It’s hard to wrap my brain around spring training being upon us when I spent my day developing a case of frostbite while trying to clear some of the snow from my porch roof in time to watch luge in the Winter Olympics.

Ok, a brief aside regarding luge in the wake of the tragic death of Georgian slider Nodar Kumaritashvili. It is embarrassing and shameful that the Olympic community at large and the luge folks in particular are so quick to write off his death as human error, but then see fit to erect a wall covering exposed steel beams and shortening the track by 176 yards. Had that wall been up before Kumaritashvili’s deadly training run, perhaps he’d be alive today. The fall itself didn’t kill him. Hurtling from his sled and flying into a steel beam killed him. Completely senseless and unnecessary.

So, we’re getting whacked by Old Man Winter every 4 days and the Winter Olympics are in full swing. But, the best news of the week came courtesy of the simple act of loading a truck bound for Florida carrying balls, gum, equipment and the promise of better weather and a season of great hope for Phillies fans.

Now that the Phillies are almost through with their winter hibernation, so will The Shibe Times. I’ve been slammed at my day job and just too busy to mine the google machine for Phillies nuggets or Baseball Reference for stats and more. But the gods are shining on me, as work will start to slow down just in time for the Phils to heat up. Life is good.

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If you missed it, David Murphy wrote the definitive breakdown of Jayson Werth’s future with the Phillies. These types of posts by Murphy are part and parcel of why it is so good to see the beat guys utilizing blogs. There simply isn’t enough column space in the Daily News for these types of analytic posts. They are a perfect in a blog post that Murphy could go 1,000s of words longer on.

Based on Murphy’s analysis, the Phils could offer Werth a competitive contract, but doing so would require the Phillies to increase payroll beyond their comfort level, delay the major league career of Domonic Brown, and potentially let go of the notion of extending Ryan Howard at a budget-busting price.

Murphy makes some other interesting observations, including how much money the Red Sox are going to be able to play with after the 2010 season when David Ortiz and others are off the books. I can’t wait to see the bidding war that occurs for Cliff Lee. So long as he doesn’t land with either of the New York teams, I won’t be completely devastated with his new team. Keeping him out of the NL East in general would be swell, also.

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I simply cannot wait to see Roy Halladay pitch for the Phillies. He has already hit the ground running and the residual effect across the pitching staff could be significant.

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Just ordered Todd Zolecki’s new book, The Good, The Bad & The Ugly…Looking forward to adding it to my already overflowing Phillies book collection.

Also coming out soon are Randy Miller’s Kalas biography and the coffeetable book The Philadelphia Phillies: An Extraordinary Tradition.