Thank God Ed Wade is Gone

This afternoon I sat on my coach watching Congress question baseball big wigs about the steroids. I was surprised to see that the House committee holding the hearings started off the day by requesting the Justice Department to investigate allegations that Miguel Tejada lied to federal agents about his use of steroids.

My first thought was to think of a good friend of mine at school (you know who you are) who is a big Astros fan. As Phillies Phans we can all commiserate with the idea of a team suddenly losing their biggest off-season acquisition. I’m thinking of Freddy Garcia.

But more than that former Phillies GM Ed Wade has already done long term damage to the Astros. He has already gutted the system trading away a ton of prospects including Josh Anderson, Troy Patton, Matt Albers, and Dennis Safate. For some reason he signed Kazuo Matsui to a 3-year contract, which is about two years more than he deserved. He traded for Jose Valverde who averages nearly 4 walks per nine innings over his career. In addition Valverde is a fly ball pitcher who is not well suited for throwing in tiny Minute Maid Park. To top it all off Miguel Tejada may be spending 2008 on trial and not fielding ground balls.

And of course old Ed traded his stud closer Brad Lidge to the Pighten Phils and got very little it return. I am so relieved that Ed Wade is no longer the Phillies GM.