Phillies to Sign Reliever Joaquin Benoit

julio 2016-12-05 04:14:08 UTC #1

Salisbury reports the Phils are close to signing a veteran reliever:

The team is close to signing veteran reliever Joaquin Benoit, sources tell CSNPhilly.com. The winter meetings officially begin on Monday. The signing is expected to be announced before the meetings end on Thursday.

Benoit, 39, is a veteran of 15 seasons in the majors. He is coming off a strong 2016 season in which he pitched in 51 games for Seattle and Toronto and recorded a 2.81 ERA.

Hot stove heats up!

Phillies 2016-2017 offseason Discussion

donaldorc 2016-12-05 10:37:40 UTC #2

Adding to the youth movement. (sarcasm alert)

tom81 2016-12-05 14:53:20 UTC #3

Sounds like we are adding Benoit after the rule 5 draft if he passes the physical. Good move IMO as all he costs is $.

andyb 2016-12-05 15:08:10 UTC #4

Good move. As I have posted before, the lousy bullpen from last season was a fixable problem with money and they have largely done that with two additional relievers. Not sure we should get in any bidding wars at the moment for a closer. But depth was needed.

Now we are up to a grand total of 3 players on the 40-man roster (Neshek, Kendrick, Benoit when signed) that are over 30 years old. Hellickson does not get there till the first week of the season.

Austinfan 2016-12-05 17:25:28 UTC #5

And all three are July trade bait or October hasta la vista signings.

Look for some TC tryout signings with minor league options (and deadlines, if they're not good enough to want "fish or cut bait" clauses, they're not good enough to waste a signing bonus).

I think eventually they'll want a home grown bullpen, but can't do everything in a year or two - the veteran RPs buy time to develop young RPs in the minors.

Philsmania 2016-12-05 17:31:59 UTC #6

Benoit's had some very good seasons and somevery bad ones. He's a box of chocolates. You don't know what you are going to get.

julio 2016-12-05 17:40:49 UTC #7

In other words, he's a relief pitcher?

andyb 2016-12-05 18:21:58 UTC #8

And the limitations of analysis with small sample sizes. Benoit had 2 different 24 inning seasons last year. 5.18 ERA in the first and 0.38 ERA in the second. While his control improved in the second half there was really nothing fundamentally different. 4 HR in one half and only 1 HR in the second is largely luck. Lots of the "variation" we see in relief pitchers is simply small sample size. More importantly Benoit has been pretty good for 7 years with variation largely based on HR rate which is often due to luck.

The wheels could always come off at his age at any time, but on a 1-year deal that is really not that important.

zambonir 2016-12-05 20:06:18 UTC #9

Good signing, will still be interesting to see if they trade Neris. They certainly can still use him.

AP report says Benoit is getting "he's probably the closer" money.

julio 2016-12-05 20:40:58 UTC #10

Looks like the Benoit signing is for real!

VoteForKalas 2016-12-05 22:39:02 UTC #11

Rebuilding is tough, lol. Signing a 39 yr old mediocre stopgap reliever is considered good news. Sad.

jimbomill 2016-12-05 23:09:53 UTC #12

Well put.

Lucky_Beagle 2016-12-06 02:31:38 UTC #13

I can't believe "journey man" relief pitchers approaching 40 years of age are now making 7.5 million a season.

bkeich 2016-12-06 05:17:49 UTC #14

That is actually a pretty pessimistic view of Benoit. His bad seasons were all before 2010.

Since 2010 he has a 2.32 ERA in 426 innings and a WHIP of 0.986. I think we would struggle to find a reliever with better and more consistent stats over the last 7 seasons. His only bad period was 24 innings (SSS) with Seattle last year, but he hasnt had a bad year in the last 7.

julio 2016-12-06 17:13:07 UTC #15

Benoit signing is official:

...and somehow, I'm not traumatized by seeing Mariot DFA'ed!

bkeich 2016-12-06 17:25:03 UTC #16

I was hoping they would DFA Mariot to allow them to select in the Rule V draft, but Benoit is much better than anything they would have picked.

So I guess we are not selecting this year.

julio 2016-12-06 17:27:47 UTC #17

Assuming the reports about Benoit's salary are accurate ($7.5 million), this means that the Phillies have now committed $41.2 million for 2017, for four players - plus buyouts/future payments of $13 million for Matt Harrison, $10 million for Ryan Howard, and $1 million for Charlie Morton. Total is about $65 million. There are three arbitration cases pending (Gomez, Galvis, Hernandez) - $12 to $15 milllion total? Everybody else on the roster will likely come in at under $1 million per. That implies another $15 million or so. Barring additional acquisitions, that's something like $90-95 million overall. There's certainly room to add salary - assuming that the players added make sense.

julio 2016-12-06 17:32:07 UTC #18

The deadline to outright players off the 40-man, prior to the Rule 5 draft, was yesterday; the deadline to ask waivers for that purpose was last Thursday. There's no allowance in the rule for DFA'ing somebody to create a roster spot (for Rule 5 purposes) after those deadlines...so the Rule 5 ship sailed last Thursday, when they did not request outright waivers on anybody.

Philsmania 2016-12-06 18:04:57 UTC #19

They can still DFA Klein.

julio 2016-12-06 18:57:35 UTC #20

Yes, but see above. They cannot clear a 40-man spot for Rule 5 purposes at this time. That deadline is past.