Who the Hell Are These Phillies?

The Philadelphia Phillies, of late, have been a team with a lot of star players. Ryan Howard. Chase Utley. Jimmy Rollins. Shane Victorino. Carlos Ruiz. Jayson Werth. Pat Burrell. Cole Hamels. Cliff Lee. Roy Halladay. Raul Ibanez. (Okay, that last one is a bit of a joke.) But now... who the hell are these guys? And it's not just that the Phillies are no-names. A lot of teams employ a whole bunch of no-name players in September of a losing year, and if they're not your team you won't know who they are. It's that their names, beyond merely lacking in familiarity, are weird. Here's a list of players off the Phillies' current active roster:

• Darin Ruf
• Cody Asche
• Freddy Galvis
• Kevin Frandsen
• Erik Kratz (yes, Erik with a k and Kratz with a z)
• Pete Orr
• Cameron Rupp (seriously, compare/contrast his name with Ruf. What is that?!)
• Justin De Fratus
• Tyler Cloyd
• Jake Diekman
• Mauricio Robles
• Joe Savery

And that's not even counting Jonathan Papelbon, who is very much a big-name player but whose name is just as weird as any of those guys'. What causes a team to have such a concentration of weird-name dudes all on its roster at the same time? I just don't get it.


UPDATE: It has just come to my attention that the Miami Marlins pitcher who just got the final out against the Mets in the top of the 9th is named Arquimedes Caminero. Okay, they win.

Jose Reyes is Gone, Long Live Jose Reyes

Ugh.

That was my first reaction to the news that the Marlins had drastically upped their offer to Reyes, and were likely to sign him last night. That kept being my reaction through the various developments about the details of the offer, to the time when it was officially announced that my favorite active baseball player in all the world is no longer a member of my favorite team. Ugh.

In fact, that kept being my reaction right until the time I went to bed last night. Ugh, I don't want to think about it, this sucks, etc. But I find that, somewhat to my surprise, on waking up today I have a less viscerally repulsed feeling about the whole thing. Instead my reaction has sorted itself into fairly specific judgments of the various parties involved in the whole affair: