Guest Feature From Kevin Lagowski
Remembering Amaury Telemaco and a Simpler Time to be a Phillies Fan
No, Amaury Telemaco didn’t die, so let’s just get that out of the way first.
Now that we’ve established that, let me just explain what I mean by all this.
Recent victories aside, the 2023 Philadelphia Phillies remain extremely frustrating. Their ace pitcher is sporting an ERA a full run over his career mark, their $300M free agent acquisition is just starting to remember how to hit, there’s no depth, and the manager we all thought was a genius is suddenly looking very suspect. On the whole, this season has been a letdown so far. In some ways, this whole organization is starting to get the feel of the post-1993 Phillies, a team that caught lightning in a bottle for one magical playoff run, then slunk back into the shadows for over a decade.
God, please tell me that’s not what’s going to happen with this team again.
During that ‘shadow’ period, however, there was still some enjoyment to be had. Yes, the Phils were bad, but I was at an age where I could still have fun by just following the team and recreating their lineup during street baseball games with friends, blissfully ignorant of other elements of the world that might sour me on how bad the team was and/or drive me into a blind rage every time they ran the bases like idiots, couldn’t put the ball in play, or were unable to make a routine play in the field. Plus, this time period all came before the advent of social media, which means that you weren’t subject to millions of people trying to ruin your ability to gain the smallest bit of enjoyment about anything at the drop of a hat.
This is where guys like Amaury Telemaco stand in as an embodiment of that era of Phillies baseball for me personally. And not to pile on the guy, but this is mostly because he seemed to be just the kind of player that the Phillies had way too many of at the time, a castoff who worked hard but sadly didn’t have enough talent to be a difference maker. It also didn’t hurt that he was an inexpensive option, and so the Phillies could keep their books in order with most of the roster skewing on the cheap side while they overspent on a few washed-up veterans who they could point to as proof that they were trying to compete. Truly, I don’t blame Telemaco or any of these guys for just trying to earn a living playing the game they loved, but it was frustrating how many of these players the Phillies would stack their roster with during the Francona years and on into the Larry Bowa era until the new stadium was on the horizon and impelled them to break out their wallets for the likes of Jim Thome.
Anyway, Telemaco.
He’ll always stick out in my mind, first and foremost, because I kept score at every game that I went to for a period of a few years, and I swear he ALWAYS got into the game. Not sure what was happening there, as he wasn’t making it into 75 games a year on a regular basis. In fact, his high total for any season was 49 appearances. But I’ve been going through old scorecards and writing recap articles about them since 2019 (shameless plug to find them here), and I keep seeing “Telemaco” scrawled in my then-teenage handwriting. The original idea behind the scorecards was so that I could have a physical record of seeing certain players, allowing me to be able to point at them decades later and marvel at having witnessed Hall of Famers and all-time greats in person. And although 99% of said great players ended up being visitors and not Phillies, I’m definitely glad that I did it. What foresight by young me. It just strikes me as funny that Telemaco’s name came up more than most.
Signed by the Cubs in 1991 as an amateur free agent at the age of 17, Telemaco had to wait five years before getting his shot in the bigs. His debut came on May 16, 1996 at Wrigley Field against the Astros. Telemaco threw seven innings of shutout ball to get the win, easily outdueling Doug Drabek and striking out the likes of Derek Bell and Jeff Bagwell. Holy smokes, a star seemingly was born. But things just didn’t work out, with Telemaco putting up inconsistent performances for the rest of that season before being sent to the bullpen to close out the year. He was very bad over just 38 innings in 1997, then started out the ‘98 season doing decently out of the ‘pen before the Cubs waived him in May and he was picked up by the expansion Arizona Diamondbacks. He held his own on a team that was as lousy as they were expected to be in their first year of existence, but a rough start in 1999 got him waived again, which is when he finally met the love of his life, the Philadelphia Phillies.
Telemaco was claimed on June 8 and got into his first game as a Phil the following day, mopping up for two innings in an ugly loss. His next several appearances would come in similar situations, and it wasn’t until over two weeks later that he was allowed to pitch in a win, which ironically came at Wrigley Field. He’d go on to provide pretty dependable results for the rest of the year, with the lone exception being a 6-run blowup that didn’t matter because the Phillies lost the game 22-3. This game rang a bell for me, and sure enough, I wrote about it a few years ago.
Telemaco was still under contract and was back with the Phils in 2000. What a team that was, oh man. I wrote a whole multi-part article series about them on the occasion of their 20th anniversary; they were that notably bad. Amaury wasn’t even good enough to hang on that club, getting demoted at the end of April with a 9.31 ERA and spending most of the season toiling away in Scranton. He came back up in September and got into a handful of meaningless games, including a start in game #162 as the Phils finished a miserable season. He was somewhat better in 2001, but still pretty forgettable, and it looked like time was already up on his major league career. But that’s when “fun with contracts” began.
A free agent at the end of the season, Telemaco unsurprisingly lingered there for a month or so. That’s when the Phillies figured they would throw him a bone, re-signing him to a one-year deal. But he never got back to the big club in 2002, throwing a grand total of 29 innings across four levels of the minors and battling injuries. His contract was up again, and once again the Phillies said “Sure, why not?” This appears to have been a two-year contract, because the next transaction that I can find for Telemaco is him being granted free agency after the 2004 season. This came after a 2003 season where he was mostly in the minors but made eight appearances, all starts, for the Phils, and a 2004 season where he stuck in the Phillies’ bullpen all year. This was followed by him signing YET ANOTHER contract with the Phillies to come back for 2005. In case you’ve lost track, here’s the whole list up to this point, according to Baseball Reference…
June 8, 1999: Selected off waivers by the Philadelphia Phillies from the Arizona Diamondbacks.
