A kind soul made the bold claim somewhere on this site that Cole Hamels and Roy Halladay would each win 20 games this season. That aggressive prediction has sparked quite a bit of interest in the topic of 20-game winning pitchers. But by far the most interesting thing to come out of this is the list of names of Chicago Cubs pitchers who’ve won 20 games in a season. How the Cubs pitching successes over the years coincided with such outrageous names is beyond me, but I’m certainly happy it happened.

Three Finger Brown won at least 20 games 6 years in a row for the Cubs starting in 1906. Elected to the Hall of Fame in 1948, Brown managed to turn a childhood farm machinery accident that cost him parts of two fingers on his pitching hand into an asset. His Christian name, of course, was not “Three Finger” but Mordecai Peter Centennial Brown, which isn’t too bad a name by itself. Interestingly, the Cubs may well be the only team in MLB history to have had a 3-fingered pitcher (4-fingered, including his thumb) as well as a 6-fingered pitcher years later in the person of Antonio Alfonseca.

Jack Pfeister was a teammate of Brown’s who won 20 games in 1906 for the Cubs. Presumably the Obamas would have loved his illustrative surname. In a nod to the greatness of that Cubs team’s names, the team doctor was none other than Bonesetter Reese.

Orval Overall won 23 games in 1907 and 20 games in 1909. He had a lifetime ERA of 2.23 and was a college All-American and captain of the football team during his days at Cal.

King Cole won 20 games in 1910. I’m just going to let you think about how awesome that name is. His birthname was Leonard Leslie Cole.

Hippo Vaughn won at least 20 games 5 times between 1914-1919. Amazingly, his real middle name was Leslie, the same middle name as fellow Cubs’ 20-game winner, King Cole. Vaughn pitched in a game at Wrigley Field against Fred Toney of the Cincinnati Reds on May 2, 1917 in which neither team recorded a hit through 9 innings. The Reds eventually won the game in extra innings but to this day, this is the only game in MLB history in which a regulation 9 innings has passed without either team recording a hit. While Hippo Vaughn lived to the ripe old age of 78, an attempt on his life was made in 1920 by his enraged father-in-law who stabbed him in his corpulent stomach.

And of course, who can forget Guy Bush, who went 20-12 in 1933. I realize that a century ago the vernacular was a little different but come on, Guy Bush? Bush was portrayed by Richard Tyson in the 1992 John Goodman film, The Babe. When Bush died in Tupelo, Miss. in 1985, The New York Times pointed out in his obituary that he was the last pitcher to give up a home run to Babe Ruth. The Babe hit home runs 713 and 714 off Bush in a game between the Boston Braves and Pittsburgh Pirates in May of 1935.

So there you have it, a proud Cubs franchise which has amassed a total of 48 seasons in which they’ve seen their pitchers win at least 20 games. The Cubs with the most 20-win seasons are Three Finger and Ferguson Jenkins, who both did it 6 times.

Surprisingly, in 23 Major League seasons, 355-game winner Greg Maddux only won 20 games in a season once. It was in 1992 with the Cubs.

And the last Cub to win 20 games in a season? Former Phil, Jon Lieber did it in 2001 when he went 20-6. Of course, if any of these modern guys had names like King, Bonesetter or Hippo, who knows how many more great years they could have had.

The good news for Phillies fans is that Roy Halladay looked strong in his spring training debut against the Yankees. He pitched 2 innings, gave up no hits and struck out 3. As I’m writing this, Jayson WoolWerth just went down on strikes in the 6th inning. Clearly today’s performances are indicative of the fact that Halladay is going to win 32 games and that Jayson Werth is done.

Also to the amusement of Phillies fans and non-rednecks everywhere, Brett Myers pitched 2 innings and gave up a hit, 2 earned runs and walked 3 in his debut with the Astros. Against the Nationals.

Game 1 starters have been announced for one of the most anticipated games in recent memory. Roy Halladay will take the mound tomorrow in Clearwater as the Phillies try to redeem themselves against C.C. Sabathia and the New York Yankees. This will be the first of 5 spring training games played between the two teams that fought for the World Series title last winter.

Look for Halladay to throw around 45 pitches in tomorrow’s game. Phils’ pitching coach, Rich Dubee, says he’ll be happy if his pitchers “pound the strike zone, work on tempo and find a fluid delivery.” It’s also being reported that Kyle Kendrick and Andrew Carpenter will pitch in tomorrow’s game.

