Discussion

zambonir 2018-03-04 22:19:45 UTC #181

You didn't but Gelb did. He brought up Longoria and others (including Singleton).

Austinfan 2018-03-05 01:35:52 UTC #182

Eickhoff was only hitting 89-90 but was very effective, 5 outs in the 1st inning (miscues) ran up his pitch count.
He must be deceptive because even the ML hitters had trouble getting wood on his FB, and his curve and change were good, the slider is average except he can back it up and jam RHs.

Thompson was popping the ball, 92-93 and looked effortless, his arm may be rebounding with some tweaks in his mechanics.

Dominquez was bringing it, consistent 97. Think he probably starts at Clearwater, but could reach the show by August if he develops his slider and decent command. He has the stuff to be a 7th to 9th inning pitcher.

nycphils 2018-03-05 13:55:22 UTC #183

I think they may skip Dominguez to Reading if he pitches out of the pen. Not sure what he learns blowing away A+ hitters with stuff that could get guys in the majors out.

andyb 2018-03-05 15:58:40 UTC #184

As we discuss this the Cardinals just gave Paul DeJong $26 million for 6 years. The White Sox had given Tim Anderson $25 million for 6 years in contracts to middle infielders with less than 1 year of service time. The De Jong deal then has 2 more years of options which could then buy out a couple of years of free agency for $25 million or so (for 2 years).

Let's do the math on what Crawford might earn over the next 6 years. 3 years near the minimum, maybe $1.8 million total if he is good. Then 3 years of arbitration. Galvis got $2 million, $4.35 and then $6.825 million but Crawford profiles as better than that (and the $2 million salary was coming off of a 645 OPS, 0.4 WAR season. Brandon Crawford's last 3 years of salary in his arbitration years were $3.175 million, $6 million, and $8.2 million.

So Crawford made close to $19 million over 6 years. Add 6 years of baseball inflation and that would be maybe $24 million on future anticipated MLB revenue levels. So Crawford is a good comp for the De Jong deal.

Given the Phillies' financial resources it might be wise to lock up Crawford and Kingery on similar cost-certainty deals. It has an additional advantage of an AAV in the $4-$5 million range in the 6th year when they might be making more than $10 million on an arbitration deal. Some of these deals may not work out, but they are actually pretty smart for teams that want cost certainty on players that might end up as stars, especially if you get some option years.

Austinfan 2018-03-05 16:50:09 UTC #185

Reading is a tough park for a young pitcher, they may want to see if his secondary pitches are good enough for the jump, but once he shows he's ready, I think he'll fly up the organization.

allentown 2018-03-05 17:05:16 UTC #186

I think you explained here why it would be an incredibly stupid, rather than a smart deal, for the Phillies. As you and I keep saying with regard to FA: the Phillies are rolling in $ and unconstrained by cap space. For such a team, 'cost certainty' in the arb years is pretty much worthless. Certainly any possible worth on the upside pales next to the downside in such a deal: we lose one year of team control, the team takes the full risk of injury/less than anticipated development/loss of motivation with the big guaranteed contract. I don't think it benefits the Phillies at all to sign up our kids in advance of last year prior to FA, UNLESS the deal includes some of those FA years. So, if Kingery comes up a bit after the season starts, we control him for 7 seasons. It likely makes sense to extend him a few seasons down the road, IF we can buy out a couple of FA seasons. Then he is a Phillie for the 9 seasons we want him most and we project on the value of declining years 9 years from now. As with Kingery, there is a lot of projection involved with Crawford. I'd wait a couple years to extend him, as well. He might be great, he might never hit enough to be an overall plus as a starting SS.

andyb 2018-03-05 17:37:43 UTC #187

What I was getting at though was that the lower AAV in 6 years might be really important if we are trying to squeeze a few stars into our payroll. So overpaying now (when cash is easy) and underpaying later (when it is tighter) can be smart.

Of course you also want the options. The De Jong deal would be a few million less without those options.

