2019 Phillies Season Discussion (part 2)

[zambonir]

I saw the article. As it noted Crawford's only played 162 major league games. The jury won't be in on him until 2022.

But the thing is, based on this season, it won't hard for him to exceed Segura's production on the wrong side of 30 (if we're talking WAR, not OPS+). And I still gotta think Crawford will rediscover his on-base skills, which he was showing with the Phillies last year too, and he'll be a better defender than Segura too.

If Crawford is only a 2 WAR player going forward for the next three years, he wasn't the Phillies shortstop of the future and he may not be the Mariners' either. But he still might out-WAR Segura over those three years.

[LoneStarPhan]

https://twitter.com/ToddZolecki/status/1178413370875285506

Phillies home attendance up over 26% over last season. Clearly due to the Harper signing and renewed hope going into the season. It should help the bottom line for the season and let them be aggressive with money again this off season, but ultimately, they need to be playing in the post season next year or the fan base will start to fade away. Rebuilding will be tolerated for awhile but when other teams have stars exceling in the majors that they signed after the last Phillies winning season, the rebuild is getting too long.

[bkeich]

Given our extreme need for quality pitching (we have 2 or 3 starters and about 4 relievers worth keeping) I can’t imagine them giving up on Hernandez. You can only solve so many problems in an off-season and Hernandez is as good as any FA for the money.

I suspect they will try and find a 3B stopgap and return Kingery to a Supersub role until the first injury for another season (after which he will take over at 2B).

We need to sign/acquire 2 solid starters, 2 5th starter types and at least 2-3 relievers. Smyly and Vargas are only answers in a desperate mode, neither is particularly close to a ML pitcher, I wouldn’t even want them as a #6 guy, maybe about #9. Maybe Vargas could be a change of pace reliever, but he is not a guy you want out there many innings. I am not even sure Smyly belongs in AAA, he probably can’t get them out either.

[el-pietro]

I'm not sure which thread this belongs in, and I apologise if it was mentioned in the game thread, I had a quick look but didn't see it.

Todays loss on the final day of the season to the Marlins brings the Phillies to 11,000 losses in their 137 season history. The next closest team is the Braves with 10,658. We need to win 88 games or more on average over the next two seasons to reach 10,000 wins.

Philadelphia Phillies 11,000
Boston/Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves 10,658
Pittsburgh Pirates 10,405
Chicago Cubs 10,404
Cincinnati Reds 10,393
St. Louis Cardinals 10,063
Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers 9,818
St. Louis/Baltimore Orioles 9,727
New York/San Francisco Giants 9,686
Washington/Minnesota Twins 9,603
Philadelphia/KC/Oakland Athletics 9,452
Chicago White Sox 9,215
Detroit Tigers 9,191
Cleveland Indians 9,037
Boston Red Sox 8,908
New York Yankees 7,840

[zambonir]

We need to sign/acquire 2 solid starters, 2 5th starter types

Not sure I understand this statement. The first part, yes. But Vargas, Smyly and Velasquez are "5th starter types."

Rotation is either:

Nola/Free Agent/Arrieta/FA or trade guy/Eflin

or

Nola/Free Agent/Arrieta/Eflin/returning 5th starter.

I like the first scenario better than the second but in either case what we already have is fine for depth until the deadline or Howard time. 5th starters just aren't especially good, even on great teams. The Astros' two fifth starters were 5-6.00 ERA guys. The Yankees' 5th starter was Sabathia who was almost a 5.00 ERA guy himself (and so was Happ, who started the second-most games for them).

[LoneStarPhan]

I hope they add two starters to the team. At least one of whom has a high probability of being a top half of the rotation type and the other at least a solid ML starter. In reality, #2 or #4 starter lose meaning once the season gets going. They need five starters that can give them innings and a decent chance to win most nights. Something like

Nola
Added Starter
Arrieta
Added Starter
Eflin

Then they will need another set of starters who likely will be called on during the season to fill in for injuries or lack of expected performance.

Velasquez and Pivetta may well be used in the pen but could return to starting if needed. Both also have an option left, which can be important in keeping pitching depth.

There are also several starters that project to be at AAA (Irvin, De Los Santos, Romero, Eickhoff (will still have an option next season), Medina, and others) that could also end up getting ML starts if we have multiple injuries or failures.

Frankly, I don't see Smyly or Vargas being retained IF they can add those two new starters that I want to see added. At least one of them should be left handed. Of course, the Phillies might retain Vargas or resign Smyly, but I am hoping for better.

[allentown]

This season can only be regarded as a failure. In addition to not making playoffs since 2011, after today we can add that the Phillies have gone 8 years without a winning season For a large market team, that is absolutely pathetic. I saw the article yesterday or day before that Eflin came on stronger at the end of season, after he stopped listening to Young's demand that he throw more high FB. His sinker works better for him. Just another square peg/round hole and the Phillies likely wrongly dumping their pitching coach, so as not to lose the assistant, who belatedly recognizes that he should have put the analytics aside for a minute until he developed a relationship with and trust of his pitchers.

Zach Eflin leads Phillies to .500-clinching victory over Marlins and makes case...

[zambonir]

Should this thread be locked as we move into off-season discussion?

