Extending Ryan Howard Is Not What Killed the Phillies

It's not your fault, Ryan. Really. (via Matthew Straubmuller)

It’s not your fault, Ryan. Really. (via Matthew Straubmuller)

The Phillies won five straight division titles from 2007 through 2011 but have been in freefall ever since. After winning 102 games in 2011, they have won only 81, 73, and 73 games in the last three years, respectively, culminating in a last-place finish this past season. With two years left in their run of success, the Phillies made the surprising move of extending their slugging first baseman, Ryan Howard, to a five-year, $125 million extension that did not begin until 2012. The move was met with criticism, especially from the sabermetric community. Almost poetically, Howard injured himself running out a season-ending ground out at the end of 2011, effectively in the final play before his extension commenced.

The contract has been an unbridled catastrophe. In the first three years of the deal, Howard has added no value at all: he has -1.0 WAR. General manager Ruben Amaro Jr. has been mostly defiant about his unwillingness to incorporate sabermetrics into his decision making. Even in 2012, right before it became clear the window was already closed, Amaro was quoted as saying, “I believe you can break down and analyze statistics any way you really want, but when it comes to scouting heart and head, you can’t do it with sabermetrics.” Surprisingly, although the Phillies have cost themselves through their own math-phobia and stubbornness, the Ryan Howard contract is not what killed them.

The Magnitude of the Problem

The Phillies certainly would have gotten more value by spending $25 million in each of the last three years just about any other way, but that typically nets only about 3-4 wins per year when spent on average free agents. Blaming the demise of the Phillies on the Howard contract understates just the magnitude of the decline. Philadelphia has averaged 21 games out of first place and 13 out of the Wild Card. Three MVPs out of Howard would not have let the Phillies sniff a playoff berth.

1a 1b 1c

This stance also ignores the overall production from the Phillies’ free-agent eligibles. Over the last three years, their overall stable of players with six years of service time has been almost exactly average; typical spending would have generated only a total of four more wins.

2a 2b 2c

Non-Market and Auction-Market WAR

The Phillies’ problems actually center on a shocking lack of production from young players. A few years ago, I wrote about a concept I developed called “NM WAR” and “AM WAR”:

  1. NM = Non-Market Players, who are either bound to their team by the reserve clause or eligible for arbitration
  2. AM = Auction-Market Players, who are eligible for free agency or are at least eligible for auction by being professional amateurs from countries like Japan and Cuba.

The difference mostly centers on whether production is cost-controlled or paid for at market prices. The Phillies’ problem is a stunning lack of NM WAR, of a magnitude so great that spending Steinbrenner money with the prowess of the most hyperbolical version of Billy Beane would not have solved the problem nor produced enough AM WAR to offset the lack of NM WAR. The Phillies have spent major money and have been rewarded with AM WAR as a result, finishing fourth, sixth, and third over the last three years in WAR generated by this older group of players.

3a 3b 3c

However, they have struggled mightily with NM WAR in almost comic proportion. After hefty production from Cole Hamels and Carlos Ruiz with five years of service time in 2012 kept the Phillies a respectable 19th in the league in NM WAR in 2012, they have finished dead last the last two years.

4a 4b 4c

These charts actually somehow overstate the Phillies’ production from young players. By taking out players who are arbitration eligible and leaving only those players with under three years of service time, the Phillies were 26th in 2012 and last in both 2013 and 2014.

The Win-Now Trades Also Fail to Explain the Demise

While the Howard contract is still the most prominent of the Phillies’ head-scratching moves, some of the win-now trades the Phillies have made may turn out to be more costly. Amaro made four giant win-now trades in a period of two years and a day, shipping out 14 different players to acquire Cliff Lee, Roy Oswalt, Roy Halladay, and Hunter Pence.

The cost of Pence has been among the most painful of these deals, with Jarred Cosart, Jon Singleton, Josh Zeid, and Domingo Santana all being sent to the Astros. But these players have not actually put a dent in the AL West yet and did not produce enough that they would have made any headway towards the NL East, either. They combined for -0.2 WAR in 2014, 0.4 WAR in 2013, and did not play in 2012.

Putting together the performances of all 14 players packaged in these trades from 2012 to 2014, the Phillies would have had 6.9 more WAR in 2014, 0.6 in 2013, and 2.0 in 2012. Philadelphia still would have been dead last in the league in NM WAR in both 2013 and 2014 and would have improved only from 19th to 17th in 2012 with these players. Considering the effect the foursome of stars had on their division titles, Amaro does not appear to have given up much, at least at this stage.

