2019-2020 Phillies Offseason News and Speculation

allentown 2019-10-11 13:26:16 UTC #202

The guy I was most leery of in that trade was Appel. He seemed like classic PR eyewash -- a failed #1 -- he didn't seem heathy, either and his attitude didn't seem good. I loved Williams and Alfaro. Eickhoff seemed a nice throw-in. Also edited.

julio 2019-10-11 13:45:23 UTC #203

That's Mark Appel, for those who are confused by the references to Mark Prior.

Squire 2019-10-11 13:46:34 UTC #204

Yikes. Sorry about that. Edited.

andyb 2019-10-11 14:59:07 UTC #205

Arbitration projections are out:

Cesar Hernandez: $11.8 million ($7.75M) - getting expensive, probably a non-zero chance of a nontender but I would bet on him staying
J.T. Realmuto: $10.3 million ($5.9M) - Phillies will offer and hope to get a long term deal. Really surprised his projection is not more which shows how messed up the arbitration system is (depending greatly on past contracts).
Maikel Franco: $6.7 million ($5.2M) - likely nontender
Hector Neris: $4.7 million ($1.8M) - Phillies will offer
Blake Parker: $4.7 million ($1.8M) - likely nontender at that price. Could explore retaining him for less
Vince Velasquez: $3.9 million ($2.249M) - Phillies should offer
Jose Alvarez: $3 million ($1.925M) - Phillies should offer
Zach Eflin: $3 million ($590,000) - Phillies should offer
Adam Morgan: $1.6 million ($1.1M) - Phillies should offer
Jerad Eickhoff: $1.5 million ($975,000) - likely nontender
Mike Morin: $1.2 million ($700,000) - 50/50 chance of retention
Jose Pirela: $900,000 ($575,000) - likely nontender
Andrew Knapp: $800,000 ($565,000) - 75% chance of offering
Edubray Ramos: $800,000 ($573,500) - depends on his health
Phil Gosselin: $700,000 ($483,000) - likely nontender

bkeich 2019-10-11 15:24:52 UTC #206

andyb:

Cesar Hernandez: $11.8 million ($7.75M) - getting expensive, probably a non-zero chance of a nontender but I would bet on him staying
J.T. Realmuto: $10.3 million ($5.9M) - Phillies will offer and hope to get a long term deal. Really surprised his projection is not more which shows how messed up the arbitration system is (depending greatly on past contracts).
Maikel Franco: $6.7 million ($5.2M) - likely nontender
Hector Neris: $4.7 million ($1.8M) - Phillies will offer
Blake Parker: $4.7 million ($1.8M) - likely nontender at that price. Could explore retaining him for less
Vince Velasquez: $3.9 million ($2.249M) - Phillies should offer
Jose Alvarez: $3 million ($1.925M) - Phillies should offer
Zach Eflin: $3 million ($590,000) - Phillies should offer
Adam Morgan: $1.6 million ($1.1M) - Phillies should offer
Jerad Eickhoff: $1.5 million ($975,000) - likely nontender
Mike Morin: $1.2 million ($700,000) - 50/50 chance of retention
Jose Pirela: $900,000 ($575,000) - likely nontender
Andrew Knapp: $800,000 ($565,000) - 75% chance of offering
Edubray Ramos: $800,000 ($573,500) - depends on his health
Phil Gosselin: $700,000 ($483,000) - likely nontender

Honestly, the only Non-Tender I see is Franco. We need pitchers so bad that anyone that we can option to AAA will get an offer.

Eickhoff might be a non-tender, but at that price if we could stash him in AAA, why not. Not like there is anyone there he is keeping down.

Blake Parker might be an interesting argument, but once again, are we going to get a replacement cheaper? He did have good years in 2017 and 2018.

Pirela serves very little purpose, but if willing to be in AAA, he isnt a bad 6th/7th OF. He actually has a near-700 OPS lifetime.

I probably am the strongest critic of Knapp, I find him to be a just awful player. Bad defensively, can't hit and makes way too many foolish mistakes after he gets on base (when he walks since he can't hit ML pitching). That said, as a 4th catcher he is still cheap, hopefully he is our backup in AAA or lower. He really is a bad player in almost all ways.

Phil Gosselin... we need backup utility players since Kingery will be our backup almost everywhere. He isnt good but as shown this year we need depth. At that price he isnt a bad bench player in AAA waiting for a couple injuries to happen. Hopefully he only plays 10 games in ML if that is his role.

