A bright spot this week from the Arizona Fall League as a few players that we talked about on previous podcasts were highlighted for thier accomplishments. Scott Mathieson who played in the futures game this past all-star break at Comerica Park was named AFL pitcher of the week. Mathieson has recorded 22 K's for the Surprise Scorpions this AFL season. He is currently 0-1 with a 6.28 ERA in 4 games. Micheal Bourne, an outfielder from the Reading Phillies is hitting .316 with 10 RBI's in 9 games. RHP Travis Minix who was promoted to Scranton/Wilkes Barre this past season is 1-0 with a 1.04 ERA in 6 appearances. Minix has recorded 5 K's and allowed just one earned run in 8.2 innings. Some good pitching to keep an eye on as the AFL continues this year. Pat Burrell had minor surgery today (Oct 24) to remove bone spurs in his right foot. I was unaware Burrell was having problems with his feet, I'm wondering what the status is on his left wrist. If you remember Burrell missed a considerable amount of time last season because of a strained tendon in his left wrist. He refuses to have surgery on the wrist, Burrell reagrivated the wrist earlier this year and started wearing a wrist brace while running the bases. Lofton also had surgery on his left knee in Los Angeles, doubtfull that Lofton will return in a Philllies uniform for the 2006 season. The candidates for the GM spot are getting slimed down. Jim Duquette recently took a job with the Baltimore Orioles as executive VP of baseball operations and Gerry Hunsicker has recently met with the Devil Rays. It's also said that Brian Cashman and Theo Epstien will sign new deals with the Yankees and Red Sox respectively. Jim Bowden has been contacted by a number of teams including the D-backs, the Phils probably will not get to him. Interviews were supposed to be started at the end of last week. It seems to me as if the club is dragging this process out and I'm not sure why. While a lot of teams have locked up front office posistions that need filled, the Phillies seem to be dragging thier feet. It seems to me that with the payroll that the team has now and with some of the mixing up that needs to go on with some of the players, I would imagine that getting GM candidates interviewed would be top priority. As the organization meetings came to a close last week, there was no new news other than an email from the desk of David Montgomery stating that they are working hard on finding a new GM and the club is listening to the fans for thier feedback. There have been many other candidates listed but what concerns me is that most of the others were assistant GM's and don't have the full experience. It would be nice to bring someone in that has experience, can work with the payroll and shake things up a bit. Go out on a limb and make some aggressive trades to possibly open up some payroll. I also wanted to mention that the Good Phight phillies blog has an interesting piece on Ed Wade. It involves a WARP-3 method on computing the effectiveness of trades. This method was put on some of the trades that Wade was involved in, it's another way of looking at the effectiveness of Ed Wade. Check it out here.Email: [email protected]: http://philliesweekly.blogspot.com

Ver todos los episodios