5a 5b 5c

Pat Gillick’s three years at the helm of the Phillies actually led to more costly win-now trades, but these were not what the spelled the Phillies’ doom. Gillick’s win-now moves brought in Jamie Moyer, Freddy Garcia, Kyle Lohse, Brad Lidge, and Joe Blanton. Many of these prospects did not pan out, either. The most destructive trade was sending Gio Gonzalez and Gavin Floyd to the White Sox for Garcia, who had 0.1 WAR in 2007 before a season-ending injury preceded free agency.

Gonzalez and Floyd, along with Michael Bourn (used to acquire Lidge) would have helped the team, and with all 25 players traded in these nine win-now moves, the Phillies would have won 9.8 more games in 2014, 4.4 in 2013, and 14.5 in 2012. Even then, the Phillies still would have finished last in NM WAR in 2014 and second to last in 2013. Although they would have been fifth in NM WAR in 2012, that would have been centered on five-year service time guys about to become eligible for free agency (Hamels, Ruiz, Floyd, Bourn). They would have been only 26th in the league in WAR by players who were not yet arbitration eligible.

The Phillies traded away a ton of talent for enough fuel to propel themselves into a five-year division title run, but this was not what brought down the team, either. The players they traded either:

A Hardball Times Update
Goodbye for now.

(a) failed to live up to expectations,

(b) were already free agents or expensive by the time the Phillies’ run of greatness ended, or

(c) are still in development.

None of these guys would have sustained their success, except for perhaps helping them play in a Wild Card game in 2012 at the expense of perhaps their one-game division victory during their World Series championship season of 2008. That does not make the moves smart, but it does mean that they do not fit an allegorical narrative you can weave around their downfall.

Colossal Draft Failure Brought Down the Phillies’ Empire

The problem was not the lack of production per dollar from free agents but the lack of production from cost-controlled talent, which was not because they traded away many young players. Instead, the issue was a series of terrible drafts that have yielded almost no fruit for the last eleven years. This is even more shocking when juxtaposed against their incredible success in the draft during the eight years prior.

The Phillies’ total career WAR among all drafted players from 2004 through 2014 is only 27.8 compared to a league average of 100.0. This is not just league-worst, it is less than half of the second-worst Blue Jays at 60.5. The following chart shows the total WAR by drafted players for each organization, ranging from the Phillies up to the Red Sox at 169.1.

6a

Amazingly, the Phillies were the best in the league from 1996 to 2003.

6b

It is worth noting that this includes J.D. Drew, whom the Phillies drafted and did not sign; excluding Drew, the Phillies would have been tied for second best. Still, the difference between the Phillies’ pre-2004 draft success and afterwards is shocking. Philadelphia’s five division titles from 2007 to 2011 were a product of these great drafts. During this short time period, they selected Chase Utley, Cole Hamels, Pat Burrell, Brett Myers, Jimmy Rollins, and even Howard. Only Hamels, Myers, and Utley were first-round picks. After that, the well ran dry, and so did the Phillies’ division hopes.

Philly certainly did not help itself by signing Type-A free agents in 2005 and 2009 to bring in Jon Lieber and Raul Ibanez. They also lost picks in 2011 and 2012 by signing Lee and Jonathan Papelbon but replenished those picks by letting Jayson Werth and Ibanez go. The lack of production by first-round picks since 2004 is astounding; they actually got some value by trading away Kyle Drabek, Adrian Cardenas, Travis d’Arnaud, and Greg Golson.

The horrific outcomes of the Phillies’ recent drafts was discussed extensively here by schmenkman (following up on findings here by Todd Zolecki). In that article, there is excellent data on how much of the Phillies’ poor drafts are a function of the lost picks and lower first-round picks, and that definitely explains some of what has happened (using Sky Andrecheck’s draft pick WAR calculator). But it does not come close to explaining all of it. Even if the Phillies were drafting low, overall the twelve players that the Phillies have drafted in the first round over the last 11 years have totaled -1.0 WAR. The average team over this time period has gotten 38.7 WAR out of these players. Contrast that with their league-best first rounds from 1996 to 2003 of 201.2 WAR, while the average team had 61.0 WAR out of their first-round picks.

The picture is not much prettier after the first round. The Phillies were not dead last, but were 28th of 30 in post-first-round drafting from 2004 to 2014. They were a respectable 10th in the league from 1996 to 2003 in post-first-round drafting.

