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After raising white flag, Phillies making a run

WashPost: Salary dump makes club younger, quicker, better defensively
HOWARD
The Phillies Ryan Howard, who is making a run at a 60 home-run season, is a huge reason the club is in the hunt for a playoff berth.George Widman / AP
/ Source: a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/front.htm" linktype="External" resizable="true" status="true" scrollbars="true">The Washington Post</a

They had given it a decent, honorable run for four months, but their season was an indisputable failure. And so, on July 30, one day before baseball's non-waiver trade deadline, the Philadelphia Phillies gave up. In a classic salary dump that was the equivalent of raising a white flag over Citizens Bank Park, the Phillies traded their top veteran hitter and their most consistent starting pitcher for a handful of middling prospects. Things appeared so grim, the general manager cautioned fans that 2007 wasn't looking so promising either. Better to look ahead to 2008.

As it turns out, Pat Gillick, the pessimistic GM, was only off by, oh, about two years — and never before has being dead wrong felt so good. Some five weeks after the Phillies wrote off their season, they find themselves in excellent position to make the playoffs, entering yesterday's games only 1 1/2 games behind the San Diego Padres in the quest for the National League wild-card berth.

"I can't really explain it," Gillick said with a chuckle in a telephone interview. "They were moves that had to be made. The team had probably been together too long. They had some chances [to make the playoffs] in the past, and they hadn't done it. It was time to change the mix. We were running in place."

The transformation from high-priced failure to surprise contender was stunning. On the morning of July 30, the Phillies were 6 1/2 games out of the wild card, with eight teams ahead of them. That day, Gillick traded right fielder Bobby Abreu and pitcher Cory Lidle to the New York Yankees, a blatant salary dump that saved the Phillies about $23 million. By the time the deadline struck, Gillick had also sent away veteran reliever Rheal Cormier, veteran third baseman David Bell and backup catcher Sal Fasano.

But instead of collapsing, the Phillies began playing their most inspired stretch of baseball, and by Aug. 19, with the team having climbed to within 2 1/2 games of the wild-card lead, Gillick was ready to do something that was essentially unprecedented: to go from being a seller at the trade deadline to a buyer during the waiver period, when teams can make trades for players who pass through waivers first.

In a two-week period beginning Aug. 19, Gillick added four veterans — pitcher Jamie Moyer and rent-a-bat bench players Jose Hernandez, Jeff Conine and Randall Simon. Since the morning of the Abreu/Lidle trade, the Phillies have gone 23-14, and in the wide-open NL wild-card race, where all it takes is a .500 record to get a sniff of contention, they are as good a bet as any to make the playoffs.

"A lot of people counted us out," first baseman Ryan Howard, a leading most valuable player candidate, said after a recent win. "But we're still here. We're still swimming."

Every year, teams make moves at the trade deadline that fall flat. You take a gamble, give up some prospects and bolster your team for the stretch drive. And sometimes you lose.

But no one can recall a team ever being wrong like this — climbing back into contention after essentially giving up on the season. Pressed to think of another example, Gillick mentioned the 2001 Seattle Mariners, for whom he was GM. That team won 116 games the season after Alex Rodriguez departed via free agency. But Rodriguez left during the winter, not in late July.

In July 2004, the Boston Red Sox traded star shortstop Nomar Garciaparra in a four-team, eight-player deal that brought them shortstop Orlando Cabrera and first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz, and which ultimately helped them make the playoffs and win the World Series -- but it was less a salary dump than a strategic move to get better defensively.

In a sense, although they received only prospects in return, the Phillies fulfilled a similar mission with their deadline deals. They filled their holes from within, plugging Abraham Nuñez in at third base and allowing David Dellucci and Shane Victorino to split time in right field. When starting center fielder Aaron Rowand went down with a fractured left ankle, both Dellucci and Victorino began playing every day.

The effect of all the downsizing was to make the Phillies younger, quicker and better defensively.

"We got quicker up and down the lineup, and we started catching the ball a little better," Phillies Manager Charlie Manuel said. "And whether people realize it or not, all that stuff matters."

But something else happened following the departure of all those high-profile veterans. The front office and the field staff began noticing younger players such as Howard, second baseman Chase Utley and shortstop Jimmy Rollins asserting themselves in the clubhouse. Dominion of the clubhouse had been bequeathed to a new generation.

"I have a lot of respect for Bobby. Bobby's a top-notch player," Manuel said of Abreu. "But what happened was, when we traded Bell and Bobby, it opened the door for Utley, Howard and Rollins. You can see the difference in how they act. It's become their team. They saw it as their time."

In the Phillies' clubhouse, curiously, there is very little resentment directed at the front office, despite its symbolic surrender in July. For one thing, players say, Gillick and his lieutenants were right — as constructed from April to July, the Phillies were going nowhere. And for another thing, they are simply a better team without Abreu and the rest of the departed veterans.

"As soon as we got rid of them, we started playing better. We took off after that. We were a different team," said veteran reliever Arthur Rhodes, who traded verbal jabs with Lidle after the latter was traded. Asked if this was a classic case of addition by subtraction, Rhodes smiled and replied, "Maybe."

"For where we were at that point of the season, it was understandable for the front office to do what it did," veteran starting pitcher Randy Wolf said. "But by doing that, they may have helped us. Some things have been added that we didn't have before, like better defense and team speed. And there's great chemistry on this team."

By now it seems clear no one is going to run away with the NL wild card. Entering yesterday, there were six teams within five games of the Padres' lead, including such improbable contenders as the Florida Marlins, with their $14 million payroll; the San Francisco Giants, who were nine games under .500 in mid-August; and the Cincinnati Reds, who remade nearly half their roster at the trade deadline.

So why not the Phillies, who arguably have the best slugger (Howard), the most promising young pitcher (Cole Hamels) and the softest remaining schedule of any of the contenders? In a way, it would make perfect sense -- just your basic success story of a team that took a chance at the trade deadline and turned around its season.