Smart organizations tend to lock up their stars rather than going year to year. There are benefits in keeping the player happy in addition to cost certainty. You might even get the added benefit of enhanced trade value if a player develops and is thus underpaid. It is not all about counting dollars and cents. There are big picture concerns.

zambonir 2018-03-05 18:07:28 UTC #188

Yeah it's all well and good to say the Phillies have plenty of money in the next 4-5 years but that isn't necessarily certain in the next 6-7 years, especially when there will also be a new CBA. Exaggerated example but if Dallas Keuchel, Manny Machado, Mike Trout and a top free agent reliever are all on the team by 2021 and Rhys Hoskins is a $20 million player, the picture will look a lot different.

But there's something to be said for both approaches (the early contract, or waiting a little longer and buying out FA years). If I'm not mistaken the Phillies only did that via options with Herrera, and they are team-friendly (for any team) to boot.

andyb 2018-03-05 19:28:04 UTC #189

ESPN Future Power rankings. Phillies 7th. 18th current, 10th future, 5th financial, 9th front office. Braves 5th overall and the Nats are 8th. Mets (18th) and Marlins (30th) trail.

andyb 2018-03-05 20:07:22 UTC #190

Fangraphs makes my case to sign Arrieta:

Check out that profit slide. $90 million in 2016. 2017 data not in but should be close to that. And we are definitely looking at $100+ this year with the lower payroll and that extra $50 million MLBAM bonus.

zambonir 2018-03-05 21:03:37 UTC #191

Well the real question might be what is Arietta waiting for?

It doesn't really bother me if they don't spend money, so long as some of it is being spent on other things, and, when necessary, can legitimately be used in the future (it's not true that it all has to be spent this year - if they are really going to sign Machado to a $300 million deal that MLBAM money could certainly go to that, and once they do end up with a much bigger payroll it might still be a while before the profits go back to winning levels).

As the article notes the young pitchers aren't so good that anyone is really being blocked (which is otherwise the reason why they aren't spending more on positions players or a third reliever) but there is still legitimate reason to wonder how much better Arrieta will make the club, and especially what he'll provide in 2019 and 2020.

The article also suggest they sign both Arrieta and Lynn, but to me if you do that you may as well also get Moustakas (though he's not Klentak's type of player and you have all those extra IF options) and maybe a veteran catcher.

I still think they are going to sign someone, but if they don't, it's a strong indication that they still aren't sure what they have - that as many as five of the eight position player spots (LF, RF, C, SS, 3B) are not yet ready to be the core of a playoff-caliber team.

andyb 2018-03-05 21:16:41 UTC #192

I am not a fan of signing 2 (or Moustakas for that matter). There is definitely a use to develop young talent and the higher quality starter will make the biggest difference. Lynn would clearly be better than our young players now, but I am willing to have 3 slots for young non-Nola starters as opposed to 4.

With Moustakas I am not sure he is that much better than what they have. Franco deserves another opportunity (the developing young talent where there is potential for improvement theory) and frankly Kingery could be almost as good as Moustakas as well.

I guess the missed opportunity in the past 2 years is that we could have been more aggressive about taking bad contracts from somebody to get more high end prospects like the Braves have done. They did it with Matt Harrison though in that case they would have sent over cash if they did not take Harrison.

From the chatter out there it really looks like we want either Arrieta or Lynn and are waiting for the price or number of years to come down.

California_Dreamin 2018-03-05 21:27:00 UTC #193

zambonir...Arrieta is waiting for Nats owner Lerner to give a thumbs up to signing the righty. I hope I am wrong but I have always believed that Boras was using the Phils to get the Nats to bite, and I believe they will this week.

I do believe the Phils are Arrieta's fall back team and if Washington were to ever simply say no to Boras the Phils probably would be in the cat bird's seat. But I believe that if the Phils were really #1 on Arrieta's list then Middleton would have heard from Boras and he indicated that he had not.

Arrieta is clearly one of those Boras players that he basically negotiates with ownership to sign and his relationship with the 92 year old Lerner is excellent.

I feel badly for the Phillies because I suspect that if/when Arrieta signs with the Nats some phans who truly believed Jake was coming to Philadelphia will criticize the team and Klentak specifically when logically if this was between Washington and Philadelphia it was never going to happen.

