I realize that there isn't much left to say as most of us have already given our opinions on the ibanez/burrell situation.

but, I just wanted to note that even if the team was fully committed to getting Ibanez (as it looks like they were), it seems more and more likely that they still overpayed for him.  Even if he goes out, plays gold-glove defense, wins the MVP, and hits 50 homeruns, they still overpayed for him.  Even if he brings us another championship, they STILL overpayed for him.

It looks like abreu and the angels are closing in on a 1 year, 5.5ish contract.  i.e. half of what the phils are annually paying ibanez.

Here are the basic differences between Ibanez and Abreu:

-Abreu is a better defender

-Abreu has more speed

-Abreu is two years younger

Other than that, they are statistically REALLY similar.  I'm not saying that we should have signed bobby over ibanez (although, maybe we should have).  I'm just asking--if we were so set on getting Ibanez, why did we have to pay so much for him?

So obviously there are about 30,000 other reasons that we won, but I think the 30,001st might be how healthy we stayed this season.  I know we discussed this a little earlier in the season, but I feel like it's worth a mention now.

Just to warn you, this is highly unscientific.  Here is the list, in order, of how many players each ML team put on the DL (either the 15-day or the 60-day) this season.  I realize that this doesn't take into account how important the players were who got injured, how long they were out for, how much of a difference the injury made in their game while back on the field, and a lot of other stuff that is likely very important in analyzing this correctly.  BUT, I do think that it does a good job of representing how well this team stayed on the field.  I don't know how much I believe in chemistry or any of that stuff, but I do think that consistently having your best players in the game has got to help somewhere along the line.

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