Voila_Capture 2014-03-06_12-41-43_PMThe Phillies are wagging the dog again. Hey, look over here. Manager-former star conflict! It’s meat and juicy. Let’s talk about that. But please, look away from the field. The train wreck is not for your eyes.

The bow tie man himself, little itty bitty Ken Rosenthal, spoke with several league scouts about the Phillies’ real problem– not the Rollins-Sandberg thing, but the fact that they’re positively awful:

The scouts’ early reviews on the Phillies are in. And to put it kindly, they are less than glowing.

“They’re awful,” said one.

“Painful to watch,” said another.

“Their window didn’t close slowly — it shut,” said a third.

I’m literally not sure the Phillies could have gotten off to a worse start this spring. Pitchers sore, Rollins hating, team not hitting– the worst case scenario for just about everything. Even scouts, the old baseball sages upon which Ruben Amaro relies while shunning advanced analytics, think the team constructed by the former Big Poker is a joke.

via The School Philly