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Not bad, plus they got the Astros to cover about half of what he's owed.

The bullpen is still a problem.

teams have won the WS with bad bullpens.

Anthony Gose who the phillies traded to get oswalt just got flipped to the blue jays for brett wallace. what the hell is ed wade doing?

No idea, Wallace is pretty close to MLB ready i think, Cardinals traded him for the Holliday package..

Congrats on getting Oswalt, we have a favorable August schedule but you just got Roy fucking Oswalt.. Braves need to match and pick up another bat..

Looks like you didnt even give up none of your top prospects either..

Great move Phils

So they wouldn't give up Happ for Halladay, but they would for Oswalt? The return they got from the Lee trade was less than what they gave up for Oswalt, and they only have him for half of this season and then a high mark next season. Strange set of moves going on up there in Philly. Between these odd trades and the bizarre Howard extension, you guys have been set up to win now and lose for a while to come.

Is Werth good as gone at this point?

Werth is pretty much as good as gone, they already have 140+ million or so commited to next year and Werth will want 13-15+ a yr, Bay type deal.. They would lose the only RH power bat in the lineup, all LH next year with Rollins/Victorino switch hitters..

Most of the Phillies top prospects are in Single A..

It's WS or bust, i still say the Yankees win the WS..

Rays ftw.

tre, they said it's only for this year and next.. I figured it would be for this year, 2011, and 2012.. I guess they will wait to see his health and determine.

By then, most of our stud pitching prospects will be up by then.. They better hope they win the WS either this year or next, our farm system is absolutely stacked.. A lot of the teams in the division have a lot of young talent coming up..

We have some contracts off the books by then to sign some core players..

most of what tre said seems like he isn't close enough to the situation to understand.


Our payroll is going up because we sell out every game and while we can't push the luxury tax like the yankees from now on just assume the phillies are going to be first or 2nd every year in payroll from now on. The growth of the product has been incredible similar to red sox nation. In any case our future is already here Dominic Brown is supposed to be our next great player. So just about the time that Utley, Rollins, and Howard are ready to decline Brown will hopefully be our star player along with Jon Singleton and Jared Cossart. I think this core has about 2-3 years left in it but our payroll situation is fine in as long as they don't sign Werth and let go of Lidge and Ibanez when their contracts are up.


As for the Lee trade, it was a mistake Tre but the difference wasn't money. Cliff wants a 6 or 7 year deal at age 31 whereas Halladay was willing to take a 4 year deal. It wasn't the dollars it was the years. The Phillies philosophy is to not give pitchers that many years because too much can go wrong with how pitchers are always getting hurt. So basically what Ruben wanted to do was get Halladay for multiple years without totally depleting the farm system from making another trade down the line. So the only way to do that was by trading Cliff Lee. Now instead of having Cliff Lee for 10 mill and then gone, they have Oswalt for 10 million over 2 years since the astros are basically paying him and now that Hamels has been able to come around into the pitcher he should be we have a legit 1-2-3 in our rotation and can stare the yankees dead in the eye if healthy.

first off the phillies will always be able to pay more then the braves. This isn't the 1879-2006 phillies anymore. they want to win they are willing to spend whatever it takes to do it and they've been very smart. Our minor league system is fine. Jon Singleton by next year may be the best prospect in baseball outside of Trout and he'll be Ryan Howard's replacement. Also Cossart and Colvin are flame throwers that will be up in the next 2-3 years and Cossart is 18 years old and arguably a top 25 overall prospect right now. The prospects we gave up to get Lee and Halladay all have done nothing on the major league level and especially with Cleveland none of them are going to be impact major league players and some of them may be career minor leaguers. I'm not saying the Braves aren't the next great NL East team but the Phillies financially are fine contrary to what some people think.