, the statistical equivalent, earned a 5-year deal. Burnett sure looked sharp in his start against the Phils.

In Texas, Padilla pitched eight innings and gave up a run on four hits Saturday. He’s 7-5 with a 4.47 ERA and is one of the main reasons why Texas is closing in on the AL West lead. Over the last four home starts, he’s 3-0 with a 2.63 ERA.

Here's the recap of his last start from texasrangers.com:

"Locating fastballs with precision, starter Vicente Padilla diced the Astros lineup for eight innings, outdueling starter Roy Oswalt and snapping Texas' five-game losing streak in front of 40,177 at Ameriquest Field in Arlington.

"Padilla tossed a season-high 111 pitches, and 79 found the strike zone. He allowed just four hits, a run and struck out five.

" 'The key to Vicente is his fastball," said catcher Rod Barajas. "It is his best pitch and when he is on and he is locating, he can be very tough. Tonight, he located it, whether up or down or on both sides of the plate.'"

Pat Gillick knew his team was so loaded with pitching, we could afford to give away a guy who may very well end up with a better season than all of his starters. Well, only the starters who haven't been charged with assault. I wonder if the Phillies will do an "addition by subtraction" with Brett Myers.

Yes indeed, it's fortunate the Phillies disinfected the team of a player of Padilla's character.

Watch him spread the cancerous uncooperativeness here in front of 40,000 strong.

Comments

[Will]

A change of scenery will do wonders for a guy. Especially a headcase. I'll pass judgement on the thing when the season ends.

[Jerry]

ALL pitchers are head cases. Padilla, however, also has a live fastball which he can throw past major league hitters for several innings at a time. The Phillies got a pass in this town for giving him away, hiding behind his unpopularity with the "fans" and the sports media. This was a terrible trade at the time it was made, and is still receiving insufficient attention. We shouldn't be that surprized, given that we live in a sports culture where the conventional wisdom is that we should trade .300 hitters with .440 OBPs, 100 runs and 100 RBIs, in order to "build around" guys who hit .265, run into walls, and curse after striking out.

[RickSchuBlues]

This is just one piece of strong evidence among others that Gillick is not to be automatically trusted with the keys to the Phillies' future. I'm not going to argue against Padilla's departure, as he was extremely aggravating to watch. But for god's sake, couldn't he have been packaged with someone else in a larger deal? Or couldn't have he landed a legitimate (or even marginal) prospect, or at the very least a goodly amount of cash?

Addition by subtraction is one thing, but there was no need for such outright subtraction when other possibilities for addition surely had to have existed. The part of me that wants to withhold criticism because I am not a general manager with 30-some years experience and world championship rings, here defers to the part of me that can't help but say: what the hell were you thinking, chief?

[martin]

The Phils organization is very poor at judging talent. I always liked Padilla, but understood the feeling that he had to go. The crime is getting nothing in return. Booker, Rodriguez, Gonzalez, Nunez, Kata, Kroeger,Ozuna, Bell, Bud Smith and on and on are too many wrong judgements. The mess at AA Reading, with a lineup filled with aged minor league journeymen is a crime too. Who is responsible? Arbuckle??

[Will]

I'll agree heartily that the trade sucked. But to say out of hand that Padilla's production would be the same here as there would be unfair. Also, to say that the phils traded him for nothing is patently false. They traded him for $4 million dollars of freed up payroll that would have helped pay for the ace that never became available.

The phils rotation would have been Ace/Lieber/Myers/Lidle/Hamels. The best laid plans.....

[Billy Mac]

Franklin was signed to take Padilla's spot for $2.6M. Gillick than spent another $700K on Gonzalez and ate Perez' contract. The $4M of freed payroll was squandered.

[clout]

Amen to Jason!!! The Padilla trade is a perfect example of what happens when you deal a guy out of frustration. Let this be a lesson to all those posters who want to trade Rowand, Burrell, Abreu et al for "prospects."
Padilla was a maddening underperformer, but even with that he was still a useful, innings-eating back-of-rotation guy.

[SirAlden]

Absolutely correct, Padilla was traded at the time because of the payroll straightjacket. Padilla was a big reason in the second half that we made a run. There was institutional bias against him and Pat Gillick early in his job with the Phillies made a huge mistake. HUGE. The Yankees even wanted him last year. He looks thin and trim and his plane ride is closer to his home from Texas. All the Best to you Vincente.

[el123chico]

vincente had to go because when joe kerrigan was fired he lost his drinking buddy.

[Nat]

If the Phillies gave away all their pitchers who are "headcases," what would they be left with? More to the point, when do they package up Myers and Floyd for that proverbial bag of batting practice balls?

And, "addition by subtraction" is just a cliche, an illogical expression that's used to justify something that can't be logically justified. I'll grant that sometimes it works, but most of the time... well, you do the math. Subtraction is just subtraction.

[zach]

The Padilla trade is a perfect example of what happens when you deal a guy out of frustration. Let this be a lesson to all those posters who want to trade Rowand, Burrell, Abreu et al for "prospects."

Impeccable logic... the Padilla deal didn't work out, therefore all deals involving our tradeable commodities are doomed to fail, because they're clearly just "out of frustration" a la Padilla. Bobby can certainly be frustrating but I don't think any Phils fan would advocate trading him for the likes of Ricardo Rodriguez.

And why the scare quotes? Prospects. They do actually exist for some teams.

[gr]

i think there are two diffrent issues here. first, the phils didn't want to pay padilla $4 million or didn't want him at all, considering he was hurt the last two seasons and difficult to deal with, to say the least. that was what it was and i don't really fault them for that, aside from not playing the cards closer to the vest in the market. the issue of the trade is different, however: they got next to nothing for the guy because, well, if you were texas, how much are you going to offer for a guy you know the other team doesn't want to resign and you could potentially just get as a free agent anyway? as far as padilla being an "innings eater," well i've heard better jokes than that, but not by much.