Beer nuts: Savery to start Tuesday exhibition game

Last season’s first-round pick Joe Savery gets the ball, as the Phillies resume their late February rivalry with the Florida State Seminoles.

The 23-year-old left-hander is in camp as a non-roster invitee and is likely to start the year in Class-A. Last season, this game was available via live stream on the Florida State Web site. Details to come.

Hamels, Victorino without contracts: The Phillies settled on another wave of split contracts this week, signing Kyle Kendrick, Greg Dobbs, T.J. Bohn and Brad Harman to minimum deals. Earlier, they did the same for 11 players, including Carlos Ruiz, Chris Coste, Clay Condrey and Fabio Castro, among others.

Pitcher Cole Hamels and outfielder Shane Victorino are in their final season of this process before becoming arbitration eligible. It’s a good guess Hamels will be owed somewhere in the neighborhood of $5-6M next season, while Victorino could fall in the $2-4M range. To compare, outfielder David DeJesus earned $2 million from the Royals last season in his first year of arbitration. For Victorino, it must feel like an eternity. He played his first Major League game in 2003, and this is his sixth spring training.

In addition, J.D. Durbin, Francisco Rosario, Scott Mathieson and Travis Blackley are still unsigned.

Totally awesome 2008 site maintenance: Beerleaguer is seeking motivated and educated readers to help customize and expand the Phillies' stat panel, located at the top left. Ideal links should include pages specific to the Phillies, containing cutting-edge sabermetric data commonly discussed in our comments threads. Suggestions can be listed in the comment thread below.

Comments

[timr]

Completely unrelated, but apparently Lidge is already hurt...

[mw_217]

sigh

[Reed]

timr, what did you hear and is it arm or knee or _____?

[Tartan69]

knee. link here:

http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/Brad_Lidge_Hurt.html

[Kevin in the Ticket Office]

Was it Kendrick or Drabek who started against FSU last year?

[The Theory]

damn. sign Loshe NOW. Move Myers to bullpen NOW.

[Reed]

Drabek

[John D]

Anybody have Bob Wickman's # on speed dial? Or Loshe...Loshe works too...

[kdon(in Brussels)]

Ugh!

For stats, at least until the regular season, you might want to link to a few projections sites like ZiPS.

http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/oracle/
discussion/2008_zips_projections_philadelphia_phillies/

If BPro allows it, you can also link to their team statistics which are free (that way we can see Feliz's awesome defensive ratings)

And B-Ref now keeps stats throughout the season, so I would link to their page.

Maybe fangraphs too, although I'll regret that if people start throwing WPA around.

That should be a good start.

[kdon(in Brussels)]

oh, and Cot's Contracts...

[Mike H.]

Um, WPA alreadyhas been thrown around, and rightly so. While it is weak in predicting what's going to happen, and unnecessary when the game is over, WPA helps greatly in determining game strategies, especially with relief pitching. If there are two concerns every Phillies fan should have year in and year out, it's effectiveness of relief pitching and managerial in-game strategy.

For probabilities of making the playoffs, which is always a fun read, I like coolstandings.com.

[MG]

Two useful things that convenient:

40-man roster:
http://philadelphia.phillies.mlb.com/team/roster_40man.jsp?c_id=phi

Phils' depth chart:
http://philadelphia.phillies.mlb.com/team/depth_chart/index.jsp?c_id=phi

[kdon(in Brussels)]

Mike, your right about WPA for those purposes. I meant it more in terms of using WPA to determine player value.

Relievers, which you mention, I think are the only players where WPA is valuable.

[kells]

Lidge re-injures knee. Are u kidding me?
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/spring2008/news/story?id=3260676

[MG]

Ugh. Even before spring training games start and the Phils' already have a significant injury concern in Lidge.

One thing I haven't seen on article is on the new Phils' trainer (Scott Sheridan) since Jeff Cooper retired last spring.

I also would love to talk to some of the orthopedic surgeons in the Philly area to see what they really think of Dr. Ciccotti off-the-record. Medical advice seems to have been pretty off the mark the past 2 years or so.

