For most of his career, reliever Brian Sanches has been hanging around the NL East organizations. From ’04-’07 he was with the Phillies system chewing up some rather brutal frames for the big club in ’06 and ’07. Washington had him the next year where he did basically the same thing which was to come up from the minors to suck for a handful of innings. Then out of nowhere he bloomed into a pretty respectable bullpen arm for the Marlins.
Nothing really shattered the earth in Phillies news today but lots got done. It seemed like an hour didn’t go by today without some news that concerned the minor league club, particularly Triple-A Lehigh Valley. What gets overlooked is how big the Iron Pigs are in Allentown and if you haven’t gone to see them yet, I highly recommend you do so. They are coming off their best season where they finished 80-64 and went to the Governor’s Cup Finals where they ultimately lost to the Columbus Clippers.
Ty Wigginton is one of those guys who had been linked to the Phillies for various reasons over the years. It makes sense that in the fall/winter of ’11, they acquire him out of the bargain bin. I always liked Wigginton and have felt the Phillies were long overdue to get a player of his sort who you can stick anywhere in the field who has some pop to his bat. As we found out this past season, players like this can help you win a World Series.
In an era where the Phillies are pulling off huge trades for the likes of Roy Halladay and Hunter Pence and signing Cliff Lee out of nowhere, they have went out an acquired one of the best closers in the game formerly of the Boston Red Sox, Jonathan Papelbon.
Papelbon is coming off a very good season where he notched 31 saves while posting a 2.94 ERA and a strike out/walk ratio of 87/10 in 64.1 innings pitched. His WHIP was most impressive at 0.93. It appears the contract is for 4 years and $50 million with a vesting option for a 5th year which could turn this into the largest relief contract in baseball history. Without a doubt, this is a very solid signing.
It was a few weeks shy of six years ago that the Phillies sent Jim Thome to the Chicago White Sox for Aaron Rowand, Daniel Haigwood, and Gio Gonzalez. While I knew it to be the right move with Ryan Howard emerging as one of the great sluggers in the game, I felt bad. After all, the team turned an important corner when he signed the 6 year/ $85 million deal after the 2002 season. This is a rare instance where credit should be given to Ed Wade. His signing brought back the old days and Phillies baseball was very much becoming a big thing again.
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