The Phillies’ drafts have turned out to be amazing disappointments during this period. Perhaps the most astonishingly bad time period was 2004 through 2007, since most of the players drafted during this time period across the league already have started augmenting their big league clubs. The Phillies’ draftees from those years have accumulated just 9.6 career WAR while the league average across all teams has been 76.1 WAR. This discrepancy explains why the Phillies have been so far out of first place during the last three years. It is simply not possible to have such colossal draft failures and still compete in baseball today.

None of this coincides with a perfect narrative of the Phillies’ leadership. The Phillies were still managed by Ed Wade through the 2005 season, who had overseen the great drafts from 1998 through 2003. Gillick replaced Wade in 2006, and Amaro replaced Gillick in 2009. One of the great architects of the Phillies’ successful teams was Mike Arbuckle, but he did not depart for the Royals until after 2008. So, one of the people most often credited for the youth movement that eventually took over the NL East by 2007 was also in a leadership position during the worst of the draft failures.

Of course, the problem could be development, rather than drafting success. The Phillies may have recognized talent in all those drafts and simply not had the coaching and teaching in place to lead to their success. But that explanation becomes strained when the failure of traded prospects is considered.

Conclusion

Regardless of what happened, the players Philadelphia has drafted over the last 11 years have failed thus far. That failure has cost the team about 72 wins and counting, while poor spending on free agents has cost them only four wins. Even the opportunity cost of extending Howard in isolation will be only about 20 wins by the time it runs out, which has been mostly offset by solid contracts to Utley, Rollins, Hamels, Ruiz, and others. The issue has not been a lack of older players living up to their contracts but a lack of younger players living up to their draft positions.

That issue remains even if the Phillies continue what they finally started this week by trading away Jimmy Rollins, and trade more older talent for younger players. Players who have already reached free agency who are signed at average free agent market prices are not going to bring enough back. And although players like Rollins are signed at a little below market value and will bring back some talent, we already know the Phillies do not have many of those. Further, even if the Phillies are willing to eat money in a trade, then they are effectively just paying for young players at the market price for older players — and we have established that this is not enough. Without drafting more talent, the Phillies are not going to be able to build on top of their (much needed) rebuilding process.

I have little doubt the Phillies would have been better if they had adopted sabermetric thinking and implemented it in their system earlier on. In fact, I have found a solid correlation between utilizing sabermetrics and success relative to payroll. None of this says spending $75 million differently would not have helped, but it would not have made up a combined 63-game division deficit, either.

That gap could have been closed substantially by having more success in the draft. Russell Carleton discovered last year that teams did not appear to be all that good at drafting, in the sense that draft position and bonuses outside of the first round were not very correlated with actual major league success. Of course, that only says league-wide bonus distribution does not account for much of the variation between players in draft outcomes. It does not prove that luck is the only source of variation, nor does it rule out that another source of variation in draft results could be team drafting skill, which I have convinced myself is something the Phillies lack. Carleton’s article also did show a relationship between draft bonus and success in the first round, and that has been where the Phillies have fallen behind the pack by the largest margin.

Even so, better drafting does not mean the problem is not a lack of sabermetrics. One of the most prominent chapters of Moneyball featured Beane making picks using analytics in the 2002 draft. And for all the criticism of that draft class, the 2002 A’s draft was tops in the league by WAR (albeit with more picks than anyone and with some of that WAR coming from an unsigned Papelbon). But it does show that there are clearly rocks the Phillies have not tried turning over during the last decade that they could have.

Amaro also was quoted in the article linked above as saying, “There are times when I think maybe we should use it some more, but, frankly, I have a great deal of confidence in the people that we have hired to help us make some of the scouting and personnel decisions. I err on that side probably because I believe in our people.” Conversely, Beane was reported to have repeatedly threatened to fire all his scouts in Moneyball. But he never did, and perhaps the Phillies should have.


Matt writes for FanGraphs and The Hardball Times, and models arbitration salaries for MLB Trade Rumors. Follow him on Twitter @Matt_Swa.
27 Comments
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pithy GM
9 years ago

It’s tough to draft 20-30 each year. Ask the Rays.

visitor
9 years ago
Reply to  pithy GM

But the Rays use Sabermetrics. So it must be extreme bad luck or that’s how the narrative goes.

Overall, an excellent article, though.

Matt Swartz
9 years ago
Reply to  pithy GM

See the link from The Good Phight to see how much of the explanation comes down to where they picked– it only goes part of the way. Keep in mind the Phillies have less than 0 WAR from their first round picks over this time period.

