Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
January 24, 2008
Trading Howard

With Ryan Howard's contract status in limbo, The Good Phight wonders if now is the time to trade the Phillies first baseman:

The other option would be to try and trade him now, again probably to Boston or the Yankees. But that's an overreaction, unless either of those teams were willing to move, say, Joba Chamberlain, Phil Hughes and three other young players or solid prospects. And the Phillies are built to win now; as TGP commenter MattS put it on another site (after I raised the possibility there, actually), trading Howard now is "the kind of move that would turn the current 90-win team into an 85-win team and turn 2012's 75-win team into an 80-win team. I'd rather make moves that turn the current team into a 95-win team and the 2012 team into a 70-win team."

Posted by David Pinto at 11:47 AM | Players | TrackBack (0)
Comments

The Phillies were 13th in the NL in team pitching - how exactly are they built to "win now"?

Posted by: Bandit at January 24, 2008 03:26 PM

Why would the red sox do a trade like that? Youkilis is probably worth one to two wins more than Howard when you consider defense and what the quality of pitching in the AL and the park effects that moving from Citizen's Bandbox to Fenway would have on Howard's output. Fenway is murder on power-hitting lefties and Howard's offense is so highly HR- and BABIP-dependent that he'd probably become a .250/.350/.550 guy with 35-40 HR's (and 200 k's!), which, while valuable, isn't worth more to the Sox than his inflated stats are to the Phils.

The Yankees on the other hand could use him as a Giambi replacement, though the question then becomes what to do with the $47M in drug money that they owe Giambi through 2009. At least Howard is (technically) a defensive upgrade from Giambi at first...

Posted by: SleepyCA at January 24, 2008 05:14 PM

You're right, they're not a "win now" team since it's been decades since they've been in the playoffs. Sheesh.

Posted by: Basura at January 24, 2008 06:49 PM

I think they got swept in the NLDS by the wild card Rox after winning a crushing 89 games and the Mets collapsing - I'll tell you what - go wait on line for those Phillies WS tix now

Posted by: Bandit at January 25, 2008 07:37 AM
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