Is The Phillies Rebuild a Bomb About To Explode?

After owning the first pick of the 2018 MLB Draft all season long, the Phillies gave it up with about three weeks left in the season, a remarkable achievement for a rebuilding team in this era of draft spending pools.

That wasn't enough for the team of MacPhail/Klentak though, they decided to fire their manager Pete Mackanin and the entire coaching staff as well even though the universal opinion of them is that they were doing a great job. Hitting coach Matt Stairs immediately found new employment with San Diego.

Shortly after Joe Girardi was dismissed by the Yankees the Phillies rushed to announce Gabe Kapler as their new manager. Girardi was immediately a fan favorite for the job and that had to be brought to an end quickly. John Middleton is not about to wrestle for control of the Phillies with a presence like Joe Girardi.

Here is an article about Gabe Kapler talking up the Phillies by Ryan Lawrence of PhillyVoice. A couple of one sentence quotes from Kapler:

“We’re going to hunt for value at the margins.”

Well, that certainly got the attention of John Middleton and Bill Giles in a big way. Clearly Kapler did his research well. Nobody can squeeze the head off a copper penny like the owners of the Phillies. Kapler even praised Phillies pitcher Luis Garcia, a guy who was stacking shelves in a warehouse for a living and was signed for nothing. Good job telling the bosses what they want to hear.

“This scouting department has done a tremendous job the last couple years”

Really? I share the exact opposite view. Last year the Phillies took a pitcher in the 2nd round who I immediately named “twiggy” and who is now on the shelf with T.J. surgery. I would have jumped the bones of Philly’s own Nolon Jones who ticked all the boxes for me.

This year I recommended to the Phillies  - in order - Jordon Adell, Keston Hiura and Mark Vientos. Again, in the second round Vientos was sitting there for the Phillies. So the Phillies could have had two of those three I flagged. The guy the Phillies took in the first round? I didn’t even look at video of him until after the Phillies picked him. The Phillies first round pick at the top of the first round was sorted out before the part where I look at video of the guy. He couldn’t make it that far with me.

Jon Heyman wrote an article about the Gabe Kapler hire and at the bottom there is a comment left. I too thought the same thing after reading the article, that the Dodgers F.O. was recommending Kapler so enthusiastically in hopes of getting him to move on.

Maybe the article is just slanted due to a small sample size of people who wanted to talk about Kapler. What is clear is that referring to Kapler as "verbose"could be taken as a sardonic comment.

However, more grimly, I could not help but be left with the impression that John Middleton would rather shoot his sister, his wife and his precious son Hollywood Johnny in the head before turning the gun on himself before he would sign Bryce Harper and Manny Machado in December 2018.

Yes Phillies fans, it sounds to me like you're about to be sodomized by John Middleton.....again. Maybe Gabe Kapler will lend Mr. Middleton his coconut oil before the attack from the rear begins?

What Jimmy Rollins Farewell Letter Tells Us About John Middleton

You notice who is not mentioned in Jimmy Rollins letter?

JOHN MIDDLETON

Neither father nor son (@johnmiddleton He's on Twitter! ! !)

No one from the Betz family. No one from the Buck family. The players had to wear patches on their uniforms for Claire Betz and others when they passed on, but Jimmy does not mention them.

That tells you everything you need to know about who owns the Phillies and what they really care about. Even one of the most infamous MLB owners in many of our lifetimes, Marge Schott, was not unknown to her players. Sure many of them wish she had been a "mystery" to them, but she did care about the team. None of the people who despised her doubted that whether players, fans or MLB writers.

No one has ever seen John Middleton at Citizens Bank Park. No one from the other families (crime?) are ever seen at CBP. Clearly the players do not know them. Jimmy Rollins mentioned everyone of consequence in his letter who had impacted him, and as we can see, in the 18 years he spent as an "iconic player" no one in the ownership of the Phillies made any impression on him.