Lanidrac
9 years ago
Reply to  pithy GM

Picking well in the bottom half of the first round can be done as the Cardinals have proven in recent years:
2009 – 19th Pick – Shelby Miller – Major League SP – Recently traded for Jason Heyward
2010 – 25th Pick – Zack Cox – AAAA 3B – Traded for Edward Mujica
2011 – 22nd Pick – Kolten Wong – Current Starting 2B for Cardinals
2012 – 19th Pick – Michael Wacha – Current Starting Pitcher for Cardinals
2012 – 23rd Pick – James Ramsey – AA OF Prospect – (Unfortunately) Traded for Justin Masterson
2013 – 19th Pick – Marco Gonzalez – Top SP Prospect for Cardinals – Made MLB Debut This Year
2013 – 28th Pick – Rob Kaminsky – Single A Pitching Prospect for Cardinals

Only one likely bust out of all these picks, and even he was useful as a trade chip.

tz
9 years ago

Excellent article. It’s very telling that even if the Phillies had drafted Mike Trout, they still would have had the worst 2004-2014 draft results.

Marc Schneider
9 years ago

Any GM that says the things that Amaro says should be summarily fired.

Brian Gunn
9 years ago

What a terrific piece. It takes a piece of conventional wisdom, turns it on its ear, tests alternate hypotheses, and backs it all with research and facts. Nice work.

Richie
9 years ago
Reply to  Brian Gunn

Yes, very good article. Other than that I think it slightly overstates how much of the blame the Howard signing has been getting. I think if you successfully asked most all people to think about it for a couple minutes rather than just answer off the top of their heads, they’d all quickly move to “y’know, the Phillies have drafted pretty lousy lately too, haven’t they?”

Matt Swartz
9 years ago
Reply to  Richie

Probably doesn’t all get attributed to Howard for most people, though I think the consensus has been that the bulk of the problem is bad trades and bad free agent signings, rather than bad drafting.

obsessivegiantscompulsive
9 years ago

Great article as usual, love reading your stuff, very thought provoking.

One aspect of the draft that rarely seems to get examined is the rate of success. Most analysis seems to follow in BP’s footsteps of looking at the average value per pick, but the sad truth is that most of that value is generated by a few players and thus the distribution curve is very skewed towards those few. Average value is fine when you have a normal curve but any chart of WAR value for any pick in the draft will look nothing like a normal curve, yet people still use that.

My analysis of the draft found that when teams are playoff competitive (i.e. drafting in the 21-30 overall picks range), the teams on average found one good player every nine to ten years. When the success rate is that low, while it is likely that such a continuously successful team should find a good player in eleven years, there is still a high odds (a little more than a quarter of the time, if I multiplied 89% the correct number of times, or 27.8%) that a random process would yield no good drafts among those eleven first round drafts. Of course, it does not help that they lost a few along the way too.

You have done great work before, and based on the data you quote in this article, you have easy access to the draft data (if not already in your hands), so hopefully you will think about looking at analyzing the actual probability of finding, say, a player with 18 WAR (I’ve been using that as my standard for a good player, that’s 6 seasons of 3 WAR or 9 seasons of 2 WAR, both good value, but I’ve seen some use 10 and others use 20). Most draftees never even make the majors, even first rounders, few taste the majors, fewer play regularly, fewest are actually good. The odds are really stacked against teams to find a good player via the draft, yet, like wildcatting oilmen, you can’t hit oil unless you draft a player. The cliche is about how in baseball, if you get a hit only 30% of the time, you are a great success, but the success rate in drafting is actually much, much lower than that, except for maybe the first five picks overall.

That’s why, I believe, we have seen this rash of teams burning down their roster. This started with Cox doing that to the Braves as their GM, and I think Dombrowski has seeded this behavior through baseball, he did that with the Expos, then Marlins, now Tigers, and his disciples continued that with Marlins and Nationals (netted them Strasburg and Harper). The Rays seemed to have that philosophy to start their franchise and I think the Cubs and Astros have been pursuing such a path, as well. The Pirates, Royals, and Orioles, I believe they were more related to incompetence, though perhaps late in their run of poor playing, they might have finally got the right people in place for success.

The logic makes total sense: the best picks to find talent easily are the first five picks or so, and the best way to ensure you get such a pick is to crash and burn the talent on the 25-man roster. You do that by trading away all your best players to get prospects for your team’s rebirth and not spending much on free agent add-ons. You lose a lot and then get a chance to shoot fish in a barrel, while everyone else is fishing in the lake. I’ve been calling this the Phoenix Rebuilding strategy for ten years now and it seems like teams are being copycats of each other now, as this tactic has been spreading.

