Marlon Byrd on the Phillies: “we’re not an old team”

With the signing of Marlon Byrd and Bobby Abreu -- and because they’re counting on Jimmy Rollins, Ryan Howard and Chase Utley to be the motors of the offense once again -- the “Phillies are old” jokes have been all over the place this winter. My favorite two so far are (1) the one about how they’re going to rename the stadium to Senior Citizens Bank Park; and (2) the one in which the announcement of Billy Joel playing a concert there this summer actually lowers the team’s average age.

Yuks are yuks, of course, but it’s not like an old team can’t win. The 1983 Phillies -- nicknamed the “Wheeze Kids” -- won the pennant. The 1993 pennant-winning Phillies were no spring chickens either. And like the man said, age is just a state of mind. Just ask new Phillies outfielder Marlon Byrd, who tells CSNPhilly.com that he uses a different measure of age than the year on someone’s birth certificate:

“All of us do. You keep hearing old, old, old ... we’re not an old team,” Byrd said. “We can still play. Once you can’t play, then you’re old. We still have a lot in the tank, we just to have to show that and stay healthy.”

It’s all the stuff of offseason optimism. History shows that, occasionally, an old team can stay healthy and produce. If the Phillies do that then, sure, they could be an interesting team. It’s just not the most likely outcome.