Tag Archives: Roy Oswalt

I Love Roy Oswalt

Now that it’s sunk in that our sea­son’s over, all I can think about how much I love Roy Oswalt.

Why?

Because he was an absolute stud down the stretch. Because he accept­ed play­ing sec­ond fid­dle when he’s an ace on most staffs around the league. Because he played left field! To top it all off, he vol­un­teered to pitch in relief.

He does the lit­tle things fans in Philly love. He’s a team play­er and I can’t wait to watch him next year.

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?

The Trade Deadline

A co-work­er said that it was “depress­ing” that I was already talk­ing about look­ing for­ward to the Phillies next sea­son. I told him that once upon a time I’d have felt that way in April!

Times cer­tain­ly have changed for the Phillies. Watch­ing the media cir­cus around their acqui­si­tions of Cliff Lee and Roy Hal­la­day were the sort of spell­bind­ing moves Philadel­phia teams sim­ply don’t make. We’ve his­tor­i­cal­ly been per­ma-sell­ers, unload­ing super­stars like Charles Barkley and Curt Schilling and get­ting noth­ing in return. We’re the sort of town where teams move into a rebuild­ing year that lasts a decade or more. In short, the Phillies are spoil­ing us by being so competitive!

I don’t know if the Phillies can make the play­offs this year, but I like that they’re try­ing to piece togeth­er a top-notch rota­tion that will be here for the next sev­er­al years. I still think they could make a strong run at the play­offs this year. They’ve shown they can do it in the past and if a team like the Rock­ies can go on a tear and snag the wild card the way they did in 2007, then why not us?

Make it excit­ing, Rube. Show us you’ve got what it takes to pull togeth­er a team for the ages with­out Pat Gillick look­ing over your shoul­der. I won’t even men­tion that you’re work­ing with your old boss Ed down in Hous­ton. It shows that you have the desire and will to build a cham­pi­onship team and that’s what this city wants as much as the cham­pi­onships them­selves. Go get Roy Oswalt for the 2010 run and see where we end up.