It would be great to see you do a comprehensive study on the draft, I’ve not seen anyone do that yet, and I loved your work with free agency and trading, which showed that teams know what they are giving away and what they are keeping, among others.

Matt Swartz
9 years ago

This is an interesting idea. I may have to try something like this. I do think average value per pick is important– because the goal is to get the most wins, so naturally you want the most WAR. But the skewed nature does mean you need a large sample (though a normal distribution isn’t necessary). But I think draft success rate is a big deal too, and should be looked at as well as an important intermediate step.

tz
9 years ago
Reply to  Matt Swartz

This kind of analysis might be fuel for teams like the Red Sox under the current CBA, since falling into the bottom ten already gives you protection for that first-round pick if you sign a free-agent. So if your team is stinking it up at the All-Star break, have a fire sale and enjoy the double benefits.

Lanidrac
9 years ago

Hmm, interesting, in that case we should look at median value per pick.

Rob Harrison
9 years ago

One nitpick: Pat Burrell was also a first-round pick — in fact, he was the first overall pick in 1998.

Matt Swartz
9 years ago
Reply to  Rob Harrison

Oops, sloppy of me. Thanks for correcting.

Drew Shervin
9 years ago

The Phillies have been running the “Good Old Boys” network for years under Dave Montgomery. What this means is no matter how bad you scouts have been they never lose their jobs. It makes no difference on how many draft picks you fail on. The Phillies are a family and once your in the family it’s for life. No one is held accountable. CBP is mostly filled every summer. All the parents buy Phanatic dolls for their kids. The food and beer lines extend to Pattison Avenue. It’s all in house. They don’t bring outside guys in ever. It hasn’t been a disaster. Two World Championships in 35 years. Go ask the Cubs if they would like just one. People like to complain but the Phillies have made 5 trips to the World Series in those 35 years. Based on the amount of teams in the National League that is way above average.

Jetsy Extrano
9 years ago

This is fascinating research (and a well-structured writeup with a strong narrative flow). I for one was amazed to see that split of the Phillies’ AM/NM value breakdown.

Have you published the full year-by-year data sets for this? I’d love to try some graphs.

I do think, like obsessivegiantscompulsive, that we need to deal with variance to understand just how poorly the Phillies have performed at acquiring NM talent. I’m not at all sure how to deal with trades, but I think it’s doable for the drafted-signed-retained players:

1) In the estimates for the value of a draft pick by position, build the full distribution info (for all teams).
This will need to be smoothed ‘enough’ across pick# and year, which is non-trivial to get right.
2) When adding up the 39 WAR the team was expected to get from the 11 picks (assuming independence), estimate the distribution of that total. (For one trial, draw from each year’s pick’s distribution and add up. Repeat a lot. I’m a programmer, not a statistician.)
3) At what percentile on that distribution does the actual value fall? Ugggh -1 WAR, good grief, let’s just clip it at zero, what % of teams with that same basket of 11 picks would be expected to get nothing out of it?

Step (1) is the tricky part of this.

(Still and all, in this case I don’t see how it could work out as very likely that they just had a run of bad luck. If the normal chance of a first-rounder being a total bust is 50%, we have to believe they hit 1 in 2048… or they were operating with a greater-than-normal Bust%.)

Free_AEC
9 years ago

“Phillies’ problem is a stunning lack of NM WAR, of a magnitude so great that spending Steinbrenner money with the prowess of the most hyperbolical version of Billy Beane would not have solved the problem”

This is false That’s why there is no evidence presented to back it up even though you favor this approach to an excessive degree.

Did you count Mark Teixeira in your WAR value for the Phillies? That is who Mike Arbuckle wanted to draft instead of Gavin Floyd, but he was told he was not permitted to because Teixeira’s agent was Scott Boras. Do you know why J.D. Drew was not signed? The Phillies knew they would not sign him before they chose him. The pick was made to stop another MLB team from paying Drew.

The Phillies have never signed a Scott Boras player.

This is all fact. If you want all the details and analysis of why the Phillies stink so bad you can begin with Phillies Draft History and Dave Montgomeryl

That article from my blog was ripped off with no attribution by Matt Gelb.

Matt Swartz
9 years ago
Reply to  Free_AEC

And yet the Phillies were the best drafting team in the league during the period when they drafted Gavin Floyd. They could have drafted every Boras client there was and paid up during the 2004-14 years, and it would have barely made a dent.

