New York acquisitions put serious pressure on the Phillies

If the Philadelphia Phillies fail to make the MLB playoffs again almost a year from now, some of their fans will likely point to the just-passed Thanksgiving weekend as the point at which the race was lost. This is because the Phillies’ nemesis forever, the Mets, had seriously increased the pressure on team president Dave Dombrowski in past few days.

In the space of mere hours, the Metropolitans had signed three significant players – Eduardo Escobar, Mark Canha, and Starling Marte – all three, players the Phillies might have found useful, at least at first glance. Phillies Twitter was clearly spooked, resorting even to silent yells such as Mattadelphia’s late Nov. 26 plea: “*WAITING FOR THE PHILLIES TO MAKE A MOVE*.”

Bang-bang-bang acquisitions by the Mets suddenly turn up the heat on the Phillies

Within 12 hours this particular tweet had amassed over 200 likes and 13 retweets from people who should have been asleep. And close observers know that Phillies fans had already been wringing their hands over the team’s obvious lineup holes – left field, center field, shortstop (arguably), third base (arguably), and vacancies in both the starters’ and relievers’ corps.

This is quite a lot of holes actually and deserves some good old-fashioned angst.

After all, by the morning of Nov. 27, the Phillies had only acquired…um… two potential back-up catchers, a potential left-handed starter, and a guy with some awful pitching numbers. These were, respectively, Garrett Stubbs, Donny Sands, Scott Moss, and Nick Nelson. Only Stubbs and Nelson had seen any MLB action, although hopes were somewhat high for Moss, who had pitched well in 2019 at the Double and Triple-A levels.

Nelson can only hope his WHIP improves greatly in a new league, assuming the Phillies keep him. The Yankees didn’t want him despite the fact he will be only 26 in 2022.

In Escobar, Canha, and Marte, the Mets had added an All-Star third baseman, a high-OBP hitter, and the consensus best free-agent center fielder.

Some Phillies fans (read, the fan wearing my shoes currently) took to Twitter to plead with Dombrowski to keep the Mets from re-signing Marcus Stroman, citing a stat boldly stolen from another’s tweet: Stroman is one of only two MLB pitchers since 2016 to have 32 starts and a FIP below 4.00 in four seasons.

This got only two likes, but that’s the sort of deeply analytical stat we serious “influencers” use.

Look on the bright side, though, Fightin’ fans. All three of the Mets’ prized signees are about to enter their age-33 seasons, and thus, should actually have New York fans worrying about breakdowns before the All-Star game.

Well, no, that probably won’t happen, but no one would sensibly bet on all the new Mets playing 155 games.

And once the possible lockout MLB date is passed successfully – Dec. 1 – Dombrowski will surely kick the Phillies’ acquisition machine into high gear, won’t he?