C.C. Sabathia doesn’t seem too concerned about tomorrow’s start. As for the matchup with Halladay, Sabathia said “I’ll be in the dugout eating seeds and goofing off.” And is he worried about Chase Utley taking him deep tomorrow? “Come on” Sabathia said with a laugh, “it’s spring training.” Apparently Sabathia has no respect for the importance this game will have for callers to WIP. His ignorance of that is indicative of the reason we never wanted him here anyway.

Much is being made of the fact that Jayson Werth is in the last year of his contract with the Phillies. Werth is due $7.5 million this year, which will make him the 7th-highest player on a team that has a $138 million payroll for the 2010 season. Ruben Amaro has made a lot of noise about the fact that this team is not the New York Yankees, presumably meaning that the Phillies cannot afford to have more than 4 or 5 players making more than $15 million per season. How this relates to their ability to resign Werth is unclear at this point, so let’s take a look at some of the Phillies’ payroll commitments for the near future.

In the short term, the six Phillies who will make more money than Werth this season are Ryan Howard ($19 million), Roy Halladay ($15.75), Chase Utley ($15.29), Raul Ibanez ($12.17), Brad Lidge ($12) and Jimmy Rollins ($8.5). All six of these players are under contract for the 2011 season and only two of them, Howard and Halladay, are due raises in ‘11 ($1 million and $4.25, respectively). This means that the Phillies are committed for about $88 million in 2011 for their top players and $133 million altogether.

Going a step further, Raul Ibanez’s advanced age and free agent status makes him a certain subtraction from the Phils’ payroll in 2012. Brad Lidge (who knows what he’ll be like in 2 years) is only due $1.5 million in 2012. Utley and Halladay are both under contract through the 2013 season so Jimmy Rollins will have to be renegotiated (2012 is the last year of his deal). With the bulk of the Phillies minor league talent existing in the form of outfielders, the need for Werth’s services past the 2011 season are questionable, which may make parting ways with him palatable for Amaro and the organization. But that all boils down to how much money Werth can expect from suitors in the free agency market.

Obviously, Ruben Amaro is better in touch with the mechanics of free agency than we are, so let’s just do a cursory look at what Werth, a career .265 hitter, can expect in the form of a raise. Statistically, Werth is coming off his most impressive season. He hit 50% more home runs in 2009 than in his next-most productive season (24 in 2008). He’s never tallied more than 100 RBI (max was 99 last season) and he’s never had an OPS better than .879. His career strikeout-to-walk ratio isn’t good (just about 1 BB for every 2 Ks) and while Werth does have good range in right field, his speed hasn’t translated that well to his stolen base totals: his best seasons were ‘08 and ‘09 where he stole 20 bases each season. For his career, he steals a base about once in every nine games he plays.

Let’s take Jason Bay’s signing by the Mets as a comparison. Bay’s contract will pay him $54.5 million over the next 4 years, plus a $17 million club option for 2014, meaning he’ll average about $13.63 million in his guaranteed years with the Mets. Considering Werth is making $7.5 million, should he expect a $6 million raise on par with a guy like Bay?

Like Werth, Bay has played 7 Major League seasons. His career average is .280. He hit the same number of home runs as Werth this past season (let’s consider Fenway Park and Citizens Bank Park to be washes in terms of their favorability to power hitters–two of the smallest lots in baseball). Bay has hit twice as many home runs in his career than Werth (185-93). Bay has tallied more than 100 RBI in 4 of his 7 seasons (119 in 2009) and has a career OPS of .896 which is better than Werth’s best single-season OPS. Bay’s SO-BB ratio is about 6% better than Werth’s. While Bay has a career best of 21 stolen bases (exceeding Werth’s best season), that was in 2005 and he only steals a base every 14 games.

We know the Mets are a relatively free-spending team when it comes to free agency. Considering they are spending less than $15 on Jason Bay (who has had a markedly better offensive career than Werth), can we really project that Werth will be able to command a contract that pays him in excess of $15 million per season? And assuming we can’t, how should we take Amaro’s argument that a likely parting with Werth will happen because the Phillies don’t want to overspend, on par with a team like the Yankees?