October 8, 2001: Granted Free Agency.
December 15, 2001: Signed as a Free Agent with the Philadelphia Phillies.
October 15, 2002: Granted Free Agency.
December 23, 2002: Signed as a Free Agent with the Philadelphia Phillies.
December 21, 2004: Granted Free Agency.
December 21, 2004: Signed as a Free Agent with the Philadelphia Phillies.
But wait, it gets better, because here’s how his 2005 looks…
March 30, 2005: Released by the Philadelphia Phillies.
April 8, 2005: Signed as a Free Agent with the Philadelphia Phillies.
June 9, 2005: Released by the Philadelphia Phillies.
June 14, 2005: Signed as a Free Agent with the Philadelphia Phillies.
July 4, 2005: Released by the Philadelphia Phillies.
Yes, Amaury Telemaco appeared to have some gentleman’s agreement with the Phillies and/or possessed incriminating photos of Ed Wade that led to several paper moves where they could sign and release him freely to facilitate other things that they needed to do. That last release is important, however, as Telemaco refused to report to AAA, and he was let go for good, never to appear in another MLB game. The Phillies had finally broken up with their longtime lover.
For me personally, I never had any direct dealings with the man, but I did get to witness an interesting sight in 2004 during spring training. I had gone to Clearwater to see the Phillies christen their new ballpark down there, and we arrived at the training complex well before the game. On one of the back fields, a contingent of the players were taking infield practice, with one of the coaches hitting fungoes at them. Pitchers weren’t exempt from these drills, and Amaury took his turn. I don’t know if the ball hit a stone or he took his eye off of it, but the hard one-hopper hit at him proceeded to smash him directly in his junk. He crumpled to the ground in agony while the teammates around him laughed hysterically. He got up, gasping for air, shortly thereafter. Good times.
Years after he retired, there was apparently a failed crowdfunding effort about a decade ago to make a documentary about him, recounting his journey to the bigs and his youth work during his post-playing days. Amaury worked in the Red Sox system for a few years, and has been a Latin America pitching coordinator for the Pirates since 2014. He’s giving back to the game after being shuttled around a whole bunch during his playing days and making relative peanuts compared to many of his peers. Respect.
It was a bad era of Phillies baseball to be sure, and Amaury Telemaco wasn’t exactly lights out for those teams. But he was and is a good dude, and some weird part of me is missing this sort of thing (read: probably pining for my own youth). I’m not saying that the current team isn’t populated with good people, but there was something quaint about the way things were even just a few decades ago, in baseball and society in general. Those were the days. Except for the part where the Phillies would go 67-95.
Exclusive new artwork from Dhwani Saraiya.
There’s not much left to be said about Kyle Schwarber’s June accomplishments. His career stats in this month: 142 games, 578 PA, 496 AB, 99 R, .254/.352./.607 (.959 OPS), 51 HR, 112 RBI.
Tweets of the week.
Rob Thomson got thrown out of Saturday’s game vs the Dodgers, and Phillies fans predictably loved it:
https://twitter.com/PhlySprtsReprts/status/1667651619331223554?s=20
Kevin mentions in the feature piece above that the 2023 Phillies have disappointed overall, and that’s certainly true. But I don’t share his fear that this is a “post-1993” kind of season, a letdown after catching lightning in a bottle. To me the 2023 team is just the 2022 team all over again. Even righting the ship at the same exact time:
https://twitter.com/JClarkNBCS/status/1667993226408607745?s=20
Really encouraging piece from Alex Coffey on Trea Turner working with Kevin Long to get himself locked in:
https://twitter.com/byalexcoffey/status/1668280802952744960?s=20
If you’re worried about the Phillies’ upcoming West Coast trip, well, you probably should be:
https://twitter.com/RayDunne975/status/1668251488194375687?s=20
We have work to do to get Nick Castellanos in the All-Star Game:
https://twitter.com/BryceInHisVeins/status/1668330560648015873?s=20
This week in 2008.
The 2008 Phils were 39-28 at the end of June 11, in first place by 2 games.
On June 5, the Phillies wrapped up a 4-game series at home vs. the Reds. Cole Hamels threw a complete game shutout.
The shutout completed an 8-2 homestand, and the Phillies kicked off a road trip in Atlanta on June 6. Shane Victorino made this throw to end the game, preserving Brad Lidge’s perfect season.
The Phils went on to sweep the Brave in that series, winning 6-2 on June 7 and 6-3 on June 8. That gave them 11 wins in 13 games and a season-high 3.5 game lead in the NL East.
Next up was Florida, and the Marlins were predictably annoying, beating the Philies on June 10 and June 11. In the series finale, Dan Uggla hit a walk-off grand slam off Tom Gordon.
Phillie you forgot about.
Who’s your favorite 1993 Phillie? Daulton? Kruk? Dykstra?
How about Bob Ayrault?
Ayrault pitched in ten games for the ‘93 Phils: 10.1 IP, 18 H, 11 R, 11 ER, 10 BB, 8 K, 9.58 ERA, 2.71 WHIP. On June 12, the Phillies traded Ayrault to Seattle for Kevin Foster, who pitched in just two games that season and was somehow even worse (14.85 ERA).
To be fair, Ayrault had a good season with the Phillies in 1992: 30 G, 43.1 IP, 3.12 ERA.
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This is the section of the newsletter where I make you look at dogs.
Go Phils! Feels like they’re really starting to get it together. Fingers crossed.
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