2017 Season Phillies Discussion (News/Notes, etc.), continued

[DurhamBull]

Quinn is supposed to play in the DR this winter. Instructional League games start today so maybe we'll see him on the field a bit.

Not sure I am interested in Schwarber. Love his bat of course, but we just don't want to start accumulating any more DH types. I'd rather take a chance on Quinn getting healthy and pushing all the outfielders for playing time as a 4th OF next season.

I'm not sure who you mean by "all the outfielders", but I agree that there should be plenty of opportunity for 4th OF types on next year's team. I think Altherr and Herrera are solid bets for next season; Williams is a definite maybe. I suppose they might stick Hoskins out in LF once in a while but I hope that will only be often enough to keep his outfielder's glove from getting dry rot.

[zambonir]

So the Tigers' utility man Romine played all nine positions last night. I don't suppose Blanco is likely to play CF and catch today.

Phillies Andres Blanco pitches against Braves

[bkox]

The Good Phight (TheGoodPhight)

[zambonir]

Announcers just mentioned Chris Wheeler is retiring. Another big symbolic change.

[bkox]

Matt Gelb (MattGelb)

[julio]

On to the off-season discussion...

Forward-looking comments/discussion should go in this thread.

Final post-mortems on 2017 can stay here.

[California_Dreamin]

Worth noting I think, the Phils actually lost their first two games after the AS break to fall 29-60. From there to the end of the season they were 37-36, not exactly a SSS but almost a half a season.

Well done and certainly worthy of an optimistic tinge to what promises to be an interesting and telling off season.

[allentown]

That is a very adventitious point to begin the sample. The actual midway point in season or the AS break or the beginning of a month seem much more honest than just picking a date which eliminates the prior 2 losses in order to say we were over .500 for the last 73 games. Well we weren't for the last 75, taken from an honest, natural demarcation line as the starting point.

[julio]

"Adventitious" is an interesting way to characterize cherry-picking.

Take the midpoint of the season; or take July 1st (or take June 30th, if you want to attribute the change in the team's fortunes to an actual change in the team!). But don't pick a start date because it gives you the result you want. That's not analysis.

[andyb]

Or one could just say they were close to a .500 club in the second half. There is no one thing that happened other than progressively they called up Williams then Altherr (from the DL) then Hoskins then Alfaro then Crawford. Some of the relievers also got better in the second half. All of those are good things and suggest the club finished the season as a better club than at the beginning. Starting pitching outside of Nola was the one thing that did not get much better though they survived and young guys like Pivetta got valuable experience.

I feel good about next year even though not getting the number one pick is a disappointment.

[zambonir]

Hey, I appreciate the story CD is trying to tell, even if it isn't data. The true season midpoint was actually July 4, FWIW. I think it's also valid to look at the trade deadline or even the day Nick Williams got called up, but again, those are symbolic points, not data (and they don't necessarily tell the story we want since the team was over .500 in July).

[bkox]

Another product on the juiced ball era

Ryan M. Spaeder (theaceofspaeder)

[LoneStarPhan]

Another product on the juiced ball era

Ryan M. Spaeder (theaceofspaeder)

Ironically, he is being pretty much written off by most and likely to be shipped out in a deal that brings little back to the Phils.

[bkox]

Ironically, he is being pretty much written off by most and likely to be shipped out in a deal that brings little back to the Phils.

Exactly.. because power is in such huge supply now. Few years ago those numbers would have been more eye popping. This year 117 players hit 20 or more HRs Last year 111 did it. But in 2014 only 57 did.

[LoneStarPhan]

After a Nola win on July 3, the Phillies were 28-53. 81 games is half the schedule. In the next 81 games, the Phillies went 38-43, the true second half of the season. A significant improvement.

Since the Phillies went 1-7 for the 8 games starting July 4, they did, in fact, play better baseball after that point. While we cannot say they played .500 or better over the second half of the season, we can say that over the final 73 games of the season, they were 37-36.

Yes, the Phillies played over .500 for the final 73 games of the season. I take that as a positive sign and I am cautiously optimistic that the 2018 Phillies can show a significant improvement over the entire season over the 66-96 record of 2017. After 89 games, they were at a season winning percentage of .3258 and they finished the full season at .4074. A very positive sign, IMO.

