2019 Phillies Season Discussion (part 2)

[zambonir]

Bad at math I guess

We know they have the talent to go 19-11, but they have not been able to show it for more than 3-4 games at a time before squandering a few.

For fun, some predictions:

Mets home 3-0 (what the heck)
Red away 2-2
Mets away 2-1
Braves home 2-2
Red Sox home - 2-0 (being positive, since they did it at Fenway)
Braves away 1-2
Indians away 1-2
Nats away 2-3
Marlins home 2-1

That's 17-13, so it wouldn't take much to do better. Or worse, if we don't own the Mets, play even worse on the road, struggle at home against the Braves/Sox or just blow it against the Marlins as usual.

[phillychuck]

Too many road games to catch the Cubs or Nats. On to next year...

[andyb]

Need to win every series. Schedule is not kind the next few days. We play a 7:00 ESPN game on Sunday night then a 2 PM afternoon game in Cincinnati on Monday. At least we'll have a large bench by then. Then that 5 games in 4 days in DC will be a major test for our bullpen. Really need the extra long relievers like Pivetta and Irvin and EDLS to give us 2 or 3 innings during that stint.

[Austinfan]

I'll be happy with 85 wins. This team is still a couple years away, they need Bohm at 3B, Haseley to settle into CF, and SP depth to get to 90+ wins. If Arrieta bounces back, Eflin gets back to his first half, Vargas has one year left, and Cutch is close to 100% they might have a shot at 90 next year.

[andyb]

I'll be happy with 85 wins. This team is still a couple years away, they need Bohm at 3B, Haseley to settle into CF, and SP depth to get to 90+ wins. If Arrieta bounces back, Eflin gets back to his first half, Vargas has one year left, and Cutch is close to 100% they might have a shot at 90 next year.

You keep saying that the team is a few years away but that simply is not true. This team should have gotten at least one of their young starters to step up and they could have been luckier keeping players on the field (Cutch, Herrera, the whole bullpen). Wishing on Eflin is not the solution. He is a 4th/5th starter at best. You also are basically saying the Segura and Realmuto trades were a complete waste.

The reality is this team should have been in the 88-90 win range with normal development of young players. That and injuries is why it did not happen. Those are more serious questions than expecting our young players to develop and make a difference. We have a few good ones in Bohm and Howard and maybe Stott. But it is a below average system so if you hope to get better with young players then you are wishing on a 75-80 win team (because that is the quality of our system).

Luck is part of the problem. But we also did not get the most out of this roster. Hoskins is an example of this. Let's hope they pull it together now, but if not there are bigger problems to face.

[Philsmania]

Opening a new thread, since the previous one just auto-closed due to length.

Last post in the previous thread:

2019 Phillies Season Discussion

No sense in them starting in Philly next spring if there isn't significant improvements to the big league squad, before adding them.

Yes. Neither Bohm nor Howard (nor the two of them) are miraculously going to make the Phils significantly better in the short run. Given that, they should be promoted to the majors when they force the issue. That may well be sometime in 2020; it may be later.

The bad luck was the bullpen completely imploding. I personally believe that had a domino effect on Pivetta, Velasquez and Efflin being disappointments as they had to go longer instead of being eased into going longer into games. It was bad luck that all three of Neshek, Hunter and Robertson broke down for a majority or almost all of 2019 but, at the same time, when you sign veteran relievers who have logged a lot of appearances in the seasons leading up to when you signed them, you are playing with fire.

[zambonir]

I don't think those starters were rushed into going longer. They're also not kids. None of them were coming off an injury. Pivetta was bad before any relievers were even hurt, Eflin hit a big wall and Vinnie's kind of the same as he ever was (he also got hurt, that was what originally bounced him from the rotation). They also performed about the same as last year. The bullpen was designed to support this group of merely adequate starters (including the aging Arrieta). Then it broke. Old guy injuries definitely to be expected; catastrophic injuries to old guys and Arano and Seranthony (and Ramos, often) while none of the the other youngsters stepped up means everything went wrong.

The Sunday/Monday schedule seems counter to the CBA, I assume either ESPN trumps all or the distance between PA and Cincinnati isn't long enough (by contrast, Wednesday's game had to start at 6 to let the Pirates get on the road earlier).

As for next year, Middleton is probably sitting at home doodling Gerrit Cole and Anthony Rendon's names in his diary.

[Florida_Sunshine]

I can’t locate it but where is the thread where everyone predicted number of wins for this team?

[Florida_Sunshine]

Come on Andy, here you go again. This team needs more time to really contend. Not sure why you felt the need to challenge AustinFans post as it makes a lot of sense to me.

[allentown]

I think you are correct in all points. It may be bad luck. It may equally be bad development staff (or amateur player selection or pro scouting of pitchers to acquire in off-season. After a while, bad luck becomes something other than simply luck.)

