Recapping the Phillies’ off-season, and a 1st crack at the 25-man roster

Apologies for the severe lack of posts – lots of non-blog related life events going on recently. This is about the time of year I forget about everything that happened to the Phillies in 2011 and start getting really excited for 2012. Since I haven’t been able to examine each move individually, I figured I’d do an overview of all the moves they’ve made now that they are pretty set. I’ll rank them by size of commitment. 1. Signed Jonathan Papelbon to 4 year, $50 million deal with vesting option for 5th year A laughable deal for a closer, Papelbon will likely be (or, better be) good, but was not worthy of the largest deal for a relief pitcher in MLB history. In a market flooded with closers, Amaro badly and embarrassingly mismanaged it. Taking the money out of it – Papelbon should be as good or better than Ryan Madson was in 2011, and despite some well publicized blown saves at the end of 2011, had an outstanding year last year, ending the year 2nd ...