Discussion

julio 2018-02-13 21:46:23 UTC #1

Late addition to the spring training roster:

Presumably to replace Eric Fryer, who decided to retire the other day.

zambonir 2018-02-13 22:46:07 UTC #2

Loving the new thread!

julio 2018-02-13 23:48:20 UTC #3

Well, it was time, eh?

andyb 2018-02-14 15:51:59 UTC #4

Roman Quinn taking ground balls at SS. Tommy Joseph at 3B (never played there).

andyb 2018-02-14 16:45:29 UTC #5

ESPN on which young players should be locked up now. Nola is on the list. This is another way to use the Phillies cash to front load a deal. If we know that we want to give Nola a 5-year deal that is paying $20 million by the end of it, there are 2 advantages to doing it now:

A. front loading a bonus might mean slightly lower salaries on the back end
B. A long term deal that includes the next couple of low salary years will have a lower AAV than if we went year to year (say 2 years until we sign him to a 3-year deal). Getting Nola in on a deal with a $10-$15 million AAV when he is being paid $23 million in 5 years is a good thing/risk.

zambonir 2018-02-14 19:49:55 UTC #6

That Athletic article says they've hired 60 new front office employees and coaches in the last two years.

andyb 2018-02-14 20:01:00 UTC #7

Which is great, though I am guessing it is not quite 60 net new employees.

I think there is an arms race to beef up the number of coaches and video supervisors and analytics people around baseball. If the Phillies are closer to the top than the bottom that is a good thing. Of course none of this justifies spending less conceptually on the major league roster. Maybe they end up spending $5 million more on the front office. That is good, but it is probably an increase in line with the percentage revenue has increased in the sport lately.

We can walk and chew gum. We can spend more on the front office and analytics. We can spend more on minor league development. And we can spend more on player acquisition.

zambonir 2018-02-14 20:30:46 UTC #8

Yeah, but you need the people to actually walk the walk and chew the gum. I still think the slow pace was, in many cases, simply because they weren't interested in acting on the evaluations of the apparatus they inherited, whether because they didn't trust the personnel or didn't have any analytics.

Also doesn't matter whether they hired 60 people or hired 30 people and replaced 30 people, it's still a new day (as that article shows). And listen, they may fail miserably. But they will fail on their own terms. And most teams that combine this approach with $ don't fail.

nycphils 2018-02-14 22:06:24 UTC #9

I like it. Maybe he’s terrible and it doesn’t work but no harm in trying - also a face saving reason to option him out.

andyb 2018-02-14 22:56:14 UTC #10

Worth trying though since he and Franco are both right-handed I am not sure it means that much. Might be an excuse to send him down to learn it since they have an option and they can find playing time for him and Walding between 1B, 3B, and DH if they have to.

More excited about Quinn actually. Since he is a potential pinch runner for lots of people in late innings, the more defensive flexibility for him the better. Get a slow runner on first in the 7th or 8th inning, use Quinn as a pinch runner, and let Quinn play whatever position outside of catcher that is needed. That could be a valuable bench piece.

zambonir 2018-02-14 23:24:30 UTC #11

I wonder if we'll see the catchers in the OF at some point. Obviously Santana can also play 3B. I assume they wouldn't have him catch in ST.

And it's really too bad Joseph can't play that position, he'd probably have a perfectly good career as a back-up C with pop.

Philsmania 2018-02-14 23:40:17 UTC #12

The Phillies will be bringing back those hideous powder blue uniforms for select Thursday games this season.

donaldorc 2018-02-15 01:04:17 UTC #13

This was exactly my reaction when I read this.

zambonir 2018-02-15 03:52:10 UTC #14

I like 'em, I guess those years were just too important to me (both personally and with how the team did) to not have a positive association.

xogfog 2018-02-15 05:40:12 UTC #15

I'm with you Z, I grew up with those unis with those great 70's teams that culminated with the 1980 champs and even the Wheeze Kids wore them. Granted, they might look dated now, but at least they won't be rolled out too often, select Thursdays sounds fine to me.

Squire 2018-02-15 14:37:16 UTC #16

Signed a 27 year old minor league starter.

allentown 2018-02-15 18:35:42 UTC #17

Quite a lot of MLB experience. Strange guy, decent to good underlying stats (although one might hope for a lower MLB HR rate) but the ERA hasn't ever been good. He did have a 13-5 record one season. He sports a 4.93 ERA in 418 MLB IP, but a BB-rate below 3 and a K-rate above 8.

phillychuck 2018-02-16 21:59:30 UTC #18

From an article in the Athletic about our new approach to catching using analytics and video analysis:

"But the value at the margins is the relationships that they develop with our pitchers. How much confidence can they inspire in our pitchers?”

That was one of Carlos Ruiz's strengths. The longtime Phillies catcher was hailed for his pitch-calling intuition and for the way he cared about his pitchers. He was so good in those areas that it was possible to overlook mediocre framing numbers. When Ruiz was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers, a coach there provided the veteran catcher with information he had never seen — information about areas in the zone where he failed to receive a standard amount of called strikes. The Phillies had never broached that subject with Ruiz.

Hard to believe, Harry. This franchise has been SO retrograde.

andyb 2018-02-16 23:01:23 UTC #19

In the Phillies defense framing stats have not been readily available for much more than 5-10 years. So it was not something we could expect Charlie to implement at the end of his run. I am guessing it was something the analytics "intern" would have flagged at the end of the Amaro years, but it was probably behind 10 other things they had not thought about like shifts.

It will be interesting if one could successfully "teach" framing. Young catchers now will start to learn it. But can a middle aged catcher improve that much. Framing stats are used to identify catchers to acquire now. Teaching how to frame might be a completely new thing (as in the last 3 or 4 years).

phillychuck 2018-02-16 23:49:42 UTC #20

andy, I agree those stats were not readily available to US as fans, but the analytics-based teams like the A's and BoSox have been using those stats since the mid-90s (at least I remember reading about those teams tracking framing back then), they've just been proprietary to the teams that were actually interested. And those teams have long had an edge on us because of it.

Phils are actually attempting to teach it...that's in the rest of the article. Special instructors, specially designed pitching machines, and lots of video.