Outside the Box: Prologue

Though it may seem that Rome is burning to the ground, dearest Philadelphia fan, you must understand that this kind of agony is the price the baseball gods demand for success.  Of course this version of the Phillies is god-awful, just unwatchable at times but don’t fault your GM for this team (there's plenty of other stuff you can fault him for).  If you remember (and you should remember, it’s an important faculty, not just in baseball, but in life, remember the good things, remember championships,

Doc and Reuben in the good ol' days

remember that the harder the struggle the sweeter the victory), Amaro was a gunslinger and you rooted him on as he stacked aces on top of aces on top of his trio of perennial  MVP candidates.  A delicate tower, to be sure, but he was gunning for a ring - of course you’re gonna over-reach all over the place.

I don’t recall anyone complaining that the Phillies were too good, that Amaro should trade Jimmy Rollins for some big name prospects.  That oh no, we traded for Roy Freaking Halladay and then resigned him to a bezillion dollar contract.  There were no uproars of dear god, take him back or we just don’t want the the franchise to pay for the best pitcher in baseball.  Really?

Its hard to fault a GM who is winning now, and wants to keep winning now.  We want to win now.

Nonetheless, here we are now at an obvious and conspicuous crossroads (Ryan Howard is never going to be Ryan Howard again, we just need to accept that) and it may seem, Philadelphia fan as if you are going back, back to the bad old days, the Calvin Maduro and Rico Brogna days, the coming up just short days and playing fantasy baseball instead of actually watching the game days.  And like a man just released from prison, you cannot go back.  Will not!  We hear you.  We understand.  Rooting for a looser is an emotional deconstruction project.

JP Crawford is a five tool shortstop

It's possible that the rage and terror inspired by this years brand of baseball is entirely justified.  The anxiety of the bad philadelphia thoughts, do you think maybe 2007-11' was all just a beautiful dream? Do ya?  Was the beautiful new park and Gillick just some  circumstantial shooting star, the rare statistical outlier of ten thousand losses.

Did management merely stumble unexpectedly and blindly into a short-lived golden age?  Is it true that because we pelted Santa with snowballs and booed Mike Schmmidt (mercilessly) at the end that we have bullied the organization into a formless shiftless feckless blundering group of fools.  Not only are they unable to sustain or (tee-hee) prolong success but they are also fated to enact a series of catastrophic personnel and management mistakes dooming the organization to inevitable bottom-feeder status for the next fifteen years. Or.  Maybe. Ever.  They will be awful forever! (like the Cubs, only Philly is not lovable when they're loosing.)

Take a breath.  Its ok, Philadelphia. We know a quick glance through the minors is an exercise in darkness.  That (for God's sake its happening all over again!) there are only three real prospects, and that of the three, only JP Crawford has the look of special talent, and he's still in A ball.

The Phillies will once again be the Phillies, you say .  God-awful, underachieving, under resourced, under managed baseball chum.  Philly.com's Mike Sielski certainly thinks so.  Compelling stuff Mike. 

There's another possibility to consider.  Consider that the Phillies ownership has crossed a threshhold.  If 2014 is to have any meaning, maybe its this:  the paradigm has shifted.  That at the end of a championship run, ownership having tasted immortality is desperate for more and when the Howard contract is finally off the books, and Amaro is still around (hopefully a little bit wiser), the gunslinger GM will have enough gold to chase dragons in the Orient.  To take a lottery ticket out of Havanna.

THink that sounds craaa-zy!  Consider the other side of this contractual, aging player mess.  The proof is in the pudding, as they say.  Think about it; ownership was willing to dole out the Benji's and let Reuben play Russian roulette with the both the payroll and the minors trying to win another championship.  The boundaries have been broadened.

Castillo was impressive in Clearwater

Literally.  The Phils are reported to have worked out Cuban outfielder Rusney Castillo.

Miguel Gonzalez, the Cuban starter turned reliever,is a tip of the cap to the new kind of thinking and comes from an intriguing, high risk reward player resource, a resource that if combined with a little drafting, some outside the box roster construction (per the A's and Rays anypostion super players and platoons) and a lot of baseball luck, the kind of quirky back to the 90's bunch could turn up in Pinstripes and we could be dancing down Broad again.

Or at least watching the games.

The resource: The international free agent market. (Guys from the KBO, Nippon and Cuban Leagues).  Yoennis  Cespedes, Yu Darvish, and Hyun Jin Ryu (all international free agents) are just the first of what might become a tsunami of near or major-league ready talent. The NFL and NBA have cut deeply into baseball's American market, and truly, sadly, baseball is no longer America’s first sport.  It is, however, played professionally on every continent in the world, because as you, yes, you, true fan of baseball know, baseball is a sublime, peaceful metric.  Something you may not know, a bunch of those other leagues play in big modern jam packed stadiums. 

Kajik Baseball Stadium (Lotte Giants), Seoul, South Korea

So, buck up, Philly fans.  After scouring scouting reports and game video from all over the globe (internet and u-tube), the Phorum compiled of list of players who are probably coming to ballpark near you and soon.

Hopefully a few of them play at the Bank.