2019 Minor League Spring Training

julio 2019-03-31 20:31:01 UTC #83

Hmmm... I can do that. The April minor league transactions thread will be up in a couple of days (assuming MLBAM does their work and lists transactions!). I can add the roster graphic (as of 4/1) at the top of the post. I keep the spreadsheet all the time (I don't update it daily - retired people may have "more time," but it's amazing what all comes along to fill that time! - but I update far more frequently than monthly.), so it doesn't represent much of a burden.

phillychuck 2019-04-01 13:09:42 UTC #84

Just reported on another web site that Josh Tols is injured and out for about 2 months.

andyb 2019-04-01 14:26:29 UTC #85

The move that surprises me the most there is Pipkin. And he would not be getting the promotion if they did not see something they like because he is the sort of raw, younger pitcher that typically takes time. De La Cruz may be temporary because of Pelletier's injury (and Ortiz), hopefully anyway. I always thought Trejo would make the jump because he was older and did play well last year.

At catcher, Gutierrez also has 2 years in GCL, so it is not a shock that they pushed him. And they did trade one part of the competition in Lenin Rodriguez.

Lakewood is certainly looking more interesting than we thought originally. Even Gowdy there from the start is a bit of a surprise to me. He is actually only about a year behind where we thought he might be if he had been a 1 stop a year player.

fish 2019-04-01 17:58:49 UTC #86

He’s needed a mechanical adjustment to his swing to stop beating the ball into the ground. Hopefully that’s what they’re working on and this is just a chance to work through it early on against lesser competition (though I would have thought there would be more resources to help him with that at Clearwater).

phillychuck 2019-04-02 00:04:15 UTC #87

Interesting organization of our rosters from BigEd over at BSG: (I'm working on the formatting--Ed had it set up to use color, which is not supported in Discourse (AFAIK)---so, smileys indicate jumps or double jumps). Previous year's placement is where the player finished the season.

Lehigh Valley Initial Roster
Down from Phillies = Anderson, Arano, Cozens, A.Davis, EDLS (#6 prospect), Eickhoff, Rios, Suarez (#10), Walding
Repeating at Lehigh Valley = Canelo, Edgar Garcia (#28), Gilbert, Irvin (#16), McBride
Added to Lehigh Valley = Lane Adams, Rob Brantly, Phil Gosselin, Josh Martin, Gift Ngoepe, James Pazos, Shane Robinson, Sean Rodriguez, Andrew Romine
Up from Reading = Grullon, Jan Hernandez, Romero (#7), Tomscha

Reading Initial Roster
Repeating at Reading = Bossart, Aaron Brown, Dohy (#22), Hall, Haseley (#3), Leftwich, Listi, Randolph (#25), Seabold (#29)
Added to Reading = Ali Castillo
Up from Clearwater = Bettencourt, Cumana, Falter, Gamboa (#13), Hammer, Jakob Hernandez, Lartigue, Llovera (#15), Medina (#2), Moniak (#9), Parkinson (#21), Rosso, Russ, L.Williams
Up from Lakewood = Antequera, Stephen

Clearwater Initial Roster
Repeating at Clearwater = Brito (#20), Cabral, Dyer, Gomez, Hennigan, Requena
Up from Lakewood = Alastre, Armas, Brogdon, Andrew Brown, Carrasco, Duran (#19), Fitch, J.Garcia, Howard (#5), D.Jones, Maton (#18), Muzziotti (#12), Scheiner, Stokes, Vierling, Warren, Young (#17)
Up from Williamsport = Aklinski, Danny Mayer, Austin Ross

Lakewood Initial Roster
Repeating at Lakewood = Kroon, McArthur, Stobbe
Added to Lakewood = Gilmael Troya (Rule V-NYY)
Up from Williamsport = Bohm (#1), Tyler Carr, Colton Eastman, Ethan Evanko, Gowdy (#24), Jonathan Guzman, Jake Holmes, Ethan Lindow, Oscar Marcelino, Rafael Marchan (#14), Robinson Martinez, Malvin Matos, Francisco Morales (#8)
Up from GCL = Carlos De La Cruz, Luis Garcia (#4), Abrahan Gutierrez, Tyler McKay, Jhordany Mezquita (#26), Jack Perkins, Dominic Pipkin (#23), Victor Santos, James Smith, Yerwin Trejo