But Eflin seemed to be doing fine under Young's tutelage for the first three months. Then he started to struggle, and physically labored, even, from throwing the FBs, and went back to what worked. It's not like he was actually good last year under Kranitz in the second half of the season last year so who's to blame for that?

Not that the Young stuff was good in any way, but I think the jury is still out on whether Efin's style of pitching will make him a long-term, higher-end piece. They wanted him to miss more bats and that was indeed square peg/round hole, the question in the long run is, which thing needs to change?

[allentown]

Should this thread be locked as we move into off-season discussion?

I don't think it should be locked yet. It is for discussion of the 2019 season. That season just ended today. The post-mortems of 2019 fit here. Let's give at least a week for that discussion. The off-season isn't really going to begin until after the WS. It's possible there will be more firings as a result of 2019 performances, but I don't expect we'll see new hires for 2020 until after WS. I see merit to letting this and off-season thread run in tandem for a week or two.

[zambonir]

Oh I think we'll get a new manager before the WS this time. Kapler was actually hired before the 2017 WS ended. Cora was hired after the 2016 ALCS, and he was employed by a team that was about to go play in the World Series too.

And sure, fair enough on post-mortems vs. look-aheads but obviously there's gonna be major overlap.

[Philsmania]

I don't know. Crawford's production since Reading leads me to believe that what you see is probably what you get with him.

[zambonir]

I would take his career AAA numbers in MLB (which would also equal Segura's career MLB numbers). But of course it doesn't usually work that way.

He's still pretty young though. He was anywhere from 3-5 years younger than the average AAA player during his stints in LV and still young in the PCL this year. Of course that's due to AAAA players, but nevertheless.

Freddy Galvis at 24 had a .51 OPS+ and -0.3 WAR. So Crawford is already ahead of him. Segura at 24 was 70, 0.7. Neither of those guys were much better at 25 either.

[julio]

Final 2019 WAR data for all Phillies players and pitchers whose WAR (either bWAR or fWAR) exceeded 1.0. These players are ranked by bWAR. In the case of starting pitchers (Nola, Eflin, Arrieta), I've added their pitching WAR and any non-zero batting WAR:

Player	bWAR	fWAR
Realmuto	4.4	5.7
Harper	4.2	4.6
Kingery	3.0	2.7
Hernandez	2.5	1.7
Haseley	1.7	0.9
Hoskins	1.5	2.1
McCutchen	1.4	1.5
Segura	1.3	2.4
Miller	1.2	1.1

Pitcher	bWAR	fWAR
Nola	4.0	3.5
Neris	1.8	1.0
Eflin	1.6	1.5
Arrieta	0.9	1.1

[Ric20]

No all Haseley will ever be is a good 4th OFer !

[andyb]

Next 2 most valuable pitchers were Suarez and Alvarez. Next most valuable offensive player was Vince Velasquez (0.6).

This is a pretty depressing list overall. Not a whole lot of younger keepers identified beyond Kingery.

[julio]

Not a whole lot of younger keepers identified beyond Kingery.

Define "younger keeper."

Bryce Harper is about 18 months older than Scott Kingery, and might qualify as "younger."

Adam Haseley is two full years younger than Kingery. Notwithstanding Ric20 (above), 1.7 bWAR at age 23, in a season when the conventional wisdom is that he shouldn't have seen the majors, is not too shabby.

[tom81]

Julio you have Eflin with the position players.

[andyb]

Defined as younger players that we would want to keep in the future. We already know Harper has a long term contract. We already know that Realmuto and Nola are very good. Neris is probably pitching well enough to merit an extension potentially.

Beyond that, which younger player would you sign to a long term deal? Eflin might be the safest if you think he could be much better, but I am not sure offering Eflin a contract for his 3 arbitration years for $15 million would be wise. We did not learn enough about Haseley this year either. His value is all defense (and Fangraphs is much lower at 0.9) and that defense is a pretty small sample. They should clearly keep him, but I am not betting the future on him. VV and Pivetta are year to year even if they get offered deals. Who really cares about any of the other relievers?

For better or worse there is not much of a young core here.

[el-pietro]

A few things stand out to me in this list.
First is another solid but unspectacular season from Hernandez. I know hes getting expensive but hes never really let us down. If you are confident you can replace his ~2 wins, or you feel he is due for a decline then sure let him go, but his floor has been pretty high over the past 4 seasons since he became the every day second baseman, and given that he has been among our 4 or 5 highest ranking players by either WAR each season I would suggest that finding a solid 2 win player is harder than it sounds.

Realmuto is a genuine super star. Maybe not an MVP candidate but hes in the next tier below Trout, Bellinger, Bregman, Betts, Yelich etc. We need to lock him up.

Hoskins had a poor year, driven by his late season swoon. I've never been convinced he would get a long term deal here, but I don't think he needs to be replaced either. Hes a streaky hitter, we just need to hope his hot streaks carry us to wins and his cold streaks can be offset by other players.

McCutchen was incredible, far better than I ever anticipated, and its a real pity injury robbed us of a full season of him. Hopefully he can rebound and be something like the player we saw in 2019 but he will be a year older and coming off a serious injury so its hard to know what kind of player he will be.

[zambonir]

What is it about the FG vs. BBR formula that views Hernandez and Segura differently? Defense? Positional value? With pitchers i know it's usually that BBR weights IPs more.