The Philadelphia Phillies are just 14 games away from becoming the first team in professional sports history to lose 10,000 games. While there are plenty of people enthusiastically awaiting that moment, you'd think that assistant general manager Ruben Amaro wouldn't be one of them. It's a neat honor and all but when your job is to provide players that will help snap the brutal history provided by Gene Mauch, Mitch Williams and a cast of thousands, you'd probably prefer to be associated with winning. That's why you keep beating the bushes to find players that will make a positive impact on the field. Right now that focus is on the pitching mound because of injuries to Freddy Garcia, Brett Myers and Tom Gordon.
Amaro looked within the Phillies system to find tomorrow's starter Kyle Kendrick, he's talking trade with the rest of the league and he's even looking south at the Mexican League. There's a familiar name down there,
There are former big-league pitchers in the Mexican League such as Jose Lima, but how much of an upgrade are they? The Phillies get reports from the Mexican League, and they will take a look at somebody if he looks interesting, but Amaro said, "We're trying to do better than what we have here. And if we don't think it's decidedly better than what we have here, then what's the point of doing it? Just to do it? You don't make moves just to make them. We have to make a move that's going to make sense to make our team better, you know?"
Maybe the Phillies should just try to get that 10,000th loss under their belts and get it over with. The best way to do that would be bringing Lima on board for a month. You'd both guarantee yourself one loss every five days and bring in an experienced singer to handle the Star Spangled Banner. Sadly he's divorced so the Philly faithful will be denied a chance to focus on the former Mrs. Lima's sublime profile while he serves up balls that threaten patrons on the line for cheesesteaks behind the bullpens.
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