How many times have we watched Bill Giles hand the NL Trophy to a team not named "Phillies" in October (you noticed he skipped this year?)? Bill Giles father was the President of the National League. It was this connection - that Bill Giles was born with - that allowed Giles to assemble this group of billionaires in the Philadelphia area to purchase the Phillies and take a 15% cut of the ownership as a commission for doing so. 

Mentions of Bill Giles in Jimmy Rollins letter?

ZERO

I don't get to watch other local TV coverage for MLB teams but I've seen Mike Ilitch watching his Tigers many times. I've seen John Henry watching his Red Sox. Hal Steinbrenner, the son of George, holds press conferences to address the Yankees on-field issues. I've seen Mark Walter in the stands at Dodger stadium high-fiving other Dodgers fans as the Dodgers score runs.

Yet I've never seen John Middleton at a Phillies game. The cameras sweep the entirety of Citizens Bank Park 81 times per year on Comcast SportsNet (CSN). Yet John Middleton is never in focus during a Phillies game. We are treated to interviews (really annoying too) by Greg Murphy of all manner of celebrities during Phillies games, but John Middleton is never one of those interviews. Neither is any member of the Betz or Buck families. 

I would like to thank Jimmy Rollins as a Phillies fan for not only all the great years of baseball, but for what he said after the 2014 season ended when he challenged these owners of the Phillies to spend money, to shop the open markets and buy the players needed to make the Phillies a winner again.

Of course, the rest of the MLB media both in Philadelphia and nationally ignored this Jim Salisbury bylined article full of spot on quotes from Jimmy Rollins. Oh Salisbury is a fixture at the rumors site, but not this article. 

No, every professional and wannabe professional MLB writer knows who and what the Phillies owners are, and all of these well kept folks (blackmailable?) know better than to go against the wind being blown from the lungs of John Middleton. These writers have never mentioned John Powers Middleton being on Twitter (@johnmiddleton). They never will. They pretend to not know that J.P. Middleton exists. 

BILL CONLIN Philadelphia Daily News

You won't read one article about the missing Phillies owners in Jimmy Rollins farewell letter. Every sports media outlet -local and national- provides cover for the bloodsuckers who are robbing the Phillies fan base of their money.  The Dodgers and Angels celebrated their new TV deals by purchasing division titles, and now the Dodgers spent the most money in MLB on their front office to remake their roster to advance further in the playoffs and to remain a playoff team every year.

Oh, and the Dodgers payroll is still sky high, and the Dodgers are paying a lot of taxes on that payroll, something which the Phillies have never done. That's correct, the Phillies have never paid one dollar of payroll tax.

John Middleton? Well, John Middleton celebrated the Phillies $6 Billion TV deal with Comcast by announcing a rebuild, apparently from the ground up, the fifteen year kind of rebuild where the big club has no payroll and all the TV dollars and other revenue streams distributed by the Commissioners Office go straight into John Middleton's bank accounts. 

Rusney Castillo was rumored to be signed by the Phillies, but it was the Red Sox who paid Castillo $72 million to sign. Hanley Ramirez or Pablo Sandoval would have looked great in a Phillies uniform playing third base, but it was the Red Sox who signed both.

Refresh my memory, was it the Red Sox who signed a $6 Billion TV deal or was it the Phillies?

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34 YEARS

JIM THOME and CLIFF LEE

That's it.

These two are the only impact free agents signed by this Phillies ownership group in 34 years. You would think looking at this that the Phillies must be located in a rural, mountainous suburb of Pittsburgh rather than the fourth largest market in the USA.

That is FELONY FRAUD, GRAND LARCENY and ORGANIZED CRIME.

Where are the perp walks by the FBI for John Middleton, John Powers Middleton and the Betz and Buck families?

John Powers Middleton wearing Dodger Cap 2014

Look at this picture. This is an unaltered screen grab from the Twitter account of John Powers Middleton just hours ago. Read the text. "Gangsta"

Yes sir. "Gangsta" He stole our money.  We the Phillies fan base sold out Citizens Bank Park. We the Phillies fan base delivered the highest attendance in MLB to the Phillies for two straight years (2011 and 2012). 

