If that sounds like thin praise, not exactly the gushing that accompanied the December trade for Roy Halladay, it is anything but. General managers around baseball would be happy to plug Blanton into the third or fourth spot in their rotations and gladly accept that the price of unspectacular production these days averages out to $8 million per season.
The Phillies know what they are going to get, or at least they know the calculus of the work that has come before. They know that they are going to get 200 innings, and that Blanton will allow about 90 earned runs. They expect him to average about six innings per start, and because they have a good hitting team that operates in a hitter-friendly park, they expect that his earned run average of about 4.00 will yield more wins than losses - if the bullpen cooperates.
Baseball is complex, and the individual pitch-by-pitch battles between the hitter and pitcher are unpredictable, but over the course of six months the numbers even out and you get what you get. For the Phillies, they will be happy if they get what they expect.
In this off-season, the Phils and Amaro have been very busy, more busy than you might think a league champion would want or need to be. A year ago, aside from minor tinkering, the Phils' biggest off-season move involved parting with Pat Burrell and acquiring Raul Ibanez for left field.
This time around, whether by their choice or not, the Phillies have needed to replace the contributions of Brett Myers, Pedro Feliz, Scott Eyre, Eric Bruntlett, Paul Bako, Pedro Martinez, Chan Ho Park, Matt Stairs, Miguel Cairo, Clay Condrey and, of course, Cliff Lee. They also have needed to acquire pitching depth in the event Jamie Moyer doesn't recover effectively from surgery.
