Phillies Nation

No Pat. You’re getting it just fine. Charlie Manuel’s shares an affliction with many aspects of corporate America as well as attributes found in our great country as a whole. In ManuelWorld, Raul Ibanez is a tenured and vested employee. No matter how bad he sucks or how bad his work performance is, Charlie will stick with him and inefficiency be damned. Its what brought Detroit down and its plaguing our teachers, firemen, and police unions, and social programs, ETCETERA AD NAUSEUM. Its called “waste”, and society’s inability to eliminate it. The Phillies, under Charlie Manuel, are a microcosm of what has been going on socio-economically in this country for years. Once a demographic takes on the staus of “entitled”, they become safe in their jobs, and get paid for mediocrity. Thats where Raul comes in. He was paid a lotta money to play and now he plays stinks.. If we were REALLY interested in putting out the best nine players each game, Raul would have been sitting fro the last year and 3/4. BUT He’s entrenched in his job so he will stay there – to the bitter end. CBP can crumble around LF before Raul is benched because – he is one of the “entitled”. Poor John Mayberry.

Does all this make Charlie a bad manager? No. He’s a good manager. But he has a real blind spot when it comes to coddling veterans come what may.

The Dipsy

I go back and forth about Ibanez every other week, mostly after reading your posts about him. On paper I can only agree that Ibanez isn’t the best player for LF and I wonder why he gets playing time in so many games. In contrast, when I watch Raul play (I try to watch almost every game) the fan in me is impressed… and not because I expect less out of him because of his age. Yeah he makes some routine fly balls look like Web Gems when a younger player like Pence makes them look easy, and yeah he can slump for long durations, but with the boys playing as well as they are this year as a TEAM, strictly in terms of wins to losses, Charlie has to be thinking “Why change anything?”. Strictly from a fan’s perspective I want Raul to play as much as possible in his last year here. I know nobody wants to talk about “clutch” because it can’t be calculated or defined, but to me Raul is a clutch player and that’s how I’ve always felt about him. I also wonder if they organization is trying to “i told you so” the $30M they spent on him. I think the old boy still has some baseball left in him but on a team that really needs him. So yeah, Ibanez is a feel-good thing- something that statistics won’t show.

Chuck…..I don’t remember him having a lot of those. I think the ones he had stand out in our minds because they happen all too infrequently. Chuck…he’s batting .235 with an OBP of like .285. Thats just brutal. And his defense. P.S. Paul Hagen (who’s terrible, too) wrote a piece in today’s DN and opined that the reasons Raul won’t sit is because A) Charlie has too much respect for Raul (not an actual reason, but, wtf.) and; 2) that Charlie “just doesn’t roll that way”. What way, dude? You mean “the way” that puts the best players on the field. Paul? Paul? Paul Hagen. I can’t believe I even quoted him.

The Dipsy

The Dipsy

AGREED Chuck. Nothing wrong with a little healthy competition.

The Dipsy

This team is doing fine but they would be better with Raul sitting and someone else playing.

The Dipsy

This is the site that had Ed Asner calling Schneider an albotross yesterday.
What more can you want from a back up catcher?
Wait. They want some minor leaguer to come up.

You deal with what your dealt. And we are dealt people who think The Big Contract is the reason for every win.

I dont care at all about the last borderline pitch last year. I care about game 1. When he Ked 3 times. 2 times with runners on. Once with runners on second and third.

In LA down 6 he somehow took walks and hit to left.
And they won.
But you guys really cared about the homer. I didnt.

He doesnt play the game right and with Mayberry or Ibanez or anyone else at first and hitting 4th who played the game right they would be better off.

You wont ever understand and I get that.
He is better than Ruiz and Victorino.
Carry on.

Andrew you are a pompous a s s. You act like you know everything about baseball and your opinion is fact. I watch the Phillies and read this blog for entertainment. I do not pretend to know everything baseball Like you do. I imagine you do good in your little fantasy baseball leagues or whatever else you do. I would appreciate if you would stop being so pompous. If you do know so much maybe you should get a job in baseball and then you can talk to people who can understand you not us illiterate fans.

Andrew it is very annoying to me how you can turn a very interestin thread on the emergence of Mayberry vs. Ibanez into Ryan Howard. Also you were hoping we lost to the DBs but then complained when we lost. You cant have it both ways. Go Ryan Howard, By the way I was at game 1, 2 and 6 of last years NLCS. In game 6 he had a single in the first with Utley on second and 1 out. Utley did not score because it was a bloop to left and might have been caught. Howard also had a double with 2 outs in the 6th or 7th with Rollins on first. Rollins did not score because Howard hit the ball too hard off the wall. He also led the team in batting average against San Fran.

I think Charlie was basically the one guy in the Phillies org who hadn’t given up on Mayberry. And, basically, nobody else has really shown interest in him. That’s because Mayberry has never really had great minor league stats. He has hit .263 in four Triple A years with a slugging average of .445. His strikeouts were staggering.

Like Vance Worly, Mayberry Jr. has performed significantly better than his minor league numbers would have indicated that he could. Is he actually this good? We’ll have to wait and see.