Jayson Werth is a very good outfielder who is coming off his best season. But it seems unlikely to me that Werth will command the kind of money that will prevent the Phillies from making him a competitive offer in free agency. So if the magic number is $140 million for 2011 and the Phillies are already committed to $133 million (with all the other top players under contract), it will be interesting to see how far over $140 Amaro will be willing to go to resign Werth.

That’s what Roy Halladay thinks, according to philly.com. At least that’s what Lou Holtz said, or maybe Ben Franklin. In any event, “WDIAMITWS” was the quote Doc invoked in response to the opening salvo of the annual preseason war of words between the Mets and Phillies. Mets’ ace, Johan Santana, was asked on Thursday who he thought was the best pitcher in the NL East. Not surprisingly, he answered “Santana.”

To be fair, I don’t know that Santana is wrong. His 2009 effort was his worst as a Met, a season marked by injury and unimpressive numbers. While the Phillies’ brass and local media would have you believe that Roy Halladay is the best pitcher since Sandy Koufax, the numbers don’t exactly support that. Santana has a better career WHIP than Halladay (1.113 vs. 1.198). He averages more strikeouts per season than Halladay (173.3 vs. 149.5) and fewer hits per season (143 vs, 199.7). Santana also has a lower career era than Doc (3.12 vs. 3.43), though he does give up an average of 1.8 more walks than Halladay per season. And Santana has won 2 Cy Young Awards in the American League while pitching for the Minnesota Twins. Halladay has 1 CYA as a Blue Jay.

I don’t know that there’s much of a difference between the two. In fact, other than the last two seasons Tim Lincecum put together, there aren’t better bodies of work among current pitchers than those owned by Santana and Halladay. Obviously the media wants to make a big deal out of Santana saying he’s the best pitcher in the division but in reality, there’s no reason for him to say anything other than that.

It turns out Charlie Manuel would have liked Cliff Lee to stay in Philadelphia. Just like in the case of his wife’s decision to buy expensive furniture, however, Charlie was powerless to stop the front office from shitting its pants. This isn’t exactly a shocking revelation but the fact that he said so publicly is a refreshing piece of honesty, regardless of how obvious that honesty is. It’s like the opposite of the lying nonsense put forth by Manuel’s boss, Ruben Amaro, on the matter. Yes, Ruben, we believe you that given the choice between “replenishing the farm system” and having the N.L.’s best rotation headlined by 2 Yankee killers, the former was a hotter priority. Or that the $9 million they saved by letting Lee go is being put to better use in the form of Shane Victorino and Joe Blanton.

Sure, the manager always wants to keep the star player because that makes his job easier. Charlie doesn’t have to worry about contracts or free agents; he just needs to fill out the lineup card and pat his guys on their butts (and even a circus clown knows that Cliff Lee’s services should have been retained). I would have liked Lee to be back but oh well, I guess I’ll have to settle for Jose Contreras.

In today’s Inquirer, Bob Ford makes one of the silliest but well-intentioned stretches in recent memory. In feeling an irrepressible urge to make way more out of the Roy Halladay signing than is actually there, Ford writes that Roy Halladay’s stated desire to be a Phillie is evidence of the fact that “the best players in baseball want to be here.”

The article seems to be about how Halladay never entertained the idea of playing anywhere else and that he chose not to go with the money, but with the team that all players want to play for. Never mind that Ford never mentions any other player who “wants” to play in Philly; it’s enough that Amaro inked Halladay for us to now know that every ballplayer has Philly in his heart.

Isn’t the manic phase of Philly’s bizarre obsession with its sports teams fun?

Let me start by saying that I will certainly not be unhappy in any way with Roy Halladay as the Phillies’ ace. I argued extensively last season for the Phils to make a move to get him and he is one of the top-5 pitchers in baseball, perhaps made even better in the short run by being a veteran of baseball’s best division. And now Halladay will land in the N.L. which by recent experience should mean he’ll get even more of a boost. From a performance perspective, Halladay probably becomes the best pitcher in the National League going into 2010.

But there are questions surrounding this move and its timing that can’t be ignored. First and foremost is the issue of what the Phillies have given up to acquire Halladay. Because Cliff Lee is gone as a result of this trade, the Phillies are simply replacing one ace with another. Let’s start with the trade that rented Cliff Lee for 12 starts to close out the 2009 season (and 4 brilliant playoff starts). According to mlb.com the Phillies will part with previously “untouchable” top pitching prospect, Kyle Drabek, as well as outfielder Michael Taylor and catcher Travis d’Arnaud. Combine that with the players they sent to Cleveland in the Lee deal (pitchers Jason Knapp and Carlos Carrasco, catcher Lou Marson and infielder Jason Donald) and you have a pretty high price paid for what amounts to be one pitcher.

