The Phillies face two contractual options after the season:
- Lefty reliever J.C. Romero has a $4.5MM club option with a $250K buyout. The 33-year-old had flexor tendon surgery in October of last year, returning to a big league mound last Friday.
- Backup infielder Juan Castro has a $750K club option with a $50K buyout.
Four more players will be eligible for free agency: Jamie Moyer, Jayson Werth, Chad Durbin, and Jose Contreras. Talks with Werth are currently at an impasse. These four account for $18.625MM in 2010 salaries. If all six players leave, and we include buyouts that will be paid this year to Adam Eaton, Pedro Feliz, and Geoff Jenkins, the Phillies have about $26MM coming off the books.
Raises to players under contract should swallow about $21MM of that freed up money. Roy Halladay has the biggest increase, as his salary rises $4.25MM and the Blue Jays won't be sending $6MM again. Cole Hamels and Shane Victorino also see increases north of $2MM. Arbitration cases are light – Kyle Kendrick and Ben Francisco are first-timers, while Greg Dobbs would fit into the third-time class.
It appears that holding payroll steady and allowing all free agents to leave would give the Phillies a few million bucks to spend. They won't have the flexibility to add top or mid-tier players in the 2010-11 offseason unless they raise payroll or dump a contract via trade.
Pedro Feliz is not with the Phillies anymore. He is with Houston.
Pedro Feliz is not with the Phillies anymore. He is with Houston, so i don’t think they’ll have to pay his buyout.
Tim is referring to those buyouts being on the ledger this year, but not next year, thus a decrease in payroll.
I would bet anything that Dobbs will not be tendered a contract
The thing that scares me is Utley, Howard, Ibanez, Brown are all left handed and will hit 3-6. I really hope they bite the bullet and trade Ibanez and add another righty with power (or keep Werth somehow). I don’t know how they do it but we need another righty with some pop that can hit in the 5 hole.
Castro is a no brainer right now and Durbin shouldn’t cost too much to keep. Werth would be awesome to keep, but I see him being greedy and going strictly for money (don’t blame him at all).
Should be an interesting year.
Yea that OF is well and good except for the fact that they do not have to RH bat behind Howard. The phils are going to have to bite the bullet next year and have payroll go north of 150 for one year. I believe the year after they have Lidge and Raul coming off the books. It is an absolute must to resign Werth for this team.
From the way Amaro was talking after the Howard signing it seems like another payroll bump might be coming. Maybe 150 mil for next year? I sure hope so!
I have a feeling that Amaro, Jr. will be tempted to re-up Moyer somehow (assuming he doesn’t totally collapse) unless Aumont or someone else from the minors is clearly ready to go. But the temptation to retain such a unique player will be there.
If Ruben’s tempted to give Jamie Moyer another contract I’ll be tempted to find his home address after waiting for some eggs to go bad.
I don’t think they will even be tempted to re-up Moyer, and since I don’t like the Phillies, I hope not. However, if Moyer still wants to play when he is 48, 49, possibly even 50, there will be some teams who can use him (Nationals, A’s, Reds to name a few). And believe it or not, there are fans of other teams who want him. (Mariners). He can still play, and as a Cardinals fan, I would take him.
Sheesh, I can’t believe they’d buy out that Eaton fellow. What an asset, haha.
Seriously though, people shouldn’t complain about Moyer. At 12 million, and producing probably 6 million worth of performance, he’s not a great contract but he at least gave something. Eaton got 24m for what Fangraphs logs as zero dollars worth of performance. Which I think is rather generous, and partly based on the fact he wasn’t allowed to play much.