Phillies - Acquired Lidge

To be honest, this looks more like roster-churning than anything else. Neither team really addressed either a short-term or long-term need. I still like Lidge a lot and while he's not the pitcher he once was, he's still pretty good. However, the Phillies only get to keep Lidge for certain for a year and Citizens Bank seems to be a poor fit for a guy who's prone to giving up a homer at an inconvenient time. Geary's not as good (the projection difference reflects the parks) as Lidge, but he's better than his 2007 ERA. On the plus side, this almost certainly moves Myers to the rotation, where he should've been all along, but they didn't necessarily have to get Lidge to do that.

Costanzo and Bruntlett are essentially role players. Bruntlett can play any position, but won't remind anyone of Tony Phillips with the bat and Costanzo has some pop, but isn't a terribly disciplined hitter.

That leaves Bourn, who played pretty well in limited playing time for the Phillies in 2007. Unfortunately, in more extended playing time, he was quite a bit less inspiring before 2007, with the exception of an excellent full-season debut in 2004. It's still premature to think that he can really better than a 5th outfielder and if the Astros were run by someone like Ed Wade, there would be a real chance that Bourn would interfere with the superior Lee-Pence-Scott outfield alignment. Uh-oh...

2008 ZiPS Projections 
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Player      W   L   G  GS   IP    H   ER  HR  BB  SO   ERA
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Lidge       4   3  72   0   72   63   31  10  31  91  3.88
Geary       5   3  70   0   90   91   37   8  24  57  3.70 
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2008 ZiPS Projections  
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Player        AB   R    H  2B 3B  HR RBI  BB  SO  SB    BA   OBP   SLG 
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Bourn        458  60  112  13  6   4  30  38 100  22  .245  .306  .325
Bruntlett    263  33   65  13  2   2  29  30  47   9  .247  .328  .335 
Costanzo     475  39  107  23  1  14  53  45 154   0  .225  .300  .366 
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