How did the Phillies get a $6 Billion TV deal? The Phillies fans delivered the Phillies the highest local TV ratings in all of MLB. 

So how do we the Phillies fans get compensated for this? Why we get a fifteen year rebuild!

Yeah, John Powers Middleton, he be Gangsta baby!

And what about John S. Middleton the father? What's he doing to occupy his time? Turns out he's a busy man. John S. Middleton isn't building a winning baseball team in Philadelphia with all those billions of dollars we Phillies fans gave him, but he is building something in Palm Beach, Florida.

Something really big!

Down in the lower right corner of this picture you can see a wave rolling in. You can also see that John Middleton's little bungalow is bigger than his Palm Beach neighbors little shacks. Oh the property wasn't a vacant lot either, no there was an 8,000+ square foot mansion on the property when John Middleton bought it in 2010. It was not the biggest mansion on the block though and a little 8,000 square foot mansion is like a little A-frame mountain retreat to someone like John Middleton so that had to go. In came the bulldozers while the architect got busy planning this 17,000+ square foot mega-mansion. 

More on this later.

I'm still trying to digest the greatest SS in Phillies history being shipped out of town to John Powers Middleton's favorite team in his city for two "prospects" who look like they'll be playing for the Camden Riversharks five years from today.

But hey, that puts another ten million dollars in John Middleton's bank account. The annual property taxes on what you're looking at above in Palm Beach are currently $432,000. 

How much would your house sell for?

Yeah Derek, he did Jimmy like that. 

Are PHILLIES Planning a TEN YEAR Four Billion Dollar RIPOFF?

As the news hit of the Phillies new TV deal it was craftily revealed that the PHILLIES have been pulling in HUGE TV dollars all along.

All that was previously reported - especially by that fat pedophile BILL CONLIN - is the CASH FEE that Comcast paid the Phillies directly. That is $35 million every year. Turns out this is like the naming rights fee paid to the Phillies by Citizen’s Bank. The Phillies sell and receive all the advertising revenue from their TV broadcasts according to David Murphy of the Philadelphia Daily News. 

All those ads from car manufacturers, Apple, Samsung. That’s all Phillies money. That’s the whole deal there. The Phillies not only own their TV broadcast they get paid $35 million annually just so Comcast can put their name all over it and draw in some viewers for their pre & post game shows. 

The new TV deal raises the annual cash payment to at least $100 million, plus advertisement revenues AND an equity stake in NBC Universal. The Dodgers much hyped deal is for cash. The value of those payments decreases with time as dollars become less valuable. The Phillies deal is NOT frozen as they get advertisement revenues which go up and the equity stake should also increase over the course of the 25 years. 

The advertisement revenues are the core of the deal. Without producing complete copies of the contract between NBC Universal and the Phillies no one can claim the Phillies are not Major League Baseball’s richest team. 

On Sunday January 12, 2014 Matt Gelb reported in the Inquirer that as I had been stating on Twitter from day one of the announcement, the deal is worth at least twice the reported $2.5 Billion price, probably SIX BILLION DOLLARS. The cash portion of the deal is subject to a 34% revenue sharing tax. That’s where the Dodgers went wrong. Their deal is all cash and all taxable to the Commissioners Office. The other half of the Phillies deal is the Equity stake and the advertising dollars which are not taxable. The Phillies keep it all. That part of the deal is also INFLATION PROOF. Not only is the Phillies deal on the same plane as the Dodgers now, but ten years from now the Phillies deal is likely to be worth MORE than the Dodgers. 

So why did the Phillies sit out the free agent market…again?

I mean it’s not bad enough the Phillies finished 73 - 89 last year. No they were actually LUCKY to finish that well. Their Run Differential predicted a 66 - 96 finish for them.

This Phillies roster looks more like the Camden Riversharks than a big market MLB team. 

