Feeling Like A Dead Duck, Spitting Out Pieces Of His Broken Luck. Stranger Danger Season Preview
A Brief History
October 31st, 2008. Broad Street is awash in Phillies gear and Mickey’s Malt Liquor. They’d waited 25 long years to raise another banner (2008 Arena Football League title notwithstanding) and the celebration was equal parts elated and unhinged. Lou Vanzetti, definitely not a fictional prison guard from Camp Hill that I just made up described it thusly, “This is like if a Geno’s steak and a Pat’s steak had a baby, and that baby steak choked Andy Reid and then went and won the fuckin’ World Series!”
It was a dynasty in the making. Howard, Utley, Rollins, Victorino, Werth, and The Machine were an offensive nucleus that could not be matched. Hamels and the ageless Jamie Moyer were terrific and the deficiencies of Fat Joe Blanton/Brett Myers were masked by a lights-out bullpen led by Brad Lidge and JC Romero. Life was good in the city of brotherly love and figuratively nothing could rain on the parade. I imagine Stranger Danger slept well (or more likely passed out comfortably) with visions of So Taguchi dancing in his head.
November 1st, 2008, a day that will forever live in infamy for Phillies fans. While the sun was coming up and city employees were scrambling to clear the streets of empty bottles of Yuengling and Rita’s Water Ice and spent canisters of Skoal, Ruben Amaro Jr. was signing on the dotted line. Pat Gillick had built a championship team and was going out on top. The task of maintaining the Phillies juggernaut fell to Amaro. Somewhere, a seal was clubbed to death. Somewhere, Stranger Danger awoke in a cold sweat.
Since that day, Amaro has overseen the gradual, but comprehensive demise of the Philadelphia Phillies Baseball Club. Here is a list of some of the things he has done in no particular order:
Let The Machine walk and replace with Raul Ibanez
Sign 48 year old Jamie Moyer to a multi-year deal
Sign 38 (?) year old long reliever Jose Contreras to a multi-year deal
Trade Cliff Lee for something called a Phillippe Aumont, Tyson Gillies, and JC Ramirez
Trade the farm for Hunter Pence because he was bored
Turn around and trade Hunter Pence for beans
Tear up Ryan Howard’s affordable deal to sign him to a franchise killing mega-deal
Give Jonathan Papelbon all the money
Give every veteran he’s ever negotiated with an extra year on their deal because why not
This is a man who has somehow managed to eradicate the goodwill built up from a W.S. championship and five consecutive NL East titles (2007-11) to the point were 94% of respondents for a recent Philly.com poll said he should be canned. Dude is either going to be fired or shanked in the street. Best case scenario, he gets fired THEN shanked in the street. If either comes to pass, we can be fairly certain that Stranger Danger had something to do with it.
Despite exhibiting opening-verse-of-Aqualung levels of depravity, The Defectors welcomed Stranger Danger to the fold in 2014. Paul Goldschmidt, Eric Hosmer, Homer Bailey, Ian Kinsler, Kris Medlen, and Addison Reed were his replacement draft picks and all of them were excised from the roster in one way or another last season. Hosmer returned this offseason when Stranger noticed he had written “If anything goes wrong, Eric Hosmer will be my constant,” on his smack talk.
For all the effort Stanger has made in securing young talent, his 2014 Major League squad was one for the record books. Literally. With a cool 34-128 record, Stranger Danger set the all-time record for single season futility, eclipsing even the vaunted Saratoga Stalkers, which was a thing that existed.
Top ML Hitters for 2015
Stranger Danger digs the youngins. When you combine the age of his top two ML hitters (Nolan Arenado and Gregory Polanco), you get 46. Which is two years younger than Jamie Moyer was when Ruben Amaro gave him a 2 year deal. It all comes back to Ruben.
Top ML Pitchers for 2015
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Two Prospects for the Future
Now we’re cookin’! Lots of options but I’ll go with the pitching tandem of Julio Urias and Hunter Harvey. Urias has one of the finest pitching repertoires in the minors as well as a truly magical milb.com headshot. I fully expect Stranger to hold onto Harvey until one of the O’s fans in the league sends him a blank check.
Stranger is also rostering a few of the Phillies top prospects (JP Crawford, Maikel Franco, Jesse Biddle) so keep an eye out for one (or all…yeah probably all) of them being flipped by Amaro at the deadline for a Randy Choate or Tom Gorzelanny type.
Projected Record
2015 is only slightly more kind to Stranger Danger than 2014 was as his offense carries the load on the way to a 40-122 record. He manages a 7-7 record vs his brother, MHink and finishes in last place in the ShadowCat Memorial Division.
