The Phillies Signed Cliff Lee, So What

The Phillies blew every ones mind with the sneaky signing of Cliff Lee. The mystery team that only seems to exist in agents minds was actually real and made the big splash.

With the signing comes the overreaction. The Phillies are going to be unstoppable and all that. Well it is just talk, remember that they lost Jayson Werth who was a big part of their offense and are looking to shop Joe Blanton now.

Dave Cameron of fangraphs put it together and figured out how good the 2011 Phillies should be. Here is what he came up with. He figured +21 wins for the starting pitching another +4 wins for the bullpen and the following for the lineup:

Carlos Ruiz: +2.5 WAR
Ryan Howard: +3.0 WAR
Chase Utley: +6.0 WAR
Jimmy Rollins: +3.5 WAR
Placido Polanco: +2.5 WAR
Raul Ibanez: +1.5 WAR
Shane Victorino: +3.0 WAR
Domonic Brown: +2.0 WAR

Throw in another win off the bench and you get +25 from the pitchers and +25 for the lineup and when added to the replacement base of 48 wins it is a 98 win team.
Now before you crawl into your hole never to be seen again let's check the Giants.

First up is the pichers:

Tim Lincecum: +6.5 WAR
Matt Cain: +4.5 WAR
Jonathan Sanchez: +3.5 WAR
Madison Bumgarner: +3.5 WAR
Barry Zito: +2 (Very Expensive) WAR
Bullpen (which one of the best in baseball and last year was worth 6.2 WAR) +5 WAR

Now the lineup:

Buster Posey: +5.5 WAR
Aubrey Huff: +3 WAR
Freddy Sanchez: +2 WAR
Pablo Sandoval: +3.5 WAR
Miguel Tejada: +1.5 WAR
Pat Burrell: +1.5 WAR
Andres Torres: +4 WAR
Cody Ross: +2 WAR
Bench: +2 WAR

If you add it all together and you get the same 50 WAR added to the 48 of the replacement level and the Giants have the same potential to get to 98 wins next year too.

The east coast media are salivating over this deal but the National League title will still have to come through San Francisco.

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