Irrational Despair
Yesterday, aging baseball scribe Bill Conlin republished a letter he'd received from a correspondent expressing his disgust with the Phillies' 2004-2005 offseason moves and claiming that he's given up hope for the coming season. Here's a taste:

This organization that is the Philadelphia Phillies is one of the most poorly run franchises in sports today. It is painfully obvious that not one person who works within the management of the Phillies cares one ounce about any fan they have. You have finally managed to do the unthinkable.

I have always been one of the most optimistic fans around. Even when you were pushing the Steve Jeltzes and Luis Aguayos in my face. I still had optimism before the start of the season. But this year, you have managed to give me absolutely no reason to even care about your team or think there is a chance for any postseason play. And that is a shame. I love baseball so much. My entire spring, summer and fall revolve around it. And now this year I have already considered it a wasted season.

It is like you all live in some sort of bubble that is cut off from the outside world. I can't believe that so many people in your organization are so dumb to think that the fans are stupid. That's really how I and many others think you think of us. Your organization needs a total overhaul, from ownership to the minors. In this letter I am going to tell you what you already know, but you think us "stupid'' fans don't know. I will also tell you how to fix some problems to start winning some fans back.
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Where to begin with Ed Wade...

Yes man. Never, ever, ever taken a chance on anything. Overvalues his "talent.'' Totally blew it during the summer of 2004. We needed a pitcher when we knew one of our starters was going to be out for a long period of time. So instead of doing something semimeaningful, he signs the released-from-the-Devil Rays Paul Abbott. Then keeps him on the team a month longer than he should have.

With a lead in the division last July, it was glaringly obvious the Phils had some holes. Instead, he did nothing meaningful at all, failed to address the issues, screwed up centerfield even worse and singlehandedly cost this team a chance at contention.

His favorite sayings that mean the same thing as "We suck and are going nowhere'' are, "If everyone plays up to their capabilities... '' and, "We're going to be competitive.'' Ed Wade needs to be replaced. And not by Ruben Amaro Jr. He's been trained by Wade and gives us no reason to believe he'd be any different. It is imperative to go, heaven forbid, outside the organization for a general manager. Find someone who lives in the real world, please.
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Mike Lieberthal is done. Finished. Washed up. You should have traded him when you had the chance, even if you had to pick up a little bit of contract money. Why not? You ask every other team to do it, so why don't you? Pat Burrell's learning curve is just about at an end. It's looking like what you see is what you get. I like him and all, but c'mon guys. How long do we have to wait here? Kenny Lofton in centerfield is about 2 years too late. If you didn't screw up the deal during last year's trade deadline, he could have made a big difference. As far as pitching, I see two number threes, a four and someone who shouldn't even be in the rotation.

Leaving aside the humorous conjunction of getting Lofton "about 2 years too late" even though "he could have made a big difference" last summer, this just seems illogically pessimistic to me. Clearly, I'm no fan of Wade and I think the team could have done a lot more to improve itself this winter, but to say there's no hope is just absurd--especially for someone who claims to have suffered through the Steve Jeltz era.

So here's the letter I wrote in response to Conlin, who told someone else on PhilliesPhans that "I'll give you equal time when you can round up 125 fans who write me e-mails backing your point of view. That's how many e-mails I got from people backing McGuigan yesterday."

I think your correspondent Francis S. McGuigan is off base on some key points here. As a Phils fan of 26 years' vintage, I feel his pain, but I also don't think he's looking at this rationally.

Not that I want to defend Montgomery or, worse, Ed Wade, whom I detest. I think he's a cowardly, unimaginative organization toady who doesn't even learn from his own mistakes, as he shows us with the annual July trade/s for lousy bullpen filler. At best, he's Chuck Lamarr--the only other GM who's kept his job as long without a playoff appearance--with a budget. But by doing one good thing years ago and then being lucky, he was able to construct a roster that clearly had--and still has--playoff-level talent.

The good thing was investing in player development when he first got his job; though this started late in the Lee Thomas regime, I'll give Wade at least partial credit. The 1996-2000 drafts were fruitful for the Phils, yielding a talented and relatively inexpensive nucleus of Rollins, Burrell, Utley, Wolf, Myers and Madson among others, with few wasted picks. The luck was in keeping his job until the team's financial circumstances improved, at which point he was able to go buy Thome and Wagner, as well as Bell, Millwood and Milton. Unfortunately, he screwed that up by retaining Bowa, who was wretchedly unfit to manage that team; Bowa should have walked the plank no later than October 2003, and arguably well before that.

If the question is "Has the organization done everything it could to put a winner on the field?", then the answer is no--but that doesn't speak to excessive frugality or ownership "not wanting to win"; it speaks to Wade's failure to make helpful trades or otherwise think creatively about roster construction... or even to be smart about when to change managers. (Montgomery et al deserve blame here, too; they should have canned Bowa and, after 2004, Wade as well.) Just this winter, he should have tried to trade Bell and gone after a slugging right-handed third baseman, or re-signed Polanco and made a real run at Beltran or another stud CF. Instead he shows faith that Bell's back will hold up, mishandles the Polanco situation, and brings in a probably-shot Kenny Lofton for, I guess, name value.

But if the question is, "Has the organization put together a roster that can compete for the postseason?", then the answer is yes. The 2005 Phils are strong 1 to 8 and have the best bullpen in the division, plus a talented though questionable rotation not unlike what the Cardinals ran out there last year. We'll live off the fruits of the last good period of player development, and the revenue jolt of 2003-04, for another year or two.

Conlin isn't always the most pleasant correspondent--he once sent me one of the most insulting e-mails I've ever received--but he does tend to write back. So we'll see what happens.