Why do the Phillies look like they are preparing to live FAT off of TV revenues and perhaps more REVENUE SHARING from the Commissioners Office?

Like the Phillies did before.

Just 13 years ago at the Vet. 

You remember that. Curt Schilling screaming to get out of town so he could win.

As Cliff Lee is doing now.

Scott Rolen then holding a press conference to trash the Phillies invisible ownership for “lack of commitment to win”. Rolen was then shipped to St. Louis, where he won a ring with the Cardinals in 2006. Schilling won three rings elsewhere. 

Curt Schilling

Scott Rolen

Jonathan Papelbon

Cliff Lee

I don’t remember any other MLB team holding stud players hostage like this and they in turn screaming to get out in public. 

And this is happening 13 years apart.

After a new ballpark was built for the Phillies with tax payer money.

This isn’t baseball. It’s ORGANIZED CRIME. 

Celebrating Ben Wetzler "pinch"

And let’s not mention BEN WETZLER again.

BEN WETZLER

BEN WETZLER

BEN WETZLER

BEN WETZLER

BEN WETZLER

Remember the end of last season, after we endured a farcical team with a roster loaded with Camden Riversharks dressed as Phillies players. We thought “well at least the Phillies first round pick is protected”.

David Montgomery is still laughing at us. Shin-Soo Choo is a Ranger. Jacoby Ellsbury is a Yankee. Brian McCann is a Yankee. 

Only three MLB teams out of thirty scored fewer runs than the Phillies in 2013. 

While the Phillies are one of those ten MLB teams with a protected first round pick, the Phillies are the only one of those ten teams that told their fan base before the 2013 season began that they were a “Championship team”

That is FRAUD.

No one in the Phillies organization thought the 2013 edition of the team was capable of making the playoffs.

If an art dealer tells you a copy of a Van Gogh painting is the real deal it’s FRAUD and the dealer goes to PRISON.

The Phillies LIED to the public to sell millions of dollars in tickets and food at Citizen’s Bank Park.

Where’s the PERP WALK?

And David Montgomery continues to laugh at us. He tells Ruben Amaro to work on his smirk. Montgomery has turned Amaro into a smirking WWE “Bad Guy”. 

And the Philly and MLB media sells the Amaro big lie to us. 

ED WADE is still here.

PAT GILLICK never left.

Wade and Gillick are both highly paid Assistant GM’s to Amaro. 

When Amaro is finally “fired” he will end up as another Assistant GM to whoever is the next GM.

Along with lying about the TV money the Philly media will soon go full out to “fire” Amaro. They will resurrect their “Next GM has to be from outside the organization”.

Yeah, like Pat Gillick, who is now a “made guy” in the Phillies organized crime OUTFIT. 

PHILLIES 

SCAMMIES MAFIA

Godfather

JOHN S. MIDDLETON

Consigliere

DAVID MONTGOMERY

Capos

AMARO

GILLICK

WADE

What the Philly media will never do is call for a BOYCOTT of the Phillies. Never demand a return of the hundreds of millions in taxpayer money given to these criminals to build Citizens Bank Park. Never call for a BOYCOTT of Citizens Bank and all Phillies advertisers. 

I’ll save you the trouble of wondering what the Phillies “next” GM will think, what his “strategy” will be.

How many major Free Agent players have the Phillies signed in the thirty-two year history of this ownership group?

TWO

Jim Thome and Cliff Lee.

That’s one big time free agent every sixteen years. The next Phillies GM won’t see any problem with that.

And Cliff Lee wasn’t even a “clean” big time free agent. He was only gone one year from the Phillies roster.

Jim Thome was signed only to cover the Phillies epic fail with Scott Rolen who called a press conference to denounce the Phillies owners for having

NO COMMITMENT TO WIN

The video of Scott Rolen’s press conference has been hidden from the public twice as long as the Zapruder film was. Eighteen year old Phillies’ fans have never seen Rolen’s press conference. A transcript of it does not even exist on the Internet (Google it). 

