Ruben Amaro Starts Feeding Jose Contreras all the Leftover Werth

The free agents are shuffling, and this time, we’ve gone from “Everyone seems to be at least open to the idea of keeping Jayson Werth” to “Fuck you and don’t ever come back here.”

Giving the Phils “zero chance” to keep him, I invite you to tune in tomorrow, when Brian Phair of BoSox Injection will weigh in on this very issue.  And I also demand/invite you to go to his site tomorrow as well, where my thoughts will appear and probably upset many fans of his who were not expecting a raucous weirdo waving his thoughts around like a pistol to ruin their Friday.

But onto the free agent news you’re not sick of.

We got Pete Orr!

You know, this is why they call them “utility” infielders.  Because they can come in, and like concrete, fill in the gaps.  At 31 years of age, he’s been dicking around the NL East for five years, and he can play two thirds of the positions on the field.

He’ll have the chance to blow of some steam in the minors for a while, or until J-Roll suffers his next fractured/strained/torn oblique/calf/smile.  Somewhere, “boCOCK and gLOAD” t-shirt enthusiasts sob themselves to sleep.

But more importantly, though I’m sure I’m not alone in assuming nothing could be more important than the signing of a 30+ utility infielder to a minor league deal, all the energy that isn’t apparently going into keeping Jayson Werth is being fed to Jose Contreras.

Interesting.  Not surprising, certainly, but after all that talk about hating old people (or whatever he actually said), I thought there was a chance Contreras might become a victim of Ruben’s focus on the acquisition of young’ns and the holding onto for dear life of J-Dub.

But it makes sense to latch onto Contreras.  He had 57 K’s in 56 2/3 innings as a reliever, and really had the ability to come in, stamp down, and lock on.  In ways that Danys Baez never did, which made him (Contreras) all the more valuable, given the alternative.

40 free agents have had the Phanatic knocking at their door, assuming he is the ambassador the Phillies send out to players in whom they are interested in signing.  Ruben claims most of them are bullpenners, and a lot of them southpaws, so his focus seems to have drifted from sparks of hope in right to the area which feels less inevitable.

Better now than later in the off season when options could be scarcer.  In choosing between the two (Clinging to Werth or solidifying the pen), with his initiatives being sponsored by a desire to scare up some younger guns, Ruben’s moving in the right direction.  Which he does sometimes.  But he’s also capable of jukes and dives that you don’t see coming, so nobody do anything until we forget how where he’s going with this.

Don’t forget to read BoSox Injection tomorrow!  And then if you want to read an article written by someone who knows what they are talking about, check out whatever the hell this site is too for Brian Phair’s take on the Jayson Werth to the Red Sox creeping possibility.