The Phillies Are Not Tanking

The Phillies are not tanking. Sorry, Buster Olney.

Yes, the Phillies are bad. No, they are not tanking.

Buster Olney, an MLB expert for ESPN, wrote on monday that the Phillies are “Tanking.” Yes, that thing the Sixers are doing. I’m writing this article, in part, because I’d like all of the very intelligent people who read our articles to sound very intelligent. If you say the Phillies are tanking, you sound pretty stupid. Do you know why? Well, to start, they’re not actually tanking.

What amazes me is Olney’s lack of segregation between “rebuilding” and “tanking”. The Phillies had a handful of old/aging veterans with big salaries. The team was regressing, so they traded away the majority of those aging vets, and their salaries, for young prospects who will help the team succeed in the near future. Is that tanking? I don’t think so. I’d consider myself a pretty knowledgeable baseball fan, so I’m pretty confident in saying that this is how teams rebuild. They trade the expensive old men for the young guns in the minors. Correct?

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Now it’s time to rip Olney a new one. Buster Olney in his most recent piece, accused the Phillies among other teams, of tanking. He used that word, of course, in a negative light. In July of 2014, he criticized the Phillies for not moving on from the old guys and their big contracts. Less than a year ago, in February of 2015, he made it clear that he believed the Phillies had to deal away Cole Hamels as soon as possible. Olney wrote on several occasions within the last year and a half that Ruben Amaro Jr. and company needed to make as many deals as possible, due to the unusual amount of “desperate teams all around baseball.” Buster Olney basically took the words of Phillies fans and put them on paper.

Now, in December of 2015, the Phillies have a completely revamped roster. They did exactly what Buster Olney said they had to do. Right? Apparently not. As I stated earlier, Buster Olney has accused the Phillies of tanking. Even though they followed his advice, and did exactly what he said they should do for the past 2 years or so, he’s still putting the Phillies front office in a negative light.

Let’s go into even more depth. Let’s break down the Phillies trades to see if we’re missing something that Olney noticed. The Phillies waited about as long as they could to trade SP Cole Hamels, and they got a boatload of high-profile prospects in return for him. That sounds like what Olney suggested back in February. In the Ken Giles trade, they sent away a young closer, but the Phillies received 5 prospects in return. The Phillies also made smaller trades that shipped off the aging veterans. Rollins, Utley, and Papelbon have all been dealt away for solid, positive young pieces. Ben Revere was traded for a pair of young pitchers.

That’s all of them, right?

The Phillies front office, now led by General Manager Matt Klentak, has made some quiet good moves this offseason. They’ve acquired Jeremy Hellickson, who’s got a lot of upside, and at worst could be possible trade bait later in the year. They’ve also acquired veteran Charlie Morton, James Russell, Vincent Velasquez, and Brett Oberholtzer. They got those pitchers without really giving up anything at all. Also, all of these guys are better than Phillipe Aumont, Sean O’Sullivan, or Jerome Williams.

I’ve presented some information to you. I’d like you to put your very intelligent brain to work for a moment. If the Phillies traded away the old veterans for good prospects, and used some of the money they have from those trades to sign players who make their pitching staff better, are they tanking?

Hey Buster Olney, check this out:

• Tanking (verb)- the act of giving up; losing intentionally or not competing
• Rebuilding (verb)- the act of revising; reinventing to achieve success