I was just about to work on a career retrospective on Randy Ready as well as a piece on Dickie Thon’s 50 Greatest Phillies moments. Such is life when you’re digging for content about the Phillies in the middle of the winter.

Randy and Dickie are going to have to wait. There’s Phillies news to spare.

We’ll start with Pat Burrell. He signed a 2 yr. $16 million deal with the Tampa Bay Rays.

2 years. 16 million. For the folks who didn’t major in math, that’s $8 million a year.

Wow.

The Phillies let a 32 year old righthanded bat with a 10 year relationship with the club who is a subpar defender go elsewhere for 1 year and $15 million less than the 36 year old lefthanded bat who is a subpar defender that they actually signed. And they gave up a 1st round draft pick to sign him as well. Sometimes first round draft picks become Cole Hamels.

Yup. Makes perfect sense.

This much is painfully obvious: The Phils did not want Pat back. Period. Not for 3 yrs. $45 million. Not for 1 year, $15 million. Not for 2 years, $16 million. Not for nothing. The Phillies were hellbent on making sure that Pat did not wear red pinstripes in 2009.

Raul Ibanez will define the early part of Ruben Amaro’s tenure as GM. If Ibanez stumbles, hits lefties poorly, and plays shitty defense, Amaro will (and should) be buried for fumbling the ball on this one.

One blessing. He went to a team that will contend, where he’ll fill an important role. And that team is not the New York Mets.

More

My Pat Burrell Tribute
Raul Ibanez vs. Pat Burrell
Somebody Hates Pat Burrell
*************************************

J.C. Romero went public today, beating the MLB by one day, with the announcement that he has been suspended for the first 50 games of 2009 for “negligence” in taking a supplement that was banned.

Phil Sheridan has details, as does Peter Gammons.

If these accounts are accurate, Romero has a legitimate beef with both the MLB and the Player’s Union. It is incumbent upon these organizations to provide as much detail as possible to the players as it relates to banned substances. Romero wasn’t hiding this stuff. He walked into a retail store in Cherry Hill and bought it! Not exactly sitting in a dark corner while having your butt injected with ‘roids. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Romero would not be buying a substance he knew was banned in a store in the Delaware Valley.

Then, he shows it to the Phillies strength coach and his nutritionist.

He takes a random drug test, it comes up positive, and before he knows it, he’s defending himself in an arbitration hearing during the World Series. If it weren’t so pathetic, it’d be great comedy.

Apparently, Romero only accepted the arbitration hearing after being offered a deal by MLB that included a 25 game suspension that would have impacted the end of the year and the postseason. Sheridan writes:

First, he believed accepting the suspension meant acknowledging wrongdoing. Second, he was hearing from players’ association attorneys that the circumstances made it seem likely that he would win at arbitration. Third, the suspension would have prevented Romero from playing in the postseason.

The arbitration hearing did not go Romero’s way, and now he’s looking at missing the first third of the Phillies 2009 campaign, as well as $1.25 million in salary, not to mention the damage to his reputation, as well as the inevitable chirping from bitter fans of teams that didn’t win the World Series who will try and paint the Phillies as cheaters.

For those ignoramuses, consider this from Gammons (emphasis added):

He spoke to Michael Weiner at the MLBPA and told him he did not know the cause of the positive test. On Oct. 1, Weiner told Romero that the specific supplement was indeed the cause of the failed test and that because it was purchased over the counter in the U.S., he believed the case would be dropped.

That same day, Oct. 1, Romero was tested again. The results were negative. So for the NLDS, NLCS and World Series, the supplement was no longer in his system.

Two days later, Romero was informed that MLB would be willing to reduce his suspension to 25 games, starting at the beginning of the 2009 season on the condition that he admitted guilt. Romero said he couldn’t because he did not believe he did anything wrong.

I’m sure plenty of dipshit fans from other teams will have a field day with this, but this is just wrong no matter who you root for.