In fairness, prospects are exactly that: an unknown commodity. But emptying close to your entire minor league tank to fill one rotation spot seems to be a bold gamble, even moreso when you consider the fact that Roy Halladay is negligably better than Cliff Lee. To boot, Roy Halladay has pitched 4 more seasons than Cliff Lee and has pitched exactly 850 innings more than Lee, meaning his treads are a lot more worn than Lee’s.

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ESPN’s Jayson Stark is reporting that a deal is “close” but “not done” that would make Roy Halladay a Phillie and Cliff Lee, well, not a Phillie. In a three-way move, Lee would go to Seattle, Halladay would come here and the Phils would part with more prospects. Ruben Amaro has done his best to tinker with the team this offseason and appears to be eager to make sure that his name is relevant every day of winter vacation.

On one hand, Cliff Lee has been rumored to be very interested in testing the free agency market upon the expiration of his contract at the end of next season. If he’s dead-set on that, then nothing the Phillies do can keep him. But if Amaro offered him a whopper contract (something along the lines of what he’ll have to give Halladay), it’s hard to imagine Lee declining simply to take his chances next offseason.

While Halladay is a statistically better pitcher, his value against Lee is negligible. Even if you brought Walter Johnson back from the dead, he couldn’t pitch better than Lee did last postseason. To boot, the prospects Amaro gave up in the Lee deal last season coupled with the prospects he’ll part with in a Halladay deal means he’s given away two sets of young players for one spot in the pitching rotation.

At the end of the day, it’s six of one, a half dozen of the other when you compare Lee and Halladay mainly because it’s really only one pitcher in red pinstripes at a time. Because of that Amaro has given up twice as much for essentially one pitcher. We won’t complain too much if Halladay is a Phillie but the wisdom of what the Phillies’ ace in the rotation costs does require questioning as does a desire to part with a guy like Cliff Lee who went 4-0 with a 1.56 ERA in last year’s playoffs.

Perhaps the Cleveland Indians are the National League’s farm team for aces. Last year the Brewers called up C.C. Sabathia during the stretch and this year they parted with Cliff Lee. At least one other person noticed this and wrote about it on espn.com today, comparing Lee’s arrival in the N.L. to Sabathia’s transition from the American League last year. Of course, Sabathia’s heroics last postseason were derailed by a lack of depth in the Brewers rotation and a consequent overuse of his mighty left arm. Let’s hope Cole Hamels shows some moxy and is able to play his role as the shut-down number 2 behind Lee.

After last night’s domination of the D-Backs, Lee has his 4th win for the Phils and looks untouchable. Since his arrival from the City of Departures, Lee has faced the Giants, Rockies, Cubs and Arizona and his numbers give plenty of reasons to get excited:

Lee is 4-0 and has pitched 33 innings of a possible 36 in his first four starts with the Phillies including 2 complete games. He’s allowed 18 hits with 6 walks and 34 strikeouts. Lee has yielded 3 earned runs in 4 games and his ERA is .82 and opponents are hitting .161 against him.

Now let’s take a look at what Sabathia did last year in his first 4 starts with the Brewers:

Sabathia also went 4-0 and pitched exactly 33 innings as well with 3 complete games. He gave up 20 hits and 8 walks while striking out 31. Sabathia allowed 5 earned runs for a 1.36 ERA and a .180 batting average against.

Two things jump out about this comparison. One, the numbers are eerily similar and equally stunning. Two, the Indians traded away two defending American League Cy Young winners in consecutive seasons, both of whom only got better in the N.L. While Sabathia’s singular ability to carry his team to the playoffs eventually wasn’t good enough to win the pennant, his performance from last year shows just how much impact an A.L. stud can have transitioning to the National League (and how frustrating it must be to be an Indians fan).

Lee looks slightly better statistically than Sabathia and plays on a team much better than the 2008 Brewers. Granted Lee only pitches every 5 days but if the rest of the rotation can hold its own, things could look very good for the Phillies.

And in case you were wondering, Roy Halladay is 2-2 since the trading deadline with a 3.30 ERA and a .294 batting average against.