The Trade Deadline, Revisited

Helen and I had tick­ets to Roy Oswalt’s debut as a Phillie. Wish it had gone bet­ter, but it was still a bril­liant move for the Phillies. Few peo­ple believed that J.A. Happ could dupli­cate his suc­cess­ful rook­ie cam­paign, myself includ­ed. The Oswalt deal gives the Phillies an intim­i­dat­ing rota­tion, espe­cial­ly in a short series.

But can they make the play­offs? The Phils have been snakebit­ten yet again, los­ing Shane Vic­tori­no, Raul Ibanez and Ryan Howard to injury, leav­ing Jayson Werth as the only Phillies reg­u­lar who has­n’t been hit with the injury bug. It could­n’t come at a worse time. The Phils have moved with­in 3 games of the Braves and seem to be putting the pieces togeth­er before the lat­est round of injuries hit. (Make that 1 game back. The Giants mirac­u­lous­ly beat the Braves last night.) If they can get healthy for Sep­tem­ber, I’d say they have more than a decent shot at win­ning the NL East yet again.

If not, they still made the right move. Get­ting Oswalt for the 2011 sea­son and beyond is still the right move. Dom Brown will have more expe­ri­ence. We may man­age to keep Jayson Werth, though prob­a­bly not. It’s still the smart thing to have done at the dead­line. Now that we’re only one game behind the Braves, our rota­tion may be too much down the stretch.

Love John­ny Good­times’ let­ter of apol­o­gy to Ruben Amaro, Jr. I guess I should sign on to that as well, huh?