Phillies Nation

The Dipsy was the 2nd gunman on the grassy knoll

can we all relax with the conspiracy theories about hidden revenues, etc..

Phillies make a lot of money, and spend a lot of money… the actually spend more on their teams, than other teams that make higher Revenue

they give us a great product, and we should all be happy about that, instead of being crying little b!tches.. If you don’t like what the Phillies are doing, then don’t watch them, don’t support them

and if you do like what they’re doing, then stop b!tching about every move they did or didn’t make

Bottom line is owners usually dont care about profit in owning teams.Breaking even is usually good. if you want to make a fortune you dont buy sports teams. But dont cry you are in the red, like montgomery did, how about the 430 million profit you are sitting on does that count. I now realize some people here just dont get it amaro screw up offering arb to Blanton. You can talk about prospect but that is bull, gillies is not a top prospect , aumont was not now with a dengerative hip condition, still rather have lee for the little more it would cost, and when you talk revenue just wondering are you counting the money from seats, concession, majorlegaue appareal majestic , the bank, for adveritisng and all the ad revenue, or just making up those numbers. And I realize nomatter what you will agree the phillies dont make mistakes thats great, this team chances were better with lee than Blanton that is the point, if you are going for greatness which this team has a chance for you keep lee, and look toward the draft and spend the money to restock the system, remember last year lowest money spent on draft and international market. look it up,

And Dipsy…

I’ll go back to my earlier argument…if the Phillies raise the payroll to $200 million (your figure)…then ticket prices…and everything else goes up

…to the point where a lot of people simply won’t be able to afford it…only the VERY WELL OFF…will be able to go to a lot of games…the true fans..the Joe Schmoes of the world ….WILL be relegated to just watching on TV.

…just like Geoff said above….people will be” less enthusiastic”..

Is that what you want?…a fanbase like that?

When the Yankees won the WS…did you see how LAME the fans were in celebrating??…That’s because the stadium was filled with “bandwagon fans”…fans that really couldn’t care less whether the Yankees won or not….They were there because they though it would be “cool” to be there…not because they really cared.

That’s the kind of fanbase the Phillies would have…if ticket prices, etc. were so high that most of us couldn’t go.

Paul Boye -

Aaron Cook and Jake Westbrook are NOT in arbitration. They negotiated for their contracts. Players in arb are in a alternative reality. While Blanton’s performance may be the same as those guys, he doesn’t get paid that way. The way the system is set up, arb keeps salaries in check until the player has been in the league long enough and also so teams can keep their younger players. If you wanna compare him to an “arbitration eligible” player with the same stats, thats reasonable. Applying your premise, Lincecum should be paid on par with the best pitcher in baseball and be awarded $25. But he asked for $13m. That is because he knows how the arbitration works. Borrowing a title from a Smiths’ song, this is the collective bargaining’s way of telling the player, “You just haven’t earned it yet, baby”.

The Dipsy

So you automatically use Cliff Lee as an example?? I thought you put it past you…guess not..

I’m talking about fiscal restraint in general…whether it’s Cliff Lee or maybe not wanting to pay $125 million to Ryan Howard for 5 years (just a hypothetical)or just whatever the situation is..

Dipsy…look…Cliff Lee was traded…from a fan’s perspective…that sucks..I would have LOVED to have seen him in this rotation this year…

BUT…he was traded…for financial reasons…AND because he had VALUE…which is also financial…in the LON-TERM

That’s why I mentioned it.. AND….YOU’RE the one who brough the guy up..

By practicing SOME fiscal restraint…whether it’s Cliff Lee, Ryan Howard or Bozo the Clown…THAT….in the end…”benefits all of us”..

Because the Phillies have at least taken some steps in keeping payroll low enough…so that the majority of the fans can afford to go..

If you can’t see that…then I don’t know what else to say.

Is that a RHETORICAL question??

C’mon…Dipsy…you know better…you know VERY well that this year’s team is not “middle of the road.”

It’s BETTER…at least on paper…than last year’s..and I’m not gonna go into all the reasons why…they’re obvious and you know them.

But to answer your question…IF the Phillies were “middle of the road”….3rd or 4th place…no better than .500…and out contention…then yeah, sure…I would gladly sacrifice my being able to go to games whenever I wanted ..in order to have a WS winning team.

But…fortunately…that’s not the case…we have a winning team…a great team… for a bunch more years….and it’s still affordable..

…Because of financial restraint and responsibility.

It wasn’t rhetorical. I’m glad you agree with me about “middle of road” v. “WS” scenario. I also agree with pretty much everything you said. Now lets find something else to fight about.

