Sources: Thome to Sign With Phillies
It’s all about the money, but the Phillies are probably a better team than the Indians anyway. The Phillies got an upgrade, and now will probably try to downgrade the Braves by offering Travis Lee, with whom the Braves have a sick and inexplicable fascination not unlike Keith Lockhart’s mysterious hold on Bobby Cox.
Big money, lots of years. Just hope that if the Phils and Braves look to move a 1B south, its Giambi the Lesser who comes down.
More Braves news: according to ESPN, Remlinger signed with the Cubs for 3 years ~$10m. I think that is too much and too long for a reliever, particularly in light of his age. But I will miss having him on the Braves. Thanks for some excellent years Mike.
Whoa! The Phillies are one Tom Glavine away from being totally stacked now! If that young Phillies rotation makes a collective jump forward, next year’s pennant race is looking pretty exciting. Let’s hope Scheurholz has something good up his sleeve to counter this move that doesn’t rhyme with “Travis Lee”.
It’s a stretch to look ahead that far, but part of me sorta wouldn’t mind of the Braves treated this as a development year, then next year as payroll is further freed up with the departures of Javy and Vinny they could go all out after Vlad Guerrero. And maybe have a shot also at getting Colon or Vazquez as a free agent.
Yeah, but remember that the Hampton deal structure means that while there is a lot of payroll flexibility over the next 3 years, we then have to start forking over massive cash to that man, whether or not he’s become “the” man by then. I mean, we’ll have to start paying him more than we’re willing to pay Glavine now. We owe Hampton like 15 million in 2008 i think.
Then again, by then that will seem like less money.