I really wonder how involved Dr. Ciccotti is but my bet is he really just serves on a consultant-type basis and really isn't involved with any primary diagnosis and recommendations. Probably more of a secondary opinion. I would be fascinated though to see how has the final say on care decisions for example in Lidge's case. Is it the surgeon who performed the surgery or Dr. Ciccotti?

[MG]

JW - I do know if you would tread on any toes/totally out of the scope of your job but I would love to see a podcast interview with Sheridan. Focus on his background a bit (e.g., history with the Phils), ask him about his philosophy on athletic training and how this might have differed from Cooper, what changes (if any) he has made to the conditioning and rehab programs.

Stay away from any specific injuries too since that would put Sheridan on the spot (and kill any chance of doing an interview).

It would shed some light on an area where there has not been a good piece written. Only comes out in bits and pieces like Hamels' request for home/road chiropractor services this spring.

[kdon(in Brussels)]

I'm going to wait a day on this...but man...

[Mike H.]

For the record, Lidge admitted that his knee was not 100%. Betcha a dollar he was "testing" it by doing full deliveries.

[Mike 5]

I know this isn't Phils news, but Mike Patterson has been arrested. Great day to be from Philly.

[J. Weitzel]

I'm not ready to push the panic button over Lidge until they find out more the next few days.

[lekh tizdayen]

The only scenario in which Myers should be moved to the bullpen at this point is if Lidge is out until August. I'd rather have Gordon or some other has-been closing than a rotation of Hamels, Kendrick, Moyer, Eaton, Happ/Durbin/Benson.

[lekh tizdayen]

Given the Mets rotation, it is imperative that we keep Myers in the rotation.

[MG]

Agreed no reason to "panic" but it is still the same knee Lidge had surgery on this offseason to repair the piece of torn cartilage. If it was a basic scope, it should not take Lidge 6 months to recover. More like a period of 8-12 weeks which means that Lidge should be nearly 100% by now since he had surgery in early Oct.

Lidge did pitch through the injury last year but wound up spending a month on the DL. Guess wait and see but I doubt you will get any real degree of clarity on this issue all spring training. The only real indicator will be if Lidge takes the mound.

One thing I don't understand though is this insistence on repeating that "Lidge will be ready for Opening Day." Everyone has repeated this same mantra this offseason including Cholly, Amaro, Gillick, Dubee, and Lidge himself. I understand they want to reassure fans and ticket buyers but seems a bit odd how often everyone in the Phils' organization repeats it everytime Lidge has come up this offseason.

Maybe just me but just seems rather odd that you have to overemphasize a player's supposed health. Generally I have found that when multiple people close to an issue tend to overemphasize something repeatedly, they are either trying to cover up something or gloss over it. I just hope that isn't the case with Lidge.

[MG]

One last point on Lidge:

I don't understand this obsession with Lidge being "ready for Opening Day either." If Lidge is injured, I would rather have him begin the season on the DL, get healthy, and not have this become a reoccuring issue.

If he Phils had put Howard on the DL in spring training like they should have, he likely wouldn't have struggled so much in April/May before going on the DL anyway.

[xfactor]

If Lidge will be out for over half the season, the Phillies have a tough decision about Myers. Brett may be happier and even more effective as a closer, but no way can they replace his talent in the rotation. You may see 3+ more blown saves from another closer, but without Myers in the rotation, you may also have 6+ fewer save opportunities.

Myers would also help protect bullpen arms by going deeper into games, which is critical given the weakness at the bottom of the rotation.

Blown saves hurt, they are dramatic and memorable, but over time Myers still helps more as a starter, especially in the playoffs.

Bottom line: Brett needs to give the Phillies as many quality innings as possible. He can't do that in the bullpen.

[Andy]

Don't know if you have this yet. It's probably more of a resource or hub:

http://www.baseballmusings.com/

It might be fun to link direct to the minor league version of B-Ref's Phils page. This was their 2007 version.

http://minors.baseball-reference.com/affiliates.cgi?aid=PHI&yid=2007