BILL GILES father was the President of the National League. Back then there was no free agency. Star players were mocked by owners when they attempted to hold out for more money. There was no way out and that’s how Bill Giles believes it should be.

The Phillies would not pay Jayson Werth, Shane Victorino or Hunter Pence. That would have been a great outfield in 2013. The Phillies could have been close to a wild card berth with them. Sign Masahiro Tanaka and another of the quality starters available and there you go, playoff team in 2014.

Phillies fans are dreaming of Giancarlo Stanton and Mike Trout.

Trout will require a contract far more than Pence, Victorino and Werth cost together. Maybe twice as much. Stanton will cost more than those three former Phillies outfielders as well.

Then there is the biggest hurdle.

BILL GILES

Bill Giles believes if you pull down Mike Trout’s pants you will see tattooed on Trout’s ass “Property of Arte Moreno”

Same goes for Giancarlo Stanton except Jeffrey Loria is the owner of Stanton. 

Bill Giles believes MLB players are like slaves sold at auction. Once a MLB plantation owner has that player under control he should never be able to free himself unless that owner gives his consent. 

Unless Bill Giles dies before Stanton and Trout hit the free agent market there is no chance of either let alone both being signed by the Phillies. 

How many Scott Boras players have the Phillies signed….ever?

ZERO

Scott Boras is the face of the free agent market, exactly what Bill Giles believes should not exist. 

The next Phillies GM is going to hate Scott Boras as well. You can bet your families life on that. 

The “Phillies GM” is a SCAM. A scam run by the Philly and MLB media on the public. 

David Montgomery has been the Phillies GM ever since he “replaced” Bill Giles as President and CEO.

John Gotti claimed he was just a “plumbing parts salesman”. David Montgomery claims he “just runs the finances and has nothing to do with the Phillies roster”. 

Whoever controls the money runs the business. The Phillies business is managed by David Montgomery who answers to John S. Middleton who has over four billion dollars in cash. 

Amaro, Wade and Gillick have lifetime employment. They get paid and they keep quiet about what they know. MLB General Managers never write tell all books. They do not do so because their paychecks never stop posting. 

The major issue we are dealing with as Phillies fans is the institutional corruption of the Philly media which will not oversee a BOYCOTT of the Phillies which would force them to change how they run the team. 

The Plan

So what is stopping the Phillies from doing what the Astros have done? You know the Astros, they are the Phillies favorite trade partner, the team Ed Wade was last GM for before he returned to the Phillies. What’s stopping the Phillies from just moving everyone and playing farm guys at the MLB minimum salary while they “rebuild”?

NOTHING

In fact, the Philly media is setting the table for the Phillies to feast off the blood of Phillies fans for TEN YEARS.

The Philly and MLB media is bashing the Phillies for being “old”. 

What a perfect setup. The Phillies farm system has very little talent, but their farm - like all 30 MLB teams farm systems - is loaded with young guys. Why not bring them all up? Just clear out all the money and lose over a 100 games.

Just like the Astros. 

Phans money in the front door

And while doing so the Phillies can feast on over a $100 million in yearly cash payments from NBC Universal, over $50 million per year in national TV money and whatever they can get from suckers still willing to buy a ticket and advertise on TV for games that few are watching. MLB minimum salaried payrolls are $13 million per year. A ten year rebuild in Mafia Burnout fashion could yield the Phillies more than $150 million per year in profit.

Werth, Victorino & Pence out the backdoor

The Dodgers recently sold for $2 billion. Ten years from now the Phillies could easily get that just off their market size and the rise in value of MLB franchises. They could get three billion. And running their Mafia Burnout plan on the payroll could yield them significantly more than an additional billion dollars.

John S. Middleton and his criminal crew might ripoff the Philadelphia market for over four billion dollars in the next ten years alone to go with the blood they have sucked out of us already. 

Now set a match to it
TEN YEAR REBUILD