[Philsmania]

I hope I am not wearing rose colored glasses but I really feel like the first half of this season was simply the proverbial darkness before the dawn. As the Phillies got younger, they got better. Of course, there's still lots of work to get done and there are plenty of unanswered questions. But, let's face, phans had to like what they saw over the last couple of months. I certainly did. If they "failed" to get the first round pick in next June's pick, they failed to do so on merit because they simply were not a bad team down the stretch. A .500 season in 2017 was a pie-in-the-sky goal, probably borne out of 2016's illusory eight game "improvement" over 2015. But, I think .500 may be a realistic goal for 2018. We shall see!

For the record, pythagoreans for the last three seasons:

2015: 61-101
2016: 61-101
2017: 72-90--ahead of the Mets (69-93) and tied with 2016 Postseason participants Baltimore and Toronto and 2015 World Champion Royals.

I don't know how reliable you can say pythagoreans are but at least using that metric, we made discernible progress in 2017. Would have landed 6th in the draft.

[allentown]

I'm also cautiously optimistic, but I'm not going to get over-excited about 2018 unless the Phillies add some serious pitching this off-season. If they do, I think we can win around 86. If we stick with basically what we've got, I think development of the kids can get us to 76-79 wins.

[Austinfan]

Phillies were a very young team by the end of the year, and the few older players on the roster (Blanco, Garcia, Rupp, Kelly, Kim were 29, Neris, Siegrist were 28) may not be around next year.
Ups and downs, Franco hit 23 HRs yet continued his bad second half of 2016 for a whole season. Williams was a surprise, you can see he's focused on improving, Alfaro was a surprise off an awful Lehigh campaign, maybe pitchers adjust next year but he can hit, Hoskins was amazing until he wore down (163 games), Altherr steadily improved, Galvis steadily improved, Herrera was Mr Hyde then Dr Feelgood, Hernandez was solid.

The bullpen really turned it around, Neris established himself as a closer with 20 straight saves, Garcia was solid (if a tad shaky) as a setup man, Morgan emerged, Milner didn't fade away, Arano showed promise. That's a nice group to start next season with, maybe add a veteran for depth.
The starters showed their youth, Nola got healthy and emerged as a top 10 pitcher, now he has to do it for 32 starts, Lively showed promise as an innings eater, Eickhoff toughed it out, hopefully it's something like a bone spur impigning on a nerve and nothing serious, Pivetta hung in there and finished strong, as did Thompson. Leiter showed he has a role as a spot starter if not overused. Velasquez got hurt again, which is becoming old. Some real promise here.

This is what rebuilding is all about, young players emerging and showing progress.
I expect some one step back, two steps forward next season, if you want consistency, don't go with one of the younger rosters in ML baseball.

[California_Dreamin]

Actually what I indicated about the Phils finishing with a 37-36 record was no more random than the talk that if the Phils swept the Mets the final weekend they would finish the "2nd half" with a winning record of 38-37. I merely was indicating that the Phils finished the first half at 29-58 and proceeded to lose their first two games on the post All Star break in Milwaukee to reach a season low of 31 games below .500 at 29-60.

From that point to the end of the season they played 73 games and were 37-36. This is to me every bit as valid as a 38-37 record post All Star break and we know this seemed important to people as not only Salisbury but the players and some posters talked about this.

My point was...and remains...the team played at an over .500 pace for quite a bit of the season, 73 games is no small sample size. Truth be told, 73 games is not really any different than 75 games [38-37 had they swept the Mets.]

To suggest I simply picked some random date is silly, I picked the point where the team sunk to their lowest depth, two games after the break. And I think its quite valid, every bit as valid as it would have been had Hoskins ball sailed out of the park on Saturday night which would have led to a weekend sweep and Salisbury, the players and some on this site would have been touting the 38-37 post All Stare game record.

[donaldorc]

To suggest I simply picked some random date is silly, I picked the point where the team sunk to their lowest depth, two games after the break. And I think its quite valid, every bit as valid as it would have been had Hoskins ball sailed out of the park on Saturday night which would have led to a weekend sweep and Salisbury, the players and some on this site would have been touting the 38-37 post All Stare game record.

I agree, CD.