As if the starting rotation wasn’t already a mess, Brett Myers seems destined for the surgeon’s table with hip surgery similar to what laid up Chase Utley during the off season. There hasn’t been an official decision that surgery is a go, but all the signs point in that direction.

So, the Phillies’ starting rotation, which was already a liability so far this year, just got weaker. Myers wasn’t on track for a Cy Young this year, but he certainly was pitching good enough to remain in the rotation, which was a plus since Moyer, Blanton and Park all have made a case to get the hook from the starting 5. So far only Park is on the outside looking in.

Now, we get our first taste of Ruben Amaro’s ability to adjust in mid season and improve the team for another postseason run.

Will Ruben make a quick move, which Phillies Nation cautions against? Or will the Phils stand pat and see how the market develops over the next 30 days? Will the Phils add one mid level starter via trade and bring up Kyle Kendrick? Or will we say farewell to multiple prospects in order to bring in 2 starters?

Nothing less than the Phillies’ chances of a rare World Series repeat hang in the balance. Your move, Ruben.

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Charlie Manuel was joking about the fans needing to get on the Phillies more often. He’s saying that now, but something makes me think that he meant it …

When Scott Rolen was traded, within 24 hours of the deal I had already removed his name and number from the back of my batting practice jersey.

I’m not saying it was the right thing to do, but truth be told, his name represents a largely frustrating period in Phillies baseball, at least during my lifetime. Seeing his name on the back of a Phils jersey just conjures up too many annoying memories.

I have similar feelings about Curt Schilling; another monster talent who chirped his way out of the city. To say the Phillies got the short end of the stick in both deals would be to grossly understate the shittiness of the trades.. I guess shotgun marriages rarely involve a hot bride.

I’ve watched Schilling’s career with more than a passing interest over the last 8 years, and I can’t say that I was pulling for him or his teams. As a die-hard Phils fan, I didn’t want to see him wildly succeed on the mound, or his teams achieve greatness during his time with them.

I went 0 for 2.

3 World Series rings, and 3 Cy Young runners-up saw to it that Schilling would not regret getting traded away from Philly in July, 2000.

Now that he has retired, and the Phils have shiny new World Series rings of their own, can I forgive and forget? Can I look objectively at Schilling’s career and not get all salty about the bad times?

I’ll try.

All that’s left to …

The offseason has given me an opportunity to try and come up with some features on the site that those who stop by might find useful.

The sidebar now has a link under the “Pages” section entitled “2009 Phillies Schedule”.

This page will be updated daily with the previous games information, as well as providing a link to the boxscore on ESPN.com.

You can certainly get this information in a bunch of different places, but what I like about this is that the columns are sortable so you can sort the Phillies games throughout the year by how many runs they scored or gave up, who the pitcher of record was for the Phils, as well as opponents and more.

Feel free to bookmark the link to track throughout the season.

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The Phils won their second consecutive spring training game this afternoon over the Braves in Lake Buena Vista, FL. Brett Myers and Chan Ho Park each pitched 3 innings. Myers game up 2 runs on 3 hits, but walked no one. No BBs is always a good thing when it comes to Mr. Myers. Park gave up 4 hits, including a home run to Brian McCann.

Marcus Giles had a good game, going 2-3 with 2 runs scored and an RBI.

The Phils play the Blue Jays on the road in Dunedin, FL tomorrow. According to Todd Zolecki, Carlos Carrasco and J.A. Happ are both scheduled to pitch.

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The Inquirer has a new Phillies beat writer.

There won’t be any suspension. No loss of income. No official rebuke.

Alex Rodriguez will face a far more unforgiving jury in the Baseball Writers Association of America than he has Major League Baseball. The court of public opinion won’t be kind, either.

But the lack of interest on Major League Baseball’s part to eliminate performance enhancing drug use in the 1990s and early 2000s has forced Hall of Fame voters to hand down the punishment.

Mark McGwire. Sammy Sosa. Rafael Palmeiro. Roger Clemens. Barry Bonds. And now Alex Rodriguez. Will any of these players be immortalized in Cooperstown? Remove the suspicion (or outright evidence) of steroid use from these players’ resumes, and they are all stone cold locks for the Hall.

A-Rod was supposed to be the guy who overtook Barry Bonds’ tainted home run record. He was supposed to be the guy who mashed balls because he had dumbells stapled to his arms, not because he was getting stuck in the behind with a needle.

We all know how this happened. The 1994 strike was a major blow to baseball’s popularity at a time when the NFL was already becoming “The National Pastime”. Then along came Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa and the summer of 1998. We all watched with wonder as they launched moonshot after moonshot into the night sky and overtook Roger Maris’ iconic 61.

Major League Baseball was either asleep at the switch, or aware that there was more to this homerun surge than just meeting the ball with the sweet …

Jim Salisbury used his “On Baseball” column in the Sunday Inquirer to share his Hall of Fame ballot. The results of the vote were released today and Rickey Henderson was elected on his first try while Jim Rice got there on his 15th. You have to love the Hall of Fame, where a player who has been out of the game doesn’t deserve to get into the Hall of Fame for 14 years, and then does the 15th. I don’t recall Rice getting any base knocks in the ’08 campaign. But that’s an argument for another day, and one that is better made by Mike Schmidt.

