Phillies Nation

I don’t know guys… if you have him for 4 years under rules of arb, is it necessary to “lock him up?” He’s not going anywhere for 4 years and that’s an eternity in baseball. Yes, he deserves a raise and he’ll get it through arb but if you lock him up for 7 and he gets hurt in 2, you are screwed. Plus, I don’t know if he’ll take anything that we would be willing to offer him to keep him long-term. To me, a long-term deal for a pitcher is 5 years. We could go 5 years but all that’s doing is giving us one more year of Hamels and adding significant risk over the next 3. Is it worth the risk? I think that Hamels is the best pitcher in the NL and keeping him happy is important but not at the risk of setting this franchise back 5 years.

Gotta sign Vic… nothing on the farm to replace him.

Howard’s case is a nightmare… terrible fielder, yes. Inconsistent, yes. BUT he’s the best run producer in baseball and has all the accolades to back it up… we screwed ourselves by low-balling him last year. Now the bar has been set pretty high. If he can continue to produce runs like he has (even considering his fielding woes and record breaking strikeout numbers), he’s worth every penny but I don’t think that he will. History is certainly not on his side.

The interesting thing to watch will be if the arbitration figures will follow the likely trend of Free Agent contracts… not YANKEE signings, but the rest of them.. the reason that so many players are still unsigned is because no team is willing to pay AVERAGE or ABOVE AVERAGE players $15 M per season

Now obviously Howard is amoung the BEST in baseball.. but I can’t see him winning $16 M in arbitration, that would be ridiculous.. The Phillies should offer him like $11 and try to settle with him around $12 M

I though Hamels had 3 years before FA, paper today said after the 2012 season.. It only makes sense to sign Hamels through his arbitration years if you plan on including 2-3 years on top of that deal.. that would make it a 7 year contract for Hamels.. leaving him to become a Free Agent for the first time at age 32.. with the chance that he’s going to add Cy Youngs and No Hitters to his resume .. he would still be in line for a GREAT contract at age 32.

Considering how much it would take to sign Hamels now (at least $70/ 7 years).. you would be overpaying him now to underpay for him later.. with a chance that his arm could be hurting from all those innings this past season…. I say you offer him arbitration each of the next two seasons, but pay him whatever he asks instead of taking him to the hearing… In two years, if you want to sign him to a 5 year deal, you can do it.. you’ll have a better gauge on the rest of your young pitchers, and you’ll see if he can stay healthy again..

I agree with you Don M., but I just hope we dont “offend” him by not giving him big money now. We’ve been pretty cheap for a long time now. At some point we’re going to have to take a big risk. I think Hamels is the one to do it on. Screw Howard.

Victorino, yes. sign him as well. his raw numbers aren’t super, but he brings a lot of fire, leadership, and clutchiness, which is hard to come by. i know that when he leads off the bottom of the ninth with a double and slides in, pumping his fist, 3 hard claps, and starts yelling and pointing towards the dug-out to get the guys rallied, i know i feel it.

Werth I’m not quite sure about going long-term, definately need to see him this year and see if he can remain healthy, and duplicate his numbers. He sure plays great D (which seems to be underrated by a lot of people), and he puts together great AB’s, usually productive AB’s. He’s a great athlete and should be signed, but let’s wait and see how 2009 plays out.

I don’t think we’ll sign Madson (Scott Boras), but who knows? Fuentes was a pretty good closer and he only got what? $6.5M for a couple years, so maybe Madson could be had for the $3-$4M range.

The thing with Werth, is that if you don’t resign him now, you need to do that in-season (which not a lot of teams or players like because its an off-field distraction)..

Werth will be VERY desireable to teams because of the reasons above… puts together good at-bats, hits for Power, Great defense, above average baserunner.. etc.. If he plays everyday, he’ll get even better against RHP.. and his HR totals get to be 25+, with RBIs climbing around 85+ if he bats 5th..

He’s a $6 M player that we’ve had for $1.7 M… I’d like to see him get $14/ 3 years… if he goes to Free Agency, somebody will pay him more money than the Phillies will.. he’s VERY underrated, lets keep him while we can.

You are so wrong about Howard….Manny is the same player…cant play defense either…but he won 2 rings with the Sox and carried that awful Dodger team to the NLCS by himself. He’s a joke in the outfield but his teams win….just like Howard.

Hamels wants the ball in his hands in big game situations. Under pressure, there aren’t many better than Hamels and that means a lot to me (as a pitcher, the highest honor should be winning a WS MVP). He’s certainly worth more than he was paid and it’s unfortunate that Hamels wasn’t happy BUT the rules of the MLB salary system dictated the situation last year. Of course we want to pay him what he’s worth but the reality is that there aren’ t many (if any) teams in baseball that would have handled his situation any differently. Hamels was upset with us but he should have been upset with the system… they always compare Hamels with CM Wang because their regular season numbers are similar. Wang earned less than $500k last year just like Hamels… we didn’t mistreat Hamels. If you’re a GM, you need to understand the system and what is customary, not just how good a player is and what you think they’re worth.