Upton Brothers are New Hottest Idea in old Philadelphia-town

City imagines possibilities of having both brothers, not just crappy one

Mark J. Rebilas-US PRESSWIRE

Previously this offseason, I listed B.J. Upton as the one major change in the Phillies lineup for their 2013 lineup.  Why?  For like an afternoon, I honestly thought it was the best idea.  I think I have a problem with seeing appeal in a team totally comprised of farm talent.  I come to a shocking number of baseball conclusions without using baseball analysis and baseball facts and baseball names.

In retrospect, B.J. is probably not the best choice to take over center field.  We have an opportunity to begin a new era of centralized outfielding, and we can’t be making decisions based more on whimsy than on who had that one good season in 2008.  So maybe it is time to rescind my initial prediction and put a bit more thought into how I go about WAIT BOTH UPTONS ARE ON THE MARKET SELL SELL SELL I MEAN BUY I MEAN HOW CAN WE SIGN BOTH OF THE **frantic arm flailing knocks laptop to ground, breaking it in half.**

The Phillies have a long, storied history of signing the wrong brother.  I remember the first time I saw the name “Giambi” in red pinstripes.

“Ooooh!” I cried.  “Ooooh,” I cried, much more literally this time, after discovering it was Jeremy and not Jason.  For whatever reason, though, I maintained a weird optimism about the whole thing.  As if having spent much of his life in close proximity to the real talent would have eventually affected Jeremy.

In reality, though, he was a totally separate person, with a different face, a different approach, and a different amount of elite hitting prowess (“zero” is an amount) than Jason, and no amount of intense wishing would ever change that.

But by signing both brothers, the Phillies could avoid getting stuck with the crappier one!  Don’t you see, it’ bulletproof!  We may not even have to use bullets!

The Diamondbacks are swearing, for real this time, that 25-year-old Justin Upton is just as on the market as B.J.  Well, sort of.  B.J.’s a free agent, so he’s wide open.  Justin is just being floated out there by his team because of a horrible 2012 season.  Despite that, the team seemed unwilling to trade Justin just days ago.  The Snakes have the young outfield depth to slide Justin out of town, even though his MVP-caliber season was only a year ago.  There must be some terribly visible portion of this downward spiral that they have a front row seat for.  I guess it could be the disparity in his numbers.  They seem pretty visible.

Of course, this isn’t a universal opinion, but the Phillies don’t have the “Eh, we’ll automatically win the division no matter what happens,” thing to fall back on anymore.  Or ever.  They will have to take risks, and Justin is one, but there are probably a few less obvious, more affordable risks out there (Justin’s contract escalates his check from $9.75 to $14.25 to $14.5 over the next three years).

So I guess the “signing both brothers” plan is only effective if one of them is verifiably a legend of the game.  If the Phillies were to actually do it in this case, it might wind up being nothing but a regrettable quirk.  Sure, we’d have some fun making signs.  I’m thinking there’s a… Mario Bros. parallel… in there somewhere… but if that’s the height of this arrangement, then my newfound baseball intellect is telling me that it is not worth millions of dollars.