Ramos. Still cheap, has had success when his head is screwed on right, and frankly that was just a single incident really. No reason to give up on him yet.

bkeich 2019-10-11 15:29:18 UTC #207

Is it time to try and lock up Neris for a few years into his FA time? He isnt a perfect reliever, but he is successful, we just need a manager that realizes when he is in his horrific slumps. On a good team he would be a very good setup man and he throws a completely unhittable pitch (partially because it is a ball) He would be a good playoff pitcher since he can come in and get very good hitters out (if he is "on").

Buy out his remaining time and see if you can get a reasonable rate on some years he is going to be a FA.

He could be a FA after 2022, so maybe a little early still, but we could probably get him to sign a 5 year contract and get 2 years of a discount on a solid reliever.

mdougherty12 2019-10-11 15:34:18 UTC #208

Alfaro was certainly the #1 catching prospect in the Rangers' system at the time, not sure where you got the idea he was #2. Here's John Sickels' list from the off-season prior to the Hamels trade:

Texas had a fairly highly rated system at the time, but they didn't get a ton of great players out of it, Gallo and Alfaro have been the best.

bkeich 2019-10-11 15:41:25 UTC #209

To speak to what Andy said... look at the order of these 2. They are both entering their last year of arbitration and would be eligible to be FAs after next season.

Realmuto is worth what... 3 times as much? 5 times? Yes, andy is right, the process is screwed up that values Carlos Hernandez (an underrated, solid player) over JT Realmuto (honestly a near-MVP candidate, should be in the top 10-15).

mdougherty12 2019-10-11 16:10:23 UTC #210

Super 2 status has a big effect, 4th year of arbitration for Hernandez vs. 3rd year for Realmuto.

andyb 2019-10-11 16:37:07 UTC #211

But past contracts and loud stats like home runs (compared to WAR) seem to have a larger effect. Cesar deserves a little more as a super Two. But any fare arbitration system should probably pay JT $20 million a year. 1B and other stars like Mookie Betts seem to be the only ones that get up to that level.

Yet another way the current CBA is broken.

zambonir 2019-10-11 17:56:12 UTC #212

You never get the top package of guys in a deadline deal, even for a controllable star. Alfaro was definitely the #1 piece but Williams was the second choices after other guys (including Mazara and Gallo in Williams' case) in the Rangers system. I don't recall if there was a better pitcher, I do recall people being pretty impressed they got Thompson.

I think it was fine to take a gamble on Appel (TNSAAP) and the guy we passed up hasn't worked out after all (so far). That was still a great trade, for a closer.

Regarding the Astros/Cole, that team has something like two dozen investors (at least) in the ownership group, and some other players to lock up (or move on from). It would be out of character for them to go into the tax, even if that team's years of being cheap were under previous ownership. The Yankees are our real competition there, unless he wants to be out West.

I don't think MLBTR projections are always spot-on, and also, I believe they are projections for what a player would get if he wins his hearing, not if he settles, right? Cesar is making $7.75 and could easily be traded or non-tendered; he would presumably take $10 million. Phillies could even walk away if it did go to arbitration and they lost. For a 1-2 WAR player, even with a dwindling bat, it simply isn't that much money, even if such production should theoretically be replaceable for less. The same argument does not apply to Franco since he's replacement level or worse.

andyb 2019-10-11 18:29:13 UTC #213

I think Alfaro, Thompson, and Williams were all top 100 prospects at the time. One can't fault Klentak of course because he was not there at the time, though it was considered a pretty good package even if all the top prospects had risk. We also did get Realmuto for Alfaro, so it is not as if the trade had no value. Thompson's stuff backed up and Williams did make the majors and have a decent rookie year (what happened after that is a little on Klentak, either for not being able to develop him further or not trading him when he had more value).

It would be interesting to look back on the board but did anyone really think it was a bad trade at the time? It won't end up being a great trade, but that is mainly because half of top 100 prospects fail and we may have hit on only 1 of 3.

andyb 2019-10-11 18:34:08 UTC #214

I think they are trying to project the settlement amount as few of these go to hearings anyway.

zambonir 2019-10-11 18:50:59 UTC #215

Well that seems mighty high for Cesar then - especially since they say their own model factors in more recent seasons over historical performance, and that offensive counting stats count more than defense, position or advanced stats. Not that they'd go to a hearing but that number implies he'd file for $13.5 million and Phillies might counter at $10 million.

Not that I want to see a guy like Cesar get squeezed. I suppose if you're looking at either $10 million or a non-tender you might take the non-tender and hope to get a two-year deal somewhere, but would be for less money.

It's actually too bad they don't like his arm on the other side of the IF more (albeit, correctly). You could do worse than to sign him for two years, $16 million as a super-sub. Then again, Cabrera only got $3.5 million from the Rangers this season (another irritant, that he was so good for his first team and bad for his second team last year, and the reverse this year).