Free_AEC
9 years ago
Reply to  Matt Swartz

They could have drafted every Boras client there was and paid up during the 2004-14 years, and it would have barely made a dent.

Is this what you meant to write?

At a quick glance:

Jered Weaver
Stephen Drew
Jacoby Ellsbury
Matt Wieters
Rick Porcello
Matt Harvey
Stephen Strasburg
Bryce Harper
Anthony Rendon

Face of Cubs rebuild: Kris Bryant

I did not include Max Scherzer because I do not recall him being represented by Boras coming out of college. He may have been, but I have never had Scherzer in mind as a Boras client until the past two years.

Boycotting the Scott Boras talent pool as the Phillies do like no other MLB team is very much like playing Russian Roulette with five bullets in the chamber.

_

Highlight and Google: John Powers Middleton Felony Fraud

_

Matt Swartz
9 years ago
Reply to  Matt Swartz

Drafting with perfect hindsight is easy. Give me a break. Lots of teams were stingy with draft bonuses, and no one else did half as badly– literally.

Michael
9 years ago

Just a fantastic article. Will come back to your site again.

Paul
9 years ago

Just a great article. It should be distributed to every advanced analytics wonk and every traditional sports writer who falls on the lazy narrative that it’s all Amaro’s fault and that the Howard deal killed them.

Park Chan ho's Beard
9 years ago

Any chance to get some of those charts in interactive format? I’d love to see where some of the other teams rank in terms of NM/AM Production and draft production

Josh
9 years ago

I think something needs to be said – or perhaps only kept in mind – about prospects, timing, and organizations. That is, while we may yet not be able to put a number value on it, certain clubs at certain times could have used a Kyle Drabek or a Lou Marson. The fact that they washed out in Toronto after the Lee deal does not necessarily mean they did not hurt the Phillies. This seems interesting to me in two ways: one is obvious, that the Phillies might have benefited from keeping both prospects (and the others they gave away to get Lee), because the Phillies are a different team and have different needs. Just as Ryan Howard might have started his MLB career about 2 years earlier if he wasn’t stuck behind Jim Thome in Philly, all the prospects listed in the article might have flourished elsewhere. To say they didn’t pan out should really be qualified as “they didn’t pan out with those particular teams, at that time.”

The other interesting aspect of the Lee trade that has always fascinated me is that the Phillies sent a slew of prospects to the Jays for a few months of Cliff Lee, then traded him for fewer, lesser prospects as soon as the season ended, despite being able to keep him for 2 more years if they wanted. Then, they went and re-signed him for ace money in 2011 and lost a draft pick in the process. The whole deal has always confused/amused me. Philly lost most of its top prospects in exchange for 3 months of Cliff Lee, then didn’t want to pay him to keep playing in Philly, then eventually paid an older version of Lee even more money and lost yet another prospect in the form of the pick. Whereas, in another world, the Phillies could have kept their top prospects and signed Lee in 2011 anyway, or else kept Lee and re-signed him, thereby not losing the pick.

That trade is the first time I remember being struck by how strange the Phillies’ “plan” seemed.

mike andrews
8 years ago
Reply to  Josh

That one’s easy money-wise, when they shipped him out it was because they didn’t think they’d have enough money and needed prospects back.

One the Comcast deal came into sight – i.e. the knowledge that Comcast would be paying them $hundreds of millions in 3 years, payroll became ‘no object’ in giving Lee ‘ace money’ and resigning J-Roll, Ruiz, Utley, etc to huge deals.

Don't want to be rude...
8 years ago
Reply to  Josh

but I just correct something. The Phillies initially traded for Lee from the Indians, not the Blue Jays. The Phillies obtained Roy Halladay from the Blue Jays. The Phillies sent Carlos Carrasco, Jason Knapp, Lou Marson and Jason Donald for 1.5 years of Lee. Then after half-a-season of stellar pitching for the Phillies, the Phillies “upgraded” by trading Lee to the Mariners for a bunch of prospects, all of whom turned out to be nothing, and sent Travis D’Arnaud, Michael Taylor and Kyle Drabeck for Roy Halladay. I am not a Phillies fan but I could not fathom why the decision to trade away Lee was made especially when the Phillies ended up signing Lee to a FA contract the next off-season.
If it makes Phillies fans feel better, you guys got two great years out of Halladay before he fell apart and the only player that has done anything has been D’Arnaud, but the Jays decided to send him and Noah Syndegaard were used to get R.A. Dickey. In other words a horrible trade for the Blue Jays.