Doc: Don't ruin your legacy, Brandon Phillips
Paul Daugherty , pdaugherty@enquirer.com 4:55 p.m. ET Jan. 12, 2017


Don’t do this, Brandon Phillips.

Your reputation with fans is too strong, the career you’ve had here too special. You’ve never made a habit of bobbling ground balls. This one is a routine two-hopper. Play it as gracefully as you’ve played second base for the past 11 years. Accept a trade. If you won’t do that, embrace what you’ve chosen: Spend your final season as a Red helping the younger players get better.

The Reds have tried to trade you for two years at least. They’ve done it respectfully and with you in mind. Last year, they offered you to the Washington Nationals, a solid contender with a manager, Dusty Baker, who understands you. Last month, they had a deal to send you home to Atlanta.

You turned down both. You wanted a contract extension to sign with Washington. You claimed you were never told the Reds were talking with the Braves. Multiple sources say that simply isn’t so. I tried reaching you via Twitter messaging. You didn’t answer.

Even if you felt the communication lacked between you and the team, that doesn’t change the scenario, which has loomed for a couple years and now has arrived:

You’re no longer the future here.

Jose Peraza and Dilson Herrera are who the Reds want to see at second base. The Reds have made that plain. You can play better than either of them, but that earns you only a short reprieve. You’re the “best’’ second baseman in Cincinnati?

Maybe. Define best as it applies to the Reds, 2017 and beyond.

This is barely a money issue now, given it’s the last year of the contract and the Reds would have to eat the bulk of the $14 mil to get a deal done. It’s about watching the new wave and judging if it’s worth surfing.

Maybe the Reds deal you at the deadline (though the market for aging second basemen who decline to play other positions never quite skyrockets) or maybe you squirm as a part-timer. You’d hate that.

We’ve watched you play in pain, seen you bat all over the lineup, observed as you did whatever the Reds needed you to do, from leading off to hitting home runs. We’ve seen your love for the game, the exuberance exploding from your smile like a thousand summer afternoons. You’ve never forgotten your good fortune, or assumed it. Watching you play showed us what can happen when a man’s skills mix with a child’s heart.

Let that be your legacy.

You’re going to be paid $14 million this year, regardless of where you play. Money is no substitute for happiness. Your idea that you are the starting second baseman doesn’t fit with the club’s need to find its future. This is a common theme in sports, maybe baseball especially.

It’s a Darwinian occupation, whose brevity barely gives you time to say hello, before you’re saying goodbye. One day you’re blowing bubbles in the All Star dugout. The next you’re rejecting trades. You replaced someone. Someone will replace you. You never see it coming.

Football players’ knees tell them when. Their brains tell them, while their brains still can. It’s harder in baseball, more subtle. Especially if you’ve been with one team a long time, and you like that team, have worked hard for it, on and off the field.

It’s business. It was business then, when you happily signed your current contract, which made you among the top six highest-paid second basemen in the game. It’s business now, when the deal is done after this year.

Your choice, Brandon. You can take a trade, if any become available. Or you can play it the way the Reds want it played. If you want a new deal elsewhere in 2018 – when you will be 37 in June – market yourself here this year.

Assume the role of wise vet, willing to play a utility role, taking advantage of (and basking in) the respect you’ve earned. The Braves didn’t pay you, they paid the former Pirate Sean Rodriguez, who plays every position but cotton-candy guy. He got two years.

Do that, or this is going to end badly. Don’t let it end badly. Handle this situation the way you might a line drive that wants to call center field home, but ends up in your glove instead. Do it so gracefully that grace seems routine.

We’ve seen you do that before. It was spectacular.

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/sports/c.../96506016/