Liberty Ball

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The Phillies traded Jeff Conine to the Reds for two minor leaguers.  Conine had a solid but unspectacular year playing for the both Philly and the Orioles.  He hit ten homeruns and he hit .268. 

In exchange, the Phillies got Brad Key and Javon Moran, two minor leaguers who played in Low A ball last year.  Key plays third and he really struggled last year (at the age of 23).  He hit a single homerun and he had an OPS of .620.  Moran had a solid season and hit .320, but he’s already 24.  So there’s not a lot to work with here.

The Phillies signed Rod Barajas to a one year, $2.5 million deal today.  He’ll share catching duties with Carlos Ruiz behind the plate after the Phillies let long time catcher Mike Lieberthal go.

Barajas is two years removed from a career year in which he hit 21 homeruns.  He only has a career .282 OBP though.  Barajas was also dead last among starting catchers with a .984 fielding percentage and he caught 28% of the runners who tried stealing on him.

John Sickels recently posted his list of the top 20 Phillies prospects.  Topping the list is Carlos Carrasco but only he and Kyle Drabak posted ratings of B or better (Carrasco was given a B+) and even Drabak is questionable.  There’s way too many C’s and C+’s on the list, especially for a team that traded one of it’s best players in Bobby Abreu last year.

Kevin Goldstein highlighted the top ten Phillies prospects in his latest Future Shock.  Carlos Carrasco tops the list as a very good prospect and right behind him is Kyle Drabek.  Both are right handed pitchers and both are a few years away (Carrasco threw at Low A while Drabek pitched rookie ball).  Best case scenario is we see both guys in the rotation a few years.  Kyle Drabek is the son of former Cy Young winner Doug Drabek.

Michael Bourn, Josh Outman and J.A. Happ round out the top five and all three were given the “good prospect” tag.

The Phillies shored up their rotation today by trading two minor league pitchers for Freddy Garcia.  A model of reliability, Garcia has thrown over 200 innings in each of the past six seasons he has a career ERA of 4.01 and a career WHIP of 1.29.  I’d expect both of those numbers to come down now that he’s in the National League.

The Phillies now are in the same position as the White Sox were.  They now have six starting pitchers.  The likely odd man out might be Jon Lieber so we’ll see if the Phillies complete another deal at some point to fix that problem.

The Phillies gave up the oft struggling Gavin Floyd and minor league pitching prospect Gio Gonzalez.  Floyd has never panned out and it looks like the Phillies finally but bait on him.  Gonzalez was almost borrowed because he came over to the Phillies organization for just one year after he was part of the Jim Thome trade.

I like this move assuming their next one is a good one as well.