Anyway, Salisbury voted for Henderson and Rice. And Bert Blyleven. And Andre Dawson. And Jack Morris. And Tim Raines. And Lee Smith. Jim must be nursing a serious case of carpal tunnel after working over his ballot so feverishly.

Good thing there are over 500 voters in the BBWAA who are eligible to pass judgment on Hall of Fame worthiness. Because some of them are clueless. Or have axes to grind. Or hidden agendas. Or delusions.

How else to explain that 27 voters left Rickey Henderson off their ballot while 2 voters thought Jay Bell deserved election to Cooperstown.

Anyway, back to Jim. Because he did vote for Rickey, and he didn’t vote for Jay. But he did vote for 7 players. Imagine that Sunday in late July in Cooperstown if …

Ok, not really, but former Phillie Ron Gant is on the 2009 ballot for the Hall of Fame, this being his first year of eligibility.

Mr. Gant won’t sniff the Hall, due in no small part to his lackluster career .256 batting average and his less than impressive career 112 OPS+. However, he finished his 16 year career with over 1000 runs and 1000 RBIs, as well as over 1500 hits. But that stat line has also been achieved by 194 other players, many of whom are not, nor will they ever be, Hall of Famers.

But I thought I’d have some fun with Lee Sinins’ indispensable Baseball Encyclopedia, and isolate a longer stat line for Gant, cherrypicking his best career numbers, and seeing how many other players had the same achievements. I didn’t include batting average, OBP or OPS, since they don’t help Ron at all (.256/.336/.806).

Well, that post by Dugout Central turned out to be a dud, huh? Not only was Dick Allen not elected to the Hall of Fame, he got the least number of votes of all 10 post 1942 players on the ballot (7, he needed 48 for induction).

I guess that those of us who think Allen should be in the Hall need to consider that he didn’t do all that hot last year in the balloting either, getting only 11 votes. I wonder how long he’ll remain on the ballot if there is this much of a lack of support for his election from the living Hall of Famers.

Ron Santo and Joe Torre did not make it in either. Only Joe Gordon from the pre-1943 ballot was elected by the Veteran’s Committee. So, no Mickey Vernon, Bucky Walters or Sherry Magee, either.

Dugout Central is reporting that a source close to the Veteran’s Committee says that Dick Allen has been elected to the Hall of Fame, along with Ron Santo and Joe Torre.

We’ve already come out on the side that Allen is deserving of enshrinement. Apparently the Veteran’s Committee agrees that Allen’s dominating offensive performance during an era defined by pitching outweighs anything negative regarding Allen’s perceived character issues.

No major media outlets are yet reporting this, but if it is true, take that, Bill James.

Now I’m off to find a hotel room in Cooperstown for late July.

Man, is the hot stove particularly cold, or what? It’s not just the Phillies, either. No team has made much of a splash, although it seems likely that the Winter Meetings will help fire things up.

Even if there is little activity in the way of free agent signings and trades at the Winter Meetings, there will be the announcement of the results of the Veteran’s Committee vote for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The ballot is separated into “Pre-1943″ and “Post-1942″ players. The “Post-1942″ players will be voted on by the living Hall of Famers, and the “Pre-1943″ players will be considered by a group of Hall of Famers and media types.

As we discussed here last week, Dick Allen made the cut to be a finalist for consideration among the living Hall of Famers. He has company, though, as he’s not the only Phillie with a shot at being immortalized in Cooperstown.

Sherry Magee, who patrolled Baker Bowl’s left field for the Phillies from 1904-1914, is on the “Pre-1943″ ballot.

Magee lacks a traditional Hall of Fame resume (although he does fare well on the Hall of Fame black ink and gray ink tests), but much of that is attributable to him playing during the dead ball era. What gives Magee a shot at making it in is that he is considered to be one of the great hitters of his time. More on his …

The complicated career of former Phillie Dick Allen is again in the spotlight as the slugger is on the ballot for consideration by the Veteran’s Committee. The announcement will be made on Dec. 8 during the Winter Meetings.

Allen did 2 tours of duty with the Phillies – first, from 1963 to 1969, and then again at the end of his career in 1975 – 76. The first go ’round was eventful to say the least. For those of us who weren’t even alive during this time, by all accounts it rivals anything we’ve seen over the last 25 years, including Owens vs. McNabb, Allen Iverson, Mike Schmidt’s well chronicled relationship with Philly fans, and the Lindros/Clarke fiasco of the late 90′s.

The Cons

Detractors contend that Allen was a clubhouse cancer, creating factions of enemies and friends that were pitted against one another. They continue that Allen created enough distractions that teams he played on were worse off for having him. Perhaps no one more succinctly explains this theory than sabermetric guru and Red Sox adviser Bill James. James writes in his book, The Politics of Glory (1994):

The stuff that is gradually being forgotten and revised and rewritten out of existence is that Allen never did anything to help his teams win, and in fact spent his entire career doing everything he possibly could to keep his teams from winning.

and then concludes with this:

Did he have value? Did he help his teams win?

He …