This will definitely be one of those things where the new manager will make a difference. If they get Maddon he's probably quite happy to have his new Ben Zobrist in Kingery. Another manager might push back and tell Klentak he'd rather have everyday players or traditional platoons.

julio 2019-10-11 19:41:38 UTC #216

I would like to think that how a manager uses players will be determined by those players' particular skills and abilities, rather than by the manager's "preferred system." I'm reminded of football head coaches who "believe" in a particular "system," and try to impose that system on players who simply don't have the particular skills to execute that system.

Good management is about understanding individuals' strengths and weaknesses, and deploying them in ways that take advantage of their strengths, and avoid exposing their weaknesses. In other words, your approach is defined by the capabilities of your actual personnel - not by belief in some particular "system." Managers who go down that other path - who let their own egos get in the way of reality - tend to be failures.

zambonir 2019-10-11 20:01:17 UTC #217

For sure. But the same goes for Klentak. If his new manager believes (as many here do) that the current set-up is not maximizing Kingery's potential, he should say so. If the new manager believes that the team would be better with a full-time CF than Kingery/Haseley platoon, he should say so.

Kapler and Klentak talked every day and were obviously aligned more often than not, but the passion for multi-taskers seemed to be more Kapler's than Klentak's (and came from Maddon and the Dodgers).

When they went over the entire roster three weeks ago I'm sure Kapler gave similiar opinions about who should play where and who should be on the roster going forward. A new manager will also do that. It will even be part of his job interview.

It's a two-way street. If you hire a manager who likes certain things, as a GM you should try to give him some of those things. If you're a manager who can't get everything he wants, or whose GM likes certain things, you adjust as well.

andyb 2019-10-11 21:05:35 UTC #218

One of the articles I read about the Cardinals in an NLCS preview talked about how they had the best defense in the league by many advanced metrics like defensive runs saved, but also were among the teams doing the least shifts. Now the team that does the least shifts these days still does 5 times as many as the teams that did the most a decade ago, but it does point out in general that there are multiple approaches to the game.

Dusty Baker is an awful analytics manager (though he has bench coaches these days that would get him closer to the norm), but he is a good manager because he gets millionaires to consistently play hard and play as a team. Maddon is appealing because he has a history of doing both, but there is a nagging suspicion based on second half performances that Kapler's weakest point was in getting players to play hard for him (and thus improve).

allentown 2019-10-11 22:49:11 UTC #219

Exactly. Square peg/round hole seldom works.

zambonir 2019-10-12 01:05:57 UTC #220

Gelb on the press conference (I posted about this in the Kapler fired thread too but I guess it's really more "off-season" news at this point.)

“What John didn’t hear was any explanation of why we were 20-36 over the last two Septembers, or more important, what was going to be in place to assure that that didn’t happen again,” MacPhail said. “So he came back and made his decision.”

Forget, for a moment, the fact that the most recent Phillies season went sideways during an 11-16 June, or that their latest September shortfall reflected an indifferent trade-deadline strategy employed by the front office, or that the Nationals traded their 22nd-ranked prospect (according to Baseball America) for a mid-tier reliever who has recorded so many important outs in October. For 56 minutes and 56 seconds, it was harder and harder to see how these Phillies will find a path toward relevancy.

Did Middleton, the club’s managing partner, fire Kapler because he was unpopular in this city?

“It’s always a factor,” Middleton said

(SNIP)

“What happened here happens every day in businesses,” Middleton said. “It has happened repeatedly in my 40 years. If you talk to the people who ran the companies and reported to me over those 30 or 40 years, they will tell you, John steps in with us and he says, ‘No you can’t do that, you’re going to do this instead. I’ve listened to you, but you haven’t convinced me and you do that.’ There is lots of talk about how that emasculates people, but that’s nonsense. That doesn’t do anything like that. This happens all the time and, in fact, it’s a learning experience.”

So, what is the learning experience for Klentak? It’s hard to admit a mistake, especially if one doesn’t believe there was a mistake made. Klentak and MacPhail advocated for Kapler or at least resisted Middleton’s impulse. It is Middleton’s team. Maybe that is the lesson.

(And yes since I'm clipping a bit liberally feel free to subscribe to the Athletic)

allentown 2019-10-12 12:03:03 UTC #221

I think these are the key sentences from that article:

"The Phillies would rather not blame behind-the-scenes communication and delegation issues that started to compromise Kapler — or the fact that they opted for an inexperienced manager and surrounded him with an inexperienced coaching staff and armed them with a technological infrastructure that was not ready to influence major on-field decisions."