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I Am Declaring The 2018 Phillies To Be Officially Watchable

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[Editor’s Note: Tbyrd is back covering the Phils comeback to reality. Give him hell over at @Phillytbyrd)

Ladies and gentlemen, it is a pleasure to be back. I was honestly contemplating even writing about this team this year. The Phillies have been a laughingstock for years, we knew that. So much so, there were twitter arguments going around yesterday whether they were “tanking” or “rebuilding” over the last couple years. My answer to that is, who gives a shit they fucking sucked and frankly were unwatchable. I mean they had Old Man Rivers as their manager for over 2 years, and even had the balls to re-sign him before quickly realizing that was the biggest mistake in the world. 2017 is in the past. The future is now and it is my honor to officially deem the 2018 Philadelphia Phillies watchable.

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Isn’t she beautiful? I still have to do a double take sometimes. I mean the Philadelphia Phillies landed a Boras client. Not just any Boras client. A World Champion. A former Cy Young and Ace of the Curse Breaking, 2016 Chicago Cubs. Jake Arietta chose Philadelphia of all places. Why? Because this is where champions come. Have you smelled Broad Street lately? It still reeks of that championship musk. Jake was attracted to it. He needed it. And he got it.

Let’s get the nonsense out of the way and talk sabermetrics for a second. If you know me, you know I love a good sabermetric stat. I can certainly hold my own with all the other baseball geeks out there. The drop in 2mph of velocity since his 2015 Cy Young campaign scares me a little. What I fear more is the fact he threw his cutter half the amount of times in 2017 than he did in 2015. The cutter is such a difficult motion for your arm and forgoing that pitch as much as he did in 2017, tells me that he feels his arm and body can’t handle it anymore.

Despite all of that, this is still Jake Arietta we are talking about. He has the composure of a lion on the mound and the heart of gold in the clubhouse. In other words, he’s a Gabe Kapler guy. And no one is a bigger Gabe Kapler guy than yours truly.

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I fucking love this guy. He is everything this city needs and more. A former 57th round pick, he worked his way up from the slums of the minors to becoming a World Series champion with the 2004 Boston Red Sox. 57th round picks aren’t supposed to do that. They are supposed to quit baseball after hitting .089 in low A and become accountants. Not Gabe. He hit the gym 3 times a day, refused to consume any empty calories, and told himself “Yes I Can,” in the mirror every day like Sherman Klump. I heard from a source not too long ago that Gabe once challenged Lance Armstrong in a “Who has more testicles?” contest. Gabe won by 5

Signing Gabe was the first sign of life from this franchise in years. It was a step away from that commitment to losing, despite what seemed like an infiinity amount of resources available to them. And then the greatest thing in the world happened. Not only for the city, but for us diehard Phillies fans. The Philadelphia Eagles won the freaking Super Bowl. What this did was create such a competitive atmosphere among all the other major 3 team owners in the city. John Middleton watched that game just like every one of us and like us, was in utter shock. He knew he had to do something. The Phillies have been hovering around the bottom of the NL East, looking up to those fraudulent, divisional round losing, Nationals for years. Not to mention, a Mets team whose window is on the verge of closing as well. They know the time was now or never.

Now look at us. We have a lineup with the on-base makeup of the Golden Years Phillies. We have a 1-2 punch of Aaron Nola and Jake the Snake. We have prospects galore and Manny Machado and Bryce Harper waiting to put pen to paper. By 2019, the Phillies Payroll will be in the vicininty $475m and I couldn’t be more about it.

2018 Philadelphia Phillies. Watchable.

More to come in the future in terms of blogs. This team sounds like it is going to be really good, so it would be a shame not to write about them. Also, if you like a good baseball podcast and hate the sound of my voice, then you’ll love this. Thank you Kyle and Matt and Baseball’s Boring for breaking my Podcast cherry. Go Phils.