Injured
OF = J.Ortiz (#11) (LWD), Jose Pujols (REA), Kevin Markham (CLW), Ben Pelletier (WPT)
LHP = Tols (REA)

Missing from Initial Rosters
1B = Martin (CLW)
2B = Mims (CLW), Brayan Gonzalez (WPT)
SS = Guthrie (LWD), Seth Lancaster (WPT)
3B = Jesus Henriquez (WPT)
IF = Raul Rivas (CLW)
OF = Keudy Bocio (WPT)
C = Nerluis Martinez (WPT), Jesse Wilkening (WPT)
RHP = Eshelman (LV), Viza (LV), Hibbs (REA), McGarry (REA), Alexis Rivero (REA), Jose Taveras (REA), Ben Brown (WPT), Eric White (WPT)
LHP = Leibrandt (LV), Singer (LV), Windle (LV), Cleavinger (CLW), Fanti (CLW), Keylan Killgore (LWD), Manuel Silva (#30) (WPT)

phillychuck 2019-04-02 14:24:26 UTC #88

AAA and AA rotations (both 6-man) not necessarily in order:

LV: Eickhoff/Irvin/De Los Santos/Suarez/Romero/Anderson

Reading: Medina/Seabold/Parkinson/Falter/Llovera/Rosso

Squire 2019-04-02 14:25:08 UTC #89

Phillychuck predictions or published somewhere?

phillychuck 2019-04-02 14:30:06 UTC #90

Published. I got them second hand from a poster at another board...I'll try to find a link and post it here.

Here's the LV link:

Can't find the Reading announcement.

On another front, the Reading and Lakewood infield cornerss are seriously over-crowded...at Reading, Hall, Listi, and Williams all need playing time at the corners, as does Ali Castillo. You could DH one, but in the minors you need to get repetitions at your position. I wonder if Williams is being groomed at multiple positions?

At Lakewood, Bohm, Holmes, and Stobbe all need to play 3B, and Matt Kroon will take most of the 1B time.

andyb 2019-04-02 14:59:20 UTC #91

That was the logjam I was looking at. Part of the reason it would have been nice for Bohm to be ready to play at Clearwater. Bohm should get most of the starts, so I imagine we'll see some DH starts and even OF starts for Holmes and Stobbe. Can't imagine either will play SS with both Garcia and Guzman there.

phillychuck 2019-04-02 15:07:31 UTC #92

Yeah, Garcia should start almost every day except for needed rest. It's got to be really interesting for Garcia, who I've heard has never played in cold weather, to come to Lakewood in April.

Holmes got at least one spring training start at 1B when the original starter got scratched.

By the way, Jake Scheiner is probably my favorite sort-of-overlooked prospect. Given the awful hitting environment in Lakewood, he ripped the cover off the ball last season. I hope he gets to Reading before the end of the season. He might have the most offensive potential of all of our third-sackers, including Bohm.

julio 2019-04-02 15:25:05 UTC #93

andyb 2019-04-02 15:28:52 UTC #94

Good Athletic overview on the assignments.

Carlos De La Cruz "played his way into the assignment" though Pelletier is expected back in April. Good notes about Gowdy (touching 94), Santos, and Pipkin. Oscar Marcelino also hitting triple digits this Spring.

Spencer Howard now seen by most as best pitching prospect. Ortiz had a hamstring injury in March and is expected at Clearwater. Had Lasik surgery in the offseason so will not have to wear contacts this year. Jose Pujols tore his achillies and is out for the year unfortunately.

baseballoldie 2019-04-02 15:37:43 UTC #95

The assignments seem to suggest they are working to develop positional versatility in a lot of their players. Garcia and Guzman are both SS but will alternate between SS and 2B. I would expect Kroon will play all over the field with Bohm, Holmes and Stobbe playing some 1st and OF in addition to 3B. I'd expect the same for Scheiner at Clearwater and Listi & Williams in Reading.

