2019 Phillies Season Discussion (part 2)

bigegypt0417 2019-09-23 13:38:23 UTC #646

I'm not really sure what you've based your opinion on or if it's just a bias.

Adam Haseley has not profiled to be anything...I can live with an OF of McCutchen, Haseley and Harper.

zambonir 2019-09-23 15:59:23 UTC #647

Not exactly a controversial opinion.

how does he project?

This is the subject of debate among rival evaluators. Most see him as a fourth outfielder on a good team — with a caveat. If he can stick in center field, his hitting profile is more favorable.

flyers19rw 2019-09-23 22:53:38 UTC #648

Andy, I would have to disagree with you regarding Alfaro and Realmuto. One is an AS while the other is not. Defensively JT has been stunning this season. With him runners attempt to steal and die on the base paths. This is with a bunch of pitchers who are not exactly quick on getting the ball to home plate.
Adding Sixto to the equation in analyzing the trade is fair. However time will tell how good he will be in the majors. He already has had arm issues. It’s rare that a hurler with his smallish physique will be able to keep up throwing at the velocity that he does without more arm problems in the future.
In the end, no one gets something for nothing. Being the tremendous athlete that he is, Realmuto should be able to be one of the top players at his position for at least five more years if not a bit longer. Good organizations build off of players like this.

Lucky_Beagle 2019-09-23 23:19:02 UTC #649

Why is Realmuto having an MRI on his knee?

mdougherty12 2019-09-23 23:29:27 UTC #650

Because it's sore:

andyb 2019-09-23 23:34:44 UTC #651

Additional years for Realmuto don't count for much though. We traded for 2 and anything more will be market priced. And the whole point of those 2 is that one is now gone without making the playoffs. We are likely going to lose the trade badly on WAR. What would make it a good trade is if it put us into the playoffs.

Economics and controllable years are what is important in baseball transactions. I don't disagree that Realmuto is great. He is. But it is for 2 years because that is what we traded for.

Florida_Sunshine 2019-09-23 23:56:08 UTC #652

I think he is good enough to be an outfielder for the Phillies until he costs more than a replacement in the system in order to help us with total payroll in a few years when it will be challenging. He has had a good partial first year, lots of positives.

BostonRoss 2019-09-24 00:04:02 UTC #653

I don’t understand this kind of thinking. It’s equivalent to saying that the Halladay trade was bad because the Phillies didn’t win with Halladay and D’Arnaud is still a useful player.

zambonir 2019-09-24 01:08:32 UTC #654

Well, the Phillies did win with Halladay. Not a ring, but multiple divisions and postseason series. This team with Realmuto (and many others) may yet not even be better than last year's team.

nycphils 2019-09-24 03:33:57 UTC #655

Kingery 2nd Half:

264 PA, .230/.293/.427, