FanHouse PedroFeliz

From now until the regular season begins, Fantasy Flings is where you'll find interesting story lines about your favorite teams from Spring Training. If there is a position battle, a nagging injury, a comeback story or a youngster making a surge for the "big club" we'll let you know the fantasy implications.

Atlanta Braves
The problem with signing 36-year-old free agents is that they tend to get hurt a bit more than younger players. New Braves left fielder Garrett Anderson tweaked his right calf in warm-ups and will miss two to three weeks; maybe more. Matt Diaz in left field is not good for the Braves and it sure as heck isn't any kind of answer for your fantasy team. There is good news in camp, however, Rafael Soriano pitched a scoreless inning today giving up only one hit and striking out one in his bid to return from right elbow surgery. Derek Lowe was next to untouchable pitching four perfect innings today striking out six and walking none.

FanHouse continues its 2009 MLB Preview with a look at the Philadelphia Phillies.

The City of Brotherly Love's long championship drought came to an end when Brad Lidge struck out Eric Hinske in Game 5 of the World Series last October. The city exploded in appreciation of a team that's a blueprint for success in the modern game, with homegrown stars studding the lineup and top of the rotation, and a handful of savvy acquisitions, like Lidge, sprinkled around to fill holes.

Fantasy baseball draft season is coming, so you best be prepared by delving through every major player on each team. Fantasy FanHouse is here to help with a quick once-over.

Meet the ...
Defending World Series champions. I know, right? Repeating it doesn't make it any less bizarre. But that's what the Phillies are, at least for this year. For fantasy folks, though, they might be a little less than "championship" material. That's meant with all due respect, of course, because the Phillies play in a fantastic hitters' park and they do have a number of elite fantasy options.

Glancing around the internet and flipping TV channels the past few days, an uneducated fan (I guess we have to call him "Joe Fan," right?) may be duped into thinking the Tampa Bay Rays just won the championship. If you mentioned the World Series to him, he may simply ask, "didn't that Tampa team just win it?"

Um, no, they didn't. They did just win one of the most exciting playoff series in recent memory, but there is still business on the docket before Major League Baseball crowns its 2008 champion.

Should we really be ignoring a team that sports an unparalleled trio of superstar infielders in Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, and Jimmy Rollins? Rollins had an off-year, but he's coming off an MVP season. Howard is in MVP consideration this year, as he exploded in the second half and ended with 48 home runs and 146 RBI. Utley is easily the best offensive second baseman in the league, sporting a .915 OPS with 33 HR and 104 RBI in the regular season. Chase has been raking in the postseason, but Rollins has struggled and Howard hasn't shown any power ... and the Phillies have won seven of nine games. What if things change and Rollins and Howard start to deliver?

In '07, "Who's on Third, I Don't Know" was more than just an Abbott and Costello routine in Philadelphia, but a way of life as Greg Dobbs, Wes Helms, and Abraham Nunez manned third base for the Phillies. Today, they hope that former Giant Pedro Feliz will provide the answer to the age old question, as the Phillies have signed him to a two-year, $8.5 million dollar deal.

Feliz batted .253 with 20 homers and 72 RBIs for San Francisco last season. He's an upgrade over the trio of Greg Dobbs, Wes Helms and Abraham Nunez. Philadelphia's third basemen batted .255 with 11 homers and 76 RBIs last year. Dobbs and Helms remain on the roster.

Feliz had spent his entire eight-year career with the Giants. He's been a full-time starter since 2004, averaging 21 homers and 84 RBIs. Feliz, who turns 33 on April 27, is a career .252 hitter with a .288 on-base percentage.

How much of an upgrade is this? The Phillies can hope that the change in home parks from 3-Com in San Francisco to the shoebox known as Citizens Bank will help those power numbers along. And Feliz, with only 11 errors last season should provide an upgrade in the field from the trip of Helms, Dobbs, and Nunez (25 errors between them in '07). But a .288 career on-base percentage tells me that if he can't work a walk in San Francisco, he can't take a walk in Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, or the North Pole.

As Mullet noted last weekend, Barry Bonds will likely be one of many veterans leaving the Giants this winter. Pedro Feliz, who signed a one-year deal last year, will be a free agent, and he's now looking for a multi-year deal.

But considering Feliz just hit .249 with a depressingly low .287 OBP (which, incidentally, is a shad below his career .288 OBP), there's not a chance in hell that San Francisco would actually re-sign him, right? Right?! I don't know, I just hope that GM Brian Sabean isn't influenced by manager Bruce Bochy. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

"He's been so consistent over the years, and he's so stable emotionally," manager Bruce Bochy said. "He's the same guy every day, just a model of consistency. And to me, he should be the Gold Glove winner." ... Asked if he'd like Feliz back in '08, Bochy said, "Any manager is going to like Pedro Feliz."

Um, actually, any manager with a rudimentary understanding of on-base percentage (that is, "making outs = bad") probably wouldn't want Feliz. Yes, he's a great fielder, and sure, he's good for 20 home runs a year, but as MLB Trade Rumors points out, Feliz still hurts the team by committing an out over 70% of the time he steps up to the plate. As the Chronicle points out, he's not striking out as much as he used to, but he's not walking any more or getting more hits, so it's not like he's actually getting better. He's just as bad, only in a slightly different way.

I don't have anything personal against Feliz and I'm glad that he's made millions of dollars and should be assured of living a long and wealthy life ... but if I'm a fan of the Giants, he can't get San Francisco fast enough for my liking.

The Giants needed to get rid of Barry Bonds.

