Phil Watch: Off-Season Phil Is Back!

It's my favorite time of year.

Phil doesn't have games to passively watch and wax wrongly on so we get Phil letting his brain wander.

Wonderful thing, that - a wandering Phil brain.

It's similar in ways to letting your dog do whatever the hell she wants. Terrible things tend to happen.

Like Phil's Whispers...ear to the ground, all that crap.

Many in the Cubs' front office think they would be foolish to give up Starlin Castro to get Curtis Granderson, but there are a lot of other ways to do the deal.

Alright! Starlin Castro better be the second coming of Hanley Ramirez because I'm sick of hearing about a guy with 122 plate appearances above A ball and, though only 19, seems to be a bit of slap hitter with a 6.7% walk rate.

It might be different if Castro was in a real minor league system with...you know...real prospects. He's not. The Cubs' system was ranked 27th last year in all of baseball. Expect that to drop this year as noboby in the system particularly shined.

But that's what Chicago does. They blow their wad over the faintest flicker of hope.

General manager Jim Hendry appreciates all Granderson brings to the table, even though he has had trouble hitting left-handers in two of the last three seasons. Perhaps Granderson would benefit from working with new Cubs hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo.

Jaramillo's a guru, you know. He takes good hitters and makes them great.

We'll overlook last year when Rangers' left-handed hitters OPSed .663 off left-handed pitching. In 520 at-bats, Rangers' left-handers were the collective embodiment of David Eckstein in 2009 (okay, that's unfair - Eckstein OPSed .657).

To the larger point - which is exhausting even writing it - hitting coaches cannot take a 29 year-old guy who has had, well, 29 years to learn to hit a lefty curve and suddenly teach an old-ish dog new tricks. He can maybe mitigate catastrophic damage but he can't remake a guy.

(In reference to signing Cuban free agents) The White Sox gave third baseman Dayan Viciedo a $10 million deal last winter that could make it tough for them to spend heavily again.

First, the vitals. Viciedo's salary:

2010: $1.25 million

2011: $1.25 million

2012: $2.5 million

$4 million signing bonus when he signed (could be pro-rated)

Ever buy a car? Of course, you have. Ever buy a car that costs half of your year's salary?

Well, I posit a question to you. After you buy said car, do you consider the purchase as a halving of your salary for that year? No...no, you don't. Because you're not a moron.

You're probably on a 3-5 year payment plan which, HOLY CRAP!, is just like baseball salaries!

Who knew? It's not like the Sox are paying Viciedo $10 million this year. It's spread out.

Also, the White Sox spent in the bottom half of all teams (19th) last year on their first 10 round picks. They're fine.

It's ridiculous for anyone to paint Tim Lincecum as the "sabermetrics candidate" in the NL Cy Young race. He's a great pitcher, as are the Cardinals' Adam Wainwright and Chris Carpenter. If I had been voting, I would have had it Wainwright, Lincecum and Carpenter.

Who is holy hell painted Lincecum a sabermetrics candidate?

Is this a reference to Greinke? Seriously, I don't get it.

I want someone to argue against Greinke. Go here, see the "traditional" statistics and argue against Greinke.

Can't be done. Sabermetrically, it can't be done times infinity.

Lincecum's award was mentioned in sabermetric circles because, like Greinke's Cy Young, it was marginally astonishing that the Algonquin Round Table known as the BBWAA actually decided to recognize the fact that win totals mean very little.

If it did, Jon Garland would be a perennial candidate for baseball's bestest of the bestest pitcher.

We won't discuss all of Phil's predictions on where free agents will land this off-season except for one.

Guerrero, Nationals: Washington has enough money to bring back the eight-time All-Star to his original franchise, making it more acceptable to trade Adam Dunn for some badly needed pitching.

Right there with Phil-isms like Phil-Math, using words like "poised" or "good fit" and tracking former White Sox prospects that were traded years ago, Phil LOVES players signing with their original franchise (or guys like DeRosa, who played football at Penn, signing with the Phillies...or Harden signing with the Twins because he's Canadian and Justin Morneau's Canadian! - you know, stuff like that).

First, another question. Don't check. How many games do you think Guerrero played in the field last year?

If you said 80, you'd be wrong.

If you said 40, you'd be wrong again.

If you said two...yes...two games, please proceed to the front desk and collect your prize.

Two. He was so bad in right that Scioscia thought BOBBY ABREU was a better option.

Now, the Nationals took some heat for signing Dunn because he's a brutal fielder and what he offers offensively, which is much, is reduced dramatically by his brutal defense. In fact, Dunn just won the Worst UZR Award for 2007-2009 over at Fangraphs. Congratulations, Adam.

So...Phil thinks they should trade Adam Dunn and replace him with a lumbering refrigerator version of Adam Dunn with bad knees and is five years older than Adam Dunn. Oh, and isn't nowhere near the offensive talent of Adam Dunn at 35 years old.

I call that brilliant!

Okay, Vlad didn't touch Dunn's prodigious -108.1 runs against average over a three-year period. He was only -46.3 runs against average from 2006-2008 (not counting two games in 2009).

That's still really bad.

Guerrero is not going to play in the National League. If someone signs him to play the field, that is a team with bad baseball thinking at the helm.

Cripes! The Nationals just made a superlatively great move last year in acquiring Nyjer Morgan, a guy who just might be the best defensive outfielder in baseball. Let's flush half of that away and sign Guerrero to play right.