how many homeruns will the remodeled outfield wall take away, has there been any estimates?

in ryan's case, none. even safeco couldn't help him.

he ain't great, but he eats up innings. i'd rather pay him one year at $2.6M than trade carlos silva and nick punto for eric milton and $9M.

I think of "innings eater" as a guy who gives you 200 league average innings. Kenny Rogers or Jamie Moyer or David Wells.

Franklin has exactly one season of 200+ innings and a 100+ ERA+. That hardly qualifies as an inning eater.

Also, 2.6M for Franklin is better than 9M for Milton, but that's not the comparison. The comparison is league minimum for Tejeda or Madson or whichever better-quality pitcher gets booted out of the rotation as a result.

Good points, PhillyBooster. But who's gonna show the kids how to fail a drug test? Ryan Madson? I think not.

Using park-adjusted Marcels (which I don't believe are quite as accurate as the Marcel hitting projections), here are the top NL pitchers in projected earned runs allowed for 2006:



Keep your head down.

Javy not in AZ any longer :)

Oh, right. Gotta update that.

Re #6:

That's one part durability and one part park factor, though. It's only the third part -- not being the ERA leader that's a point against.

Brett Myers threw 215 innings at a 122 ERA+, which worked out to 89 earned runs. Giving up 94 earned runs with a comparable innings total gives you an ERA+ of 120 or so.

Sure, Woody Williams gave up 86 earned runs in 159 innings in San Diego for an ERA+ of 79. I don't think anyone would see that Myers gave up 3 more earned runs as an indication that Williams's year was better.

Lidle, I predict, won't get anywhere near enough innings to get to 102 earned runs. The Phillies are just too deep with adequate pitchers to allow extended periods of dreck.

That's one part durability and one part park factor, though. It's only the third part -- not being the ERA leader that's a point against.

Sure, I know. (I have Myers projected for a 105 ERA+ in 202 innings, which of course is not bad at all.) It's not meant to be a real serious analysis; I just thought it was funny that Lidle and Franklin were 1-2.

Time to get back on the 'roids, Ryan

Any chance to get a Dennys Reyes and Gabe White ZiPS for the Twins? Possible one could be the lefty setup guy replacing Romero. Sorry not really on topic figured it would be seen here though.

I'll say it again: they are not serious about Madson in the rotation. He will not be in the rotation. Franklin will stink and stink, and still Madson will languish in the bullpen, and Floyd, Tejada, and even Brito, with whom they have a sick organizational fascination, will shuffle in and out of the five spot. The Phillies will once again win 87 games and finish close behind the playoff teams, because they "didn't have enough starting pitching."

What makes me sick about it is that they project to the same 87-75 record even when you replace Madson's 170 innings of 4.20 with Franklin's 170 innings of 5.20 in the projection, because Madson's 85 innings of 4.00 as a reliever go into the set of relief innings previously projected to be thrown by random dreck. So, the Phillies wil stil be a strong contender, they just will be a lot uglier doing it, robbing me of being able to enjoy the NL East. Right now, it looks like I'll only enjoy the AL Central and NL Central, and I won't even enjoy the latter if Clemens doesn't come back to the Astros, because they'll contend anyway. I just HATE it when teams contend with ugly starting rotations, and this year it looks like every division will have one that does.

Combined with the trade of Padilla, Gillick has now substantially downgraded the Phillies' rotation. Even with his inconsistancy, I would still take a $4 million Padilla over a $2.6 million Franklin any day.

This signing is so bad on several levels:

1. Franklin is an extreme flyball pitcher with a homer problem. Is Gillick even aware of this?

2. Franklin barely strikes out 4.5 batters per nine. Is anyone in the Phillies organization even aware of the significance of this and what it probably says about Franklin's future effectiveness?

3. Gillick dumps Padilla, a superior pitcher, for nothing just to save 1.5 million.

4. Worst of all, he justs signs a pitcher he's obviously familiar with from his Seattle GM days. How lazy.

Gillick was on the radio this morning fielding questions (pretty hard-hitting questions from Cataldi, actually) about this signing. He of course cited knowing what kind of person and pitcher Franklin was, then said his numbers were misleading because he had the second worst run support in the league (methinks this was probably not adjusted for park) and that "if you remove four bad games, two against Toronto and two against Texas, you will see that his ERA was not above 5.00." Which can probably be said about any pitcher. You could probably say it about Paul Abbott in '04.

Did he say Madson was the fifth starter?? An article in one of the local papers implies it, but says it's only if they're able to trade for another set-up man...

"He's going to pitch better than 15 losses," Gillick said. "If he loses 15, I'd bet he wins 16 or 17. I think he's a better pitcher than the numbers indicate."

Well, you're going to lose that bet quite easily.

I also liked what Franklin said about his altercation with Mariners pitching coach Bryan Price:

"I'm super-competitive," Franklin said with a laugh. "I've been working on not getting too crazy. What can I say? I'm a redneck."

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/sports/13562219.htm

His first three years, as a long reliever, swing man, and finally as a full-time starter, were average to very good. In 2003 he pitched 212 Innings with a 3.57 ERA. I'll take that for $2.6 million every time I can get it.

The last two years, Franklin has been bad. Bad. ERAs of 4.90 and 5.10 in a fairly good pitcher's park. Bad.

Ryan Franklin really looks a lot like Cory Lidle. A couple of good seasons, then a couple of bad seasons, then he comes to Philly at age 33. Spooky. Lidle was an acceptable, back-of-the-rotation starter last year and I guess the Phillies are hoping to get the same from Franklin. Not a move I'd have made -- especially combined with dumping Padilla -- but it has a chance of working, change of scenery and all that.

It wasn't a great year to be looking for an ace, so Gillick went for low-rent depth.

pretty big money for a guy who is going to be a spot starter/mop up guy by June. Poor move

As a Met fan, I must say I fully support this move by the Phillies.