The other reason I disagree with AF's approach is that while he is correct that we certainly have players on the way in the minors, they seem to be 'useful players' not stars and it doesn't look like we have more help on the way from our minors than the average team or the competitors sitting above us in the standings.

The organizational strength is what it is, which to me means that if we are going to strongly contend in this cycle we need to push hard to do so sooner rather than later. Unlike the time leading up to 2008, there simply bolus of talent working its way through the farm to reach Philly in 2-3 years and make a huge difference.

[andyb]

This team needs more time to really contend

It is actually a cop out though to keep saying the team is a couple years away for 4-5 years. AF likes to say that but then endorsed the Segura and Realmuto trades. One does not do those trades if the team is not ready to contend. AF just refuses to criticize even when his very contention contains two contradictory points.

This WAS a team ready to contend. It looks to fall short for a variety of reasons. Bad luck - injuries, Herrera. Bad development (all the young pitchers, maybe Hoskins). And trades that were mediocre at best.

And the whole point of just wait for the prospects is just a bad point. Every team has prospects and ours are judged below average by neutral sources. Waiting for prospects seems to be a strategy of waiting to lose. That does not mean a Bohm might not solve a big problem. He might. But others teams will get prospects too to solve their problems.

I am looking for a little more sophisticated analysis here. It is easy to say we just need to wait. It is harder to analyze why this team did not win because it really should have been better than the result.

[bkeich]

I dont see the rebuild being 2 years away, the simple fact is if it takes 2 years for us to contend, it has been a fruitless action.

This offseason the front office cashed in much of the rebuild to win now. We traded away our catcher, shortstop, possibly ace pitcher away in order to get players that were better NOW. Those players probably will not be better long term (well, Alfaro for Realmuto may not fall in that category) and we spent more than probably any team in league history on future contracts to win in the short term. If it takes 2 years all of those moves will have been failures.

Realmuto is a FA after next season. We could have just signed him then if we didnt think we could compete until 2021.
Segura is a FA after 2023, but he will be very expensive after 2021, he may or may not play to his contract at that point.
Hernandez has 1 more year of team control. He will probably be replaced by Kingery.

The simple fact is that our team is now not young, they are starting to enter their primes, are in them or in the case of some of our signings (McCutcheon) are past them. Waiting 2 more years will just mean we dont have enough quality players left to win, the guys in the minors now are ok prospects, but there is no one coming up that is likely to be a player that leads us to success, those players have to be Nola, Harper, Hoskins, etc.

The Front office MUST make moves for starting pitching this offseason, we are almost completely without quality starters, we have 1. Arrieta is a reasonble #4 starter, but we need a #2, #3 and #5, we have lots of #6-#9 already. If they want to contend virtually every dollar has to go to the pitching staff, which is frankly almost completely bare. Only returning starters should be Nola and Arrieta, only returning relievers should be Neris, Morgan and maybe a couple of the young guys. We need about 6 pitchers.

[Florida_Sunshine]

Andy, honestly I know what you are saying but you are jumping the gun on this one. First off, I will be honest, I like to read point and counterpoint.

But, as a stand alone post, AF is correct with his post. What bothers you is that he doesn’t acknowledge that Middleton needs to spend more money in the offseason to bring in more talent. I honestly think AF probably doesn’t feel the need for that and would want to wait another year or two. But, his post as stated is valid.

OK my man, be honest, how many wins did you predict this team would have this year?

And with all the injuries, this team is still today, right now, in serious contention for a wild card spot.

I am curious as to how many predicted that.

[bkeich]

And with all the injuries, this team is still today, right now, in serious contention for a wild card spot.

The other way to look at it is the team is barely a .500 team, and honestly the only reason they are over .500 is they had a good start. We are in the wild card hunt because the NL is oddly "flat" this year, with a few games over .500 being in the wild card. In a more normal year we would be long done at this point. The AL has very good and very bad teams, and we would be miles out of the wild card if in that league at the moment.

[bkeich]

This was prior to last season. Most people, including AustinFan, had us contending next season.

In what year do you expect the Phils to contend?

The simple fact is you can always say it is two years away, that is the default answer if the team is not very good unless you are in the situation we were in after 2012 when we were clearly further away. Since this pole we cashed in many of our younger players for older ones, signed the biggest contract in ML history and endured a shocking season where we literally had the entire bullpen on the DL and had to go guy find guys off the street to serve as starting pitchers.

We have to exit the "our prospects will get us over the top" idea at some point, that is the Montreal Expos cycle where they were constantly developing players that would then leave because the team never won. They did it much better than the current Phils farm system is doing it, but still all they did was provide talent to the league.

At some point the team has to put its cards down and say, we are going to try and win now. They did that last offseason after 5 seasons of futility, if they step back and try and "develop" over win again and shoot for 2022 they will just be restarting the cycle that we just went through.

