Rollins Signing in Wake of Madson

The Phils agreed to re-sign SS Jimmy 'J-Roll' Rollins to a 3-year, $33-million deal Saturday (with an additional 4th year option).

"Gotta deal with me for 3 (4) more years!" Rollins wrote on Twitter Saturday.

Rollins, 33 years-old, has played his entire career with the Phillies. He is also the charismatic, outspoken team leader. Although manager Charlie Manuel has benched Rollins over the years, for not running out ground-outs and other antics, the manager has always shown Rollins the respect of a team captain and has expected him to act like one. For the most part, Rollins has.

In the '11 postseason, Rollins led the team with a .450 ave. and 4 2B in a losing 1st-round effort.

In 2007, Rollins famously predicted the Phillies would win their division, although no one else in baseball was ready to stake the same claim. The Phils hadn't won their division in 14 years and were nobody's favorite on paper. Rollins was right and the next year the Phils won the World Series.

He went on to win 3-straight Gold Gloves and to carry a swagger that set the tone for his team, which has now won 5-straight division titles and has made 2 World Series appearances in that span. It is Rollins spunk and spirit that has made him the poster boy of this Phillies era.

If once it seemed implicit that the Phils would retain Rollins, that assurance disappeared when the team recently parted ways with reliever Ryan Madson.

While Jimmy Rollins began his pro career a Phillie in 2000 and outlasted Pat Burrell as the longest standing member of the team, Madson had been with the Phils since 2003.

So, when the Phillies signed once-great closer Jonathan Papelbon to a $50 million, 4-year contract this offseason, it suddenly appeared that parting ways with Rollins might actually happen next.

However, it didn't. Rollins, whose numbers have declined greatly throughout the last 4 seasons and who has been plagued by significant leg injuries for 3 of the last 4 seasons, will now be a Phillie through probably at least age 37.

He is fourth on the Phillies' career list behind Richie Ashburn, Mike Schmidt and Ed Delahanty with 1,866 hits, and ranks among the franchise's top five in games played, plate appearances, runs, total bases, doubles, triples and stolen bases.

Rollins persistent injuries have shortened his playing time (to a career-low 88 games in '10), but he developed a new workout routine with a heavy emphasis on yoga, which he insists is helping a lot. "I don't even think about my calf injury anymore," Rollins said in June of this year.

He continues work as a stellar defender, whose trusty presence at SS has led the Phils as a superlative defensive team atop MLB.

However, his offensive decline at the top of the batting order has also paralleled the team's, in an unsettling fashion.

Rollins won the '07 NL MVP, hitting .296 with 20 triples, 30 HR and 94 RBI. In the 4 seasons since, he has averaged .261 with 5 triples and 14 HR per year.

The 2011 Phils scored 713 runs, the least for any Phillies team since '02.

Pat Gillick, former GM and present Phillies advisor reiterated the team's operating philosophy toward the offensive downward spiral: "The sort of solution is to pitch better and hit better."

It's the same 'it ought to fix itself' language the Phils front office has applied during the past 4 seasons of continuing offensive decline, which is now thought to be their roadblock to another World Series title.

Meanwhile, the dismissal of Ryan Madson is confounding. Yes, they replaced him with a big name in closer Jonathan Papelbon. However, they lost a key component of what has made the team work for the last several years.

Madson was invaluable and unflappable, especially in October. Madson's postseason ERA was 2.31. In '11, Madson's postseason ERA was 2.08. Papelbon's was 13.50.

Madson and Papelbon are both 31 years old. Over the next 4 years of Papelbon's $50 million contract with the Phils, his signature fastball might lose steam, while Madson's more varied repertoire of circle change-up and cutter, which so perfectly compliment his four-seam fastball, is more reliably poised for successful longevity.

Phils rookie phenom starter Vance Worley was dismayed by the Phils flushing Madson down the toilet:

"He's obviously very talented and one of the best closers in the league," said Worley, who, like Madson, is a Californian who was drafted by the Phils. "It would have been nice to have Madson back because he's homegrown and really took me under his wing in the bullpen over the last couple years."

In '08, Brad Lidge's legendary perfect season & postseason as closer (48 saves in 48 tries), culminating in a World Series win were set-up by Madson's 8th inning reliability. Etched in every Phillies fan's eternal mind is the reassuring, tall, commanding presence of Madson on the mound late in a game. Something that is, unfathomably, now a thing of the past.

In 2011, Madson was asked to do something new. He had been asked to be a starter, a middle reliever and a set-up man for the Phils over his 8 seasons with the team. However, in '11, his 9th season, he was asked to be the team's closer. Madson responded with a 2.37 ERA, his best since '04 and recorded 32 saves in 34 attempts.

Meanwhile, Papelbon, who recorded at least 35 saves from '06-'09, stumbled mightily in '10. While posting 37 saves that year, he also blew a career-high 8. He posted a career-high 3.90 ERA (nearly double his career average) and looked to be on an obvious decline. He bounced back in '11 with a 0.93 WHIP and 87 S.O. to 10 BB, but posted his 2nd-worst ERA at 2.94, a mere echo of his former self (i.e., '06: 0.78 WHIP, 0.92 ERA and '07: 0.77 WHIP, 1.85 ERA).

The Phillies have a long history of dismissing clients of infamous cutthroat agent Scott Boras (think J.D. Drew), so severing ties with Madson may be comprehensible from that perspective, but it is an otherwise unacceptable reality, which makes nearly no sense from a baseball standpoint.

The Phils gain more experience at the closer position, but give up one of their own and trade a closer at the height of his achievements for one whose numbers have clearly diminished.