Hope you’re ready for more Odubel Herrera, because he’s back:

 

Good God. I don’t have another Odubel Herrera column in me. I used up my last remaining Odubel energy fighting with Mikey Miss, Tyrone, and Natalie last summer. There was some totally irresponsible stuff being said about the fan base’s least-favorite player, a domestic abuser who won the center field job only because four other guys couldn’t take their opportunity and run with it. We got Odubel because Scott Kingery, Roman Quinn, Adam Haseley, and Mickey Moniak each turned in their respective shortcoming.

We don’t need to re-litigate the entire DV situation with Odubel because it’s been put to bed. He served his punishment and his girlfriend forgave him. It’s up to each individual Phillies fan to determine whether or not the punishment was adequate.

Beyond that, you ask yourself if Odubel is a good baseball player, and he really is mediocre-to-utterly average at this point. He hit .260 last season with a .310 on-base percentage and slugged .416. That gets you an OPS of .726, plus the requisite defensive brain farts. It’s whatever for a guy who was the 5th option at center field when the season began. They didn’t want Herrera to win the job, but he did anyway.

From an optics perspective, it looks stupid to come out the lockout and have everybody excited for this free agent frenzy, then you give them Odubel Herrera and Jeurys Familia. Of course there’s going to be more to come, and if the Phillies go out and land somebody like Nick Castellanos, then nobody is talking about Odubel. But it’s funny, regardless, that the labor stoppage is finally resolved and excited Phillies fans are gifted with a new contract for the least-liked player on the team.

However, we all know the Phillies are already spending a lot of money. They have money invested in right field, catcher, starting pitching, etc, so unless you’re gonna try to be the Mets, you have to find some value somewhere. That value appears to be a CF platoon of Odubel and Vierling, which hopefully indicates that something big is happening at another position. Get excited!

edit – as expected, super cheap: