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.
December 7th, 2006 at 4:46 am
i like the garcia trade. i very much dislike floyd and gio gonzalez is unproven. he could end up being likely johan santana or julio santana. it’s a good trade because garcia is solid and proven, plus it puts the phils in a good situation with excess starting pitching to deal…bye-bye lieber.