You’d have Brown-Victorino-Raul for 2011. After that, who knows who might substitute Raul… perhaps Gose, especially if Brown develops some power…

It’s all up in the air..and will continue to be. A couple months ago, we all had Michael Taylor breaking in 2010…

I think that Howard is a player you HAVE to try to resign, even if he’s gonna be very expensive… he’s one of the faces of the franchise.. people buy his jerseys and shirts, they wear them all the time.. Not to mention that he’s arguably the best 1B in all MLB after Pujols. That being said, 2010 will be pivotal.. if Werth puts up even better numbers, and Howard shows ANY sign of decline, then things might change.

The Dipsy

The Ruiz signing is good. Even if another team wouldn’t pay much more if he hit the open market, the Phils couldn’t replace him for any less.

It was suggested a few days ago that the Phillies should sign Ruiz to a 5 year/20mil contract…to lock him up….

So this isn’t that far off.

I doubt Ruiz…on the open market …gets more than $4mil per season??

1. You are not counting the increases built into the current agreements. Everyone goes up even if they signed the year before.

2. RAJ has a spreadsheet and already has spent a lot of that “saved” money (see #1).

For those of you spending the Phillies money – tell me how they increase revenue with a sold out park? Forget ticket prices – that is chump change. A $3 across the board increase in prices for an already sold out ballpark only grosses them $10 million. They need that just to cover the increases they are negotiating.

RAJ has said it, we can’t afford every player to be $15 million. Werth or Howard have to go.

It comes down to where is your dollar value??…$15mil+ for Werth…or $23-25 mil for Howard.??

I just don’t see that having Ryan Howard is $8-10 million more valuable…it’s just not there…

And if Howard’s here and Werth isn’t…I guarantee you Howard’s numbers go down…Werth behind him in the line-up as protection is HUGE for Howard.

My point is 65 mil is big money..

I’ll probably get slated for saying this but I’d much rather give a Bay deal plus an option year to Werth and move Howard for elite prospects down the road than let Werth walk and expect to sign Howard to a friendly deal. Though his power/RBI numbers will likely take him to Cooperstown I think Howard is far from establishing himself as one of the best players in the game, when he’s not in one of his red-hot streaks his bat control is poor and Werth though not the talent Howard is shows up with consistency in many more games over the course of a season.

That said I don’t see any way Werth doesn’t walk unless he’s given 5 years and I hope Howard starts working on his plate presence

I also don’t think payroll can increase much, if at all. There’s a limit on how many times the stadium can sell out (81 games). The Phils nearly reached that last year.

Amaro is really in for it the next several offseasons, and we fans should expect changes in the team. We may not like them, but we’ll have to accept them.

$16 million/5 years…that’s $80 million

I think a lot of players would take the 65…to play for the winner…and the team they have been with and that gave them the shot in the first place.

That $15 mil difference isn’t an insult in any way, shape or form..

5/65 is NOT “signing cheap” at all