Ugh....

Well, it looks like my argument with Bill James will have to wait a couple of days now that the Phils have gone and done something stupid, signing Raul Ibanez to a 3 year/$30 million contract.  This move is perplexing for several reasons; first Ibanez is 5 years older, second he cost us our first round draft pick, third he's no better than Burrell on defense, fourth he's no where near as good as Burrell when it comes to getting on base and finally he's left handed.  Oh, and in a saturated market the Phils sign maybe the worst of the numerous OF/DH types first without waiting to see what the market sets as value.  

The first thing everyone is going to say is that Pat can't play defense.  Well, neither can Ibanez.  Over the last two years John Dewans +/- has Burrell at -47 plays and Ibanez at -43.  Baseball prospectus FRAA has Burrell at -29 runs with Ibanez at -16.  So Ibanez has been slightly better over the last two years, meaning we've replaced the worst LF with the third worst LF.  Not an improvement.   Next Phils fans will bring up Ibanez's batting average, which is definitely better than Burrells.  However his OBP has been significantly lower anyway.  Burrell the last 4 years; 389/388/400/367.  Ibanez; 355/353/351/358.   So now our lineup is making outs at a higher rate.  The LF problem comes into play in a big way here as every NL East team will just throw out those LOOGY to deal with Utley/Howard/Ibanez.   

The problems with this deal are compounded by the earlier decision not to offer Burrell arbitration.  So now instead of either having Burrell's last tail end prime year or netting two draft picks, we've signed a decline phase player who cost us our own pick.  The net transaction here is probably $6 million saved this year, an extra $14 on the books for the next two years and a net loss of three draft picks for a pretty good scouting/development team.  Oh and we're not any better than last year, maybe a bit worse.  Look Ibanez will probably have a decent season next year and if we don't defend the division title this move will probably not be the sole reason, but it is a short sighted move that will hamper this teams success no later than 2010.  Oh and I'm not the only one saying this, check out this site, this one, how  bout this one or you could just head over ussmariner.com and see what Mariners fans and Dave Cameron think.  

Honestly at this point I'm too tired to go into any of my other problems with Ibanez, but this signing coupled with reports that the Phils will give 46 year old Jaime Moyer a 2 year deal gives me a great deal of distrust in the early days of the Ruben Amaro Jr. reign.