The Dipsy

Phils exploring multi year deals with Blantan and Victorino. That would add another reason to trade Lee and Keep these two instead. Also looking in to multi year deal with Chooch. If they plan on having them around for a fews it’s understandable. Should be interesting to see if they can make a deal

Well if you are going to involve the Lee trade then the question should not be, would you rather have a middle of the road team or years over world series for a year. The issue is would you rather have an Ace for one year, or an Ace for several years? Contend this year or contend for the next several years.

Dipsy – I stick to my original argument that sports franchises are not the cash cows you claim them to be. But I will agree with you that there is probably a decent amount of revenue that each team has that goes unreported. Considering how much people buy from the various beer men, program guys, cotton candy guys etc. That’s all cash. No receipts so it’s almost like it didn’t happen. I am sure not all of that goes reported. Why would it? If I owned the team I wouldn’t either. But you have to figure that if regular people like you and I can come to that conclusion then so to can the IRS. And I am sure they can easily show up to CBP one day and say you ordered X amount of programs to be printed, at the end of the year you had Y left over. Show me the revenue from those programs. If X-Y does not equal Z then they will know you are hoarding profits and then the IRS is all over you. So I would think teams have to be guarded with how much unreported income they have, to the point that we aren’t talking millions of dollars.

ESPECIALLY Because 2008 happened… I would rather have the middle of the road team, with the chance to make the playoffs and the World Series

that I could go to see 10-15 times a year.. instead of a WS winner that I couldn’t afford to ever watch in person

I became a Phillies fan because my dad used to take me to games at the Vet, not because I used to watch them on TV

That is the stupiest, most ass answer to a question , I now know that I was right about you Don you work for the phillies, you want a loser so it cheap for you to go, what a loser attitude that is, 50 years of this francise , two championship , that is a disgrace and i dont care about other teams bull shit to that stupid argument, this is the first team that i ever remember that had a chance to be champs more than one in a decade. And when people want to defend there bugject attitude, bullshit they have the resourse to sign players, and if blanton gets 10 million he wil have more than lee in one year deal, Don you dont have to ever answer any of my comments and I wont answer yours, I AM A WINNER NOT A loser who works for the phillies,That the same attitude laurie with the eagles has be good enough and hope y get lucky in the playoff dont spend the money its takes to win championship, peyton manning redid his contract three times to allow his team to keep the star players, to win a superbowl, laurie keeps ten percent of the cap which is another 12,3 million, thats why he wouldnt pay a loyal player like dawkins he wanted the money like the phillies owner, damm if we lose money we will die , those damm owners combine have a ton, middleton is a billionaire. so go watch you team Don while you are loyal the owners arent what a loser you really are, dipsy i salute you , you tell the truth, anyone who says for one year this team wouldnt be better with lee than blanton is nuts, a cy young pitchers versus a fat pig who gets hit around a lot.

8 Million a year for a starter who wins 60% of his games with a 4.00 ERA is actually a fair deal for all sides involved like it or not.

Forget about Lee everyone. It wasn’t about his 10 million this year. It was about the 20 milllion a year for the 5 years after it.

Would we have been a better team with both of them? Sure, clearly we would. However are we still clearly the class of the National League as we stand now? Yes we are.

The other thing that bugs me is the people who think we got robbed when we dealt Lee, when Aumont is almost guarenteed to be in the majors (and contributing) much sooner then Drabek. Oh yeah, we also got a guy with speed and a .321 minor league average.

What I don’t get is how low the Victorino figures are. The guy is a legit all star and a very good two way player with elite speed. Last time I checked those guys usually make way more then 5 and change. And Ruiz’s figure is almost laughable for a solid defensive catcher who has appeared in 2 consecutive World Series. Lock them both up quickly before thier agents regain thier brains.

Lastly, I am in full support of Ruben Amaro. His top priority is the same as all of ours at every job that any of us do… it is to keep his job. Keeping the Phillies good for a long time through solid financial planning is the first step to that. While I want another parade as much as the next guy, keeping Lee doesn’t guarentee anything. However watching the Phils become a second division team in about 2012 when everyone’s contract comes up does guarentee something. It would guarentee that we would want Amaro fired for the reprocussions of him pushing all of his chips into the middle of the table in 2010 when he didn’t need to. Ladies and gentleman, we have a championship already. We followed it up with one of the best half dozen seasons in team history. Think long and hard about what some of you want, because eventually the future will catch up with us.

So from one life long Phillies fan to Phillies management…

Thank you all for having the foresight to take a half step back this season so we are not spending the years of 2012 to 2015 rooting for the Philadelphia Pirates.