[andyb]

But, as a stand alone post, AF is correct with his post. What bothers you is that he doesn’t acknowledge that Middleton needs to spend more money in the offseason to bring in more talent. I honestly think AF probably doesn’t feel the need for that and would want to wait another year or two. But, his post as stated is valid.

AF can speak for himself but it was not really a standalone post. It was a post that said this is a team that he'd be happy with 85 wins that can improve simply by waiting for prospects. Now one might assume that means not spending money, but the larger issue is the prospects. Ours are simply not above average. Bohm looks good among the close prospects. Who else though looks to be above average among position players? Not Haseley. And Howard is a really good pitching prospect but lots of organizations have several like him.

Assuming we'll get better by waiting for internal options to align with better luck is just not a good strategy and that is what AF's post implied. And it is not like he has not been saying we are a couple years away for several years.

Pretty sure I was in the 88-90 win prediction range also. I did not love all the offseason moves but they should have made us better in the short term. Disappointing development of younger players and bad luck is why we are not getting there.

[julio]

I dont see the rebuild being 2 years away, the simple fact is if it takes 2 years for us to contend, it has been a fruitless action.

This offseason the front office cashed in much of the rebuild to win now. We traded away our catcher, shortstop, possibly ace pitcher away in order to get players that were better NOW. Those players probably will not be better long term (well, Alfaro for Realmuto may not fall in that category) and we spent more than probably any team in league history on future contracts to win in the short term. If it takes 2 years all of those moves will have been failures.

After the 1978 season, when the Phillies had what was on paper the best team in the National League, but they fell short in the post-season, the Phillies bet the farm on the largest free agent signing to that point.... and finished in 4th place in 1979. For whatever reason, the cakewalk to the World Series that was supposed to happen... did not. The Phils' big gamble was evidently a failure.

Sometimes your plans just don't work out the way you expect them to - even if you've made the right decisions. But patience can bring rewards.

[bkeich]

the Phillies bet the farm on the largest free agent signing to that point.... and finished in 4th place in 1979. For whatever reason, the cakewalk to the World Series that was supposed to happen... did not. The Phils' big gamble was evidently a failure.

Sometimes your plans just don't work out the way you expect them to - even if you've made the right decisions. But patience can bring rewards.

Actually, you are kinda proving my point. The next year it finally worked and they won the WS. And that core also went to the WS 3 years later (with some additions), had a very good 1981,etc.. It wasnt years away, it was the beginning of a run, it was just that 1979 was a hiccup (a bad year by our pitching staff, McGraw and the rest of the bullpen were awful, a few starters had below average seasons and the Pirates just being "the team"). The Phils were not still years away after the spending, they tried to make a move and it worked, it was just delayed a year. Hopefully we are in that situation now, not still "years away" as has been suggested and what I was commenting on.

My comment was that we are not STILL 2 years away, we should be much closer and we should not be waiting for our prospects to get us over the top. As PC points out our farm system is pretty short right now, and what it is really short of is stars about to emerge, there is really no one (Bohm fills a need and might be a solid player, Howard is exciting but still a bit of a "maybe", Moniak is flawed but improving, etc.).

[Austinfan]

If Herrera and Franco hadn't gone belly up we'd be contenders, if either Pivetta or Velasquez stepped up, we'd be serious contenders, if Arano and SD were healthy with those other items we'd be ahead of the Braves. But those things didn't happen.

We need Bohm b/c we have a hole in the IF, once he arrives and Kingery moves to 2B, if Haseley is the player he looks to become (average fielding CF with shot at .800+ OPS) our lineup is set. If Cutch doesn't look to be 100% I'd resign Dickerson and let Cutch play part-time in 2020.

We have to extend Realmuto who is >> Alfaro. Which is why he cost Sixto.
Segura is a placeholder for Stott/Simmons/Garcia - if the kids are for real, they'll shoot up the system, if not, hopefully Stott can give us similar production at 24 in 2022.

Once your lineup is set, guys like Quinn are luxury items, you can wait on Moniak, you can hope on others.

As far as pitching, Cole would be great but would you really give ANY pitcher with his mileage 6 years, $180+M?
Just look at Sale.
I think you go with Nola, Arrieta, Eflin, Vargas, pick up a pitcher or two, start Howard in AAA, and focus on building a deep bullpen so you don't have to overwork your starters.

As we saw last decade, build the lineup and eventually you'll get lucky with pitchers, build around a rotation and let the lineup decline and eventually your pitchers will implode (2012, 2013).

[allentown]

When you have as good a major league team as the Phillies have, you don't look 2 years down the road, unless you have reason to expect that an extraordinary amount of minor league or new $ (new stadium or TV contract for an impoverished team) is going to arrive at that time. There is not a great amount of help coming in that time span. We will have to find our help on FA market,(including AAA and scrap heap dives), Rule V, return to health of our players, and ML coaches and development staff unlocking more from players we have. There is really nothing about our present situation which augurs for patience.