It probably would have been the best thing for the health of the Giants franchise to get rid of Barry Bonds a few seasons earlier, but you can't expect the Giants to turn away millions in revenue connected to Bonds' chase for Hank Aaron's record. In the efforts to win in the present while Bonds was still an active part of the club, the Giants brought in a lot of older help in the forms of guys like Omar Vizquel, Ryan Klesko, Dave Roberts, Mike Matheny, Moises Alou, Steve Finley, Jeff Fassero, Benito Santiago and Andres Galarraga. Over the years, signings like those were probably in lieu of better, younger signings because the money that Bonds was making ate up a large percentage of their payroll.

The problem was that Bonds would frequently be pulled after the seventh inning for pinch runners to save his health. So you have $15 million dedicated to a guy who isn't going to be around past seven innings to potentially win ballgames, forcing the Giants to depend on some overvalued talent to carry the team the rest of the way.

Well, not only does $15 million come off the books with Bonds, but they also lose the salaries of Vizquel ($5.1 million), Pedro Feliz ($5 million), Klesko ($1.75 million) and Matheny. Nobody should be surprised if the Giants also get rid of guys like Rich Aurilia (.245) and Ray Durham (.215) who combined are making $10.5 million. And perhaps, as correctly noted by a comment here (thank you for the correction), the Giants could find a way to trade Roberts, who was signed to a three year $18 million deal before the season began. That would be a shade over $40 million to spend to make an old roster younger and energetic, and perhaps get some younger legs with some range to support guys like Barry Zito, Matt Cain, and Tim Lincecum. This is probably the first opportunity since 1993 for the Giants to remake their roster in a significant way, instead of putting band-aids on problems just to give Bonds some patchwork support.

Or, they could go get Alex Rodriguez, because you know that if he opts out of his contract, that speculation is going to start. A-Rod did say how much he loved San Francisco, didn't he? If the Giants want to keep their ballpark full, that would be the way to go. And that $40 million just might be enough to get him (he is, after all, a Scott Boras client). But to me, the smart money is to fortify their roster with fresh prospects and bullpen help to surround their starting rotation. The key for the Giants is to not let the bottom fall out for a few more seasons just because Bonds is leaving. If they're smart, it doesn't have to be that way.

Previously on FanHouse:
Barry Bonds is Leaving San Francisco
Alex Rodriguez Loves San Francisco

In serious style -- they're having margaritas in the clubhouse before the game, along with chips and bean dip. Pedro Feliz will be on the tacos, Bengie Molina's making the guacamole, Zito's got the horchata, and Lamar's bringing the pinata. OK, that's probably not happening -- except for the margaritas -- but the Giants will be celebrating Cinco de Mayo today. Check it out:

The Giants will wear their "Gigantes" jersey today as part of their Cinco de Mayo and Mexican Heritage Night festivities.

Evidently convinced that Mexicans and Mexican-Americans still use the Aztec calendar, the Giants will give a Giants-Aztec calendar T-shirt to those who purchase a Mexican Heritage Night ticket.

Sounds good to me, I'm soooo there. But apparently the Giants are somewhat culturally insensitive.

The first 20,000 fans to enter the park will receive a poster of Omar Vizquel, who is Venezuelan.

Last time I checked, Cinco de Mayo was a Mexican holiday. But who am I to get nit-picky here? I guess you gotta make do with what you got. Details, schmeetails. Next thing you know, the Red Sox will honor Dice K with Chinese Cultural Night. Man, I would love to know who plans these events.

File this one under "It seemed like a good idea at the time." Charlie Manuel had Antonio Alfonseca on the mound in the eighth inning with two outs and nobody on, when Manuel ordered a free pass to Barry Bonds.

Seemed like a good idea at the time, right?

Well, a flare hit to Mark Sweeney, a walk to Pedro Feliz, a bloop hit by Omar Vizquel, and a single by Ray Durham later, a manageable one run deficit became an impossible four run hole for Philadelphia. And it was all because of an intentional walk with nobody on base.

"We had two outs," Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said. "Why take a chance on him hitting a home run when we could pitch to somebody else?"

And somebody else, and somebody else, and somebody else, and somebody else. Yeah, a three run rally is much better than a solo home run by Barry Bonds.

Alfonseca seemed somewhat perturbed by the decision to walk Bonds after he dispatched of Randy Winn and Rich Aurilia rather easily. (He barked a bit on the mound, and had some animated conversations in the dugout with some of the coaches, and my guess is that he was wondering about the decision as well.) After a 6-2 loss in San Francisco, I imagine that Phillies fans may be a little confused by Manuel's decision also.

It took 21 games for the first manager of the year to realize it's hard for the Giants to win if you don't give Barry Bonds a chance to beat you. That's exactly what Arizona manager Bob Melvin did Friday in the D-Backs 3-2 win -- he made his pitchers intentionally walk Bonds three times, each with two out and a man on second base (one instance was in the ninth inning). The plan worked as Ray Durham followed each walk with an out, stranding eight men in the game. I guess when you follow Barry Bonds in the lineup, it's hard to take an intentional walk to bring you up as an insult. Certainly Durham understands the strategy:

"That's the smart thing to do," Durham said. "The man's got 700 home runs. You don't let him beat you. You keep on doing it until the guy behind you shows he can get the big hit."

Of course Durham's being hard on himself, but yes, the smart play against the Giants is to force anyone but Bonds to beat you. Who else is there? Durham? Bengie Molina? Pedro Feliz? Randy Winn? Those guys certainly won't beat you nearly as often as Barry will. Oh, and Bonds by the way, has seven home runs, 15 RBI, and a ridiculous 1.292 OPS. Barry is just as scary as ever this year, and the Giants saw their eight game losing streak come to an end when he wasn't afforded the ability to take the bat off his shoulder. So like I said, managers take note.