Late Innings

The Phillies have been busy the past few days. They inked Jamie Moyer today to a two years, 16MM deal. They also signed Chan Ho Park for 2.5MM. And of course on Friday, the team inked Raul Ibanez to a three year, 31.5MM deal. Granted some money has been spent, but I’m not overly disappointed with this moves. I work with a few Phillies fans, and they disagree. I even got a few emails this weekend about people who disagree with me on Ibanez.

The whole day started out with what I read on THT. At least according to Craig Calcaterra, after the Phillies signed Park:

Reason number 137 why, even a couple of months later, it doesn’t feel like the Phillies are the World Champions

And now onto Ibanez, BTBS had the following to say about this signing:

Phillies sign Raul Ibanez to a three year contract worth $30 million. This, on the other hand, is not a very good deal.

And of course, ESPN’s Keith Law doesn’t like the signing one bit, as he wrote in the header:

Signing Ibanez an absurd move by Phillies

Granted the economy has put the damper on free agency spending, however the Phillies didn’t overspend with Ibanez here, not with players like Adam Dunn, Pat Burrell and Bobby Abreu expecting to make 16MM a year. They figure to save about 5MM in 2009, the figure they would have paid Burrell if he had accepted arbitration. Of course, I’ve been saying all along that the Phillies should have at least offered him arbitration. Burrell was a Type A, and if he would have left, the team would have gotten two draft picks next year. Law agrees with that point, and even brings up the following:

The goal should be to give the scouting department more picks, not fewer, unless the move makes the big league club better, which the Burrell-for-Ibanez tradeoff does not.

The main problem with this signing is that the Phillies have to surrender their first round draft pick to the Mariners. However they’re picking at the end of the draft’s first round, so the Phillies front office wasn’t expecting to land a David Price. Still in the end there are worse ways for the team to be spending their money, and some other bloggers actually like the signing. Philly fans have nothing to complain about here; after all they’re surrendering their draft pick to a team which shelled out 48MM to a “ball and chain” named Carlos Silva last year.