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Thoughts on The Two Roys

It now looks as though the Phillies are one step away from an all-Roy ace tandem, as the team has agreed in principle to acquire Roy Oswalt from Houston, pending the pitcher agreeing to waive his no-trade clause.

Now Topic A in Philly all year has been that the Phils screwed themselves before the season in trading Cliff Lee, with talk radio conventional wisdom that the team was once again too cheap to compete with their rivals (i.e., the Yankees), while hamstringing themselves with a $140 million payroll. "Why give themselves a self-imposed salary cap?," Joe Talk Radio Caller says daily. "No other team has one!"

The Oswalt deal, assuming it's completed, turns all that on its head. Oswalt is an ace pitcher, signed for more money and more years than Lee, which would seem to indicate that maybe the Lee trade wasn't about money- and really was about prospects- after all.

The Phils' stated reason in trading Lee was that the "cupboard was bare" in terms of prospects- and after the Lee, Halladay and other trades, it was. But the Phils' farm system has improved a lot this year- their two A ball teams, in Clearwater and Lakewood, are chock-full of prospects.

Let's not forget: the Phillies didn't just "trade Cliff Lee." They traded ONE YEAR of Cliff Lee, which is why it's so ridiculous to call this the "worst trade in history" or whatever else the 610 morons say. Lee wasn't going to re-sign with the Phils without going to free agency. And while Lee is a better pitcher than Oswalt, two and a half years of Oswalt, I believe, is more valuable than one of Lee.

(Sure, they should have made a better trade, and from a 2010 standpoint, the Lee deal sure looks like a mistake. But worse than trading Ryne Sandberg and missing his whole Hall of Fame career? No way.)

And about that self-imposed salary cap: Every team, other than the Yankees, has one. It's called a "budget." But the Phils have a much higher one than most teams- the fourth-highest payroll in the game. And the "cap" is neither immutable nor the same year-to-year- the team has added a veteran starting pitcher at the deadline four straight years (Moyer, Lohse, Blanton and Lee), and dramatically increased their payroll every year over the last (when they won it all in '08, it was around $90 million.)

So let's let the "Phillies are cheap" meme now die forever, along with the "self-imposed salary cap" argument. And enjoy September and October.

So how about that Domonic Brown?

Posted by Stephen Silver at July 29, 2010 11:08 AM