Please note this addendum....I hope I am wrong.

zambonir 2018-03-05 21:34:45 UTC #194

It was a rhetorical question, but agreed. Though I don't think Boras really needs the Phils to get the Nats to bite, they are just playing the same game of chicken with Arrieta that the Phillies are. If the Phillies wanted to hand out a rich five-year deal Arrieta would be here already, but the Nats don't want to do that either. The difference is Klentak has full authority and plenty of money to spend whereas Rizzo probably needs Lerner to sign off on exceeding the luxury tax (or Lerner needs to overrule Rizzo in doing so).

All else being equal though, of course he won't choose the Phillies over the Nats if there are offers from both. He may not even choose the Phillies over the Brewers if they get back in.

EDmuch 2018-03-05 21:43:55 UTC #195

If Crawford has this year the kind of power showing that DeJong had last year, then we can start talking extension. But until then, any kind of comparison between DeJong and Crawford is kind of silly. and I know that in saying that someone is going to produce some kind of statistical analysis that demonstrates that Crawford's walks are more important than DeJong's power.

Austinfan 2018-03-05 22:37:21 UTC #196

So far this spring the young starters look just fine:
Thompson back up to 92-93
Eickhoff seems over his arm troubles, want to see an uptick but his secondary pitches look fine.
Velasquez still has command problems but is bringing it
Eflin was hitting 94-95 and should improve as he gets used to using his lower body in his delivery
Haven't seen Lively yet but he's pitching well, at least statistically.
Haven't seen Pivetta either, but we know he has a ML arm.

So 6 pitchers for 4 spots, with Leiter as the long RP and spot starter.
I'm not sure Lynn or Cobb would provide much of an improvement.
And I don't trust Arrieta's arm, he might give you one or two good seasons then fall off the cliff.
So at this point, it makes sense to keep auditioning the young pitchers unless prices go down.

Anderson, Tavares and Eshelman are AAA depth, but by the end of the season -
Kilome, De Los Santos, Irvin, Waguespack, El Garcia, Romero, Sanchez, Medina, Suarez, Howard and Mills will be filling out the AAA and AA pitching staffs and pushing for 2019 jobs.
So by next spring, any veteran we add could be pushed to the end of the starting staff if not off the roster.

zambonir 2018-03-05 22:51:34 UTC #197

The only thing signing a veteran pitcher does now, potentially, is stop them from acquiring a veteran pitcher in July or December. Because I guarantee the 2019 starting five will include a pitcher who is not currently in the organization.

That's another reason to just go with the kids. You're developing trade assets as well as potential contributors. And you've still got Hutchison too.

But Arrieta is still plainly an upgrade over any 5th and 6th starter the Phillies go with. Lynn and Cobb too. And the health/performance histories of most of these kids makes assuming the best for them no more rose-colored than assuming Arrieta can go back to 4.0 WAR.

It won't bother me if they sit it out, but there is an opportunity to take advantage of here if they are able to, to get one of these guys on team-favorable terms, and to actually be .500 weak NL.

andyb 2018-03-05 23:16:14 UTC #198

Still not sure we have any quality starters after Nola in the rotation. Odds are one or two emerge but four is unlikely.

They all have issues:
Velasquez - control and command
Eickhoff - Throwing less hard than a couple of years ago. Not sure he can win with that.
Pivetta - Good candidate to improve but we don't know if he is ever better than a back of the rotation guy.
Thompson - Lots to prove. 92-93 not that great.
Lively and Leiter - control pitchers who change speeds. These types of pitchers are often ahead of the hitters in Spring Training. 5th/6th starter type stuff.
Eflin - His 94 is pretty straight and he needs to miss more bats

Numbers do not necessarily equal quality. At least we have the depth to do a rolling 6th starter over the course of the season with judicious use of the DL. If we get Arrieta and some of the pitchers wait a little longer - what is the problem with that?

baseballoldie 2018-03-05 23:33:36 UTC #199

I tend to agree with CD that Arrieta is looking for the Nats to step up. I would think Arrieta wants to play for a team that has a legit chance to win a championship now vs. 3-4 years from now.

zambonir 2018-03-06 02:11:23 UTC #200

Well, I certainly hope they are closer than that. They likely can't win one this year,but if they did sign Arrieta and then acquired another starter and Machado (or Harper) next year, they should be a playoff team from 2019-2021, and any playoff team can win it all. If not that will mean a lot of other things went wrong. But yes, they probably have to outbid the Nats, if the Nats want him. Just like the Cubs outbid the Sox for Lester.