Squire 2019-04-02 17:00:57 UTC #96

I am fired up about the start of the minor league season.

Almost all of my potential pop-up guys are at Lakewood

LHP Ethan Lindow
LHP Jhordany Mezquita
OF Ben Pelletier
INF Jake Holmes

Austinfan 2019-04-02 18:03:11 UTC #97

Marcelino was listed at 6'3 166, so if he's filling out and already touching 100 (93-96 last spring), he could be another Sanchez or SD.

Pulojs is a shame, a longshot who made real progress last year.

Austinfan 2019-04-02 18:07:26 UTC #98

My feeling was Howard's progress made Sanchez expendable, not that they were looking to move him, but that with Howard's development (probably more velo than they expected) they had the quality depth with Gowdy coming back, Medina and Morales (and now maybe Marcelino) to move Sanchez, especially with his durability concerns.

I think Klentak is sticking to his philosophy, buy bats, develop pitchers.
Makes sense, since even a guy like McCutcheon is a better bet at 32 than say Arrieta (see Darvish).
And a guy like Harper sets your lineup for a decade.
Meanwhile, with pitchers it's always safety in numbers, not just prospects, but just remember how Lee and Halladay fell off the cliff, one year elite, the next year or two headed to retirement.

andyb 2019-04-02 18:16:56 UTC #99

In no way does Howard's progress make Sanchez expendable. Pitching prospects don't work like that. You generally need more of them because half of them get hurt. And Howard is probably as risky as Sanchez was. His velocity is new and we don't know whether he can handle it. And he has generally faced younger, less experienced hitters. He has much to prove even if he showed good raw stuff.

Marcelino is nothing special. Every club has these popup high velocity guys more because that is how they are training pitchers these days. When you build them to be a limited, high velocity, late inning pitcher you get more of them (and probably burn a bunch of them out in the process). The only reason I noted Marcelino was to show why they kept him at Lakewood even though he pitched so poorly last year. His velocity makes him interesting, but not necessarily any good yet.

I also not sure we can say that Klentak's philosophy is to buy bats and develop pitchers. Every #1 pick of his has been an offensive player. In Latin America we have spent more on the position players (i.e. Garcia and the guy they will sign this year) than pitchers even though more pitchers probably get $500K bonuses. As I said early, you need a high volume of pitching prospects because of attrition.

zambonir 2019-04-02 18:41:05 UTC #100

"Grow the arms buy the bats" was MacPhail not Klentak, and it predates his time in Philadelphia by at least a decade (i.e., Baltimore, and I bet he said it in Minnesota too).

julio 2019-04-02 18:41:20 UTC #101

andyb's right about this, IMHO. Sanchez wasn't traded because "he was expendable" (nor because "he knew what he signed up for," either!). He was traded for value, to acquire a player who is likely to contribute substantially the the club's success - in 2019 and 2020 at least, and potentially longer. Sometimes you trade players who are not "expendable," because even though they're valuable to you, what you get back is of more value to your organization. Moreover, it's not just a function of the player's abstract value (as measured by projected WAR or whatever); it's also a function of what other resources your organization has.

Evidently, the Phillies concluded that, given all the other pitching resources the organization has, and given the catching resources in the system, Realmuto is simply worth more to the Phillies than Sixto Sanchez and Jorge Alfaro (yeah, OK, and Will Stewart). One may disagree with that analysis, but there are credible arguments that their conclusion was correct. It's not about expendability; it's about net value, in the context of the organization's other resources. Period.

fish 2019-04-02 19:33:38 UTC #102

Apologies if I missed this, but News Day recently had a great article on the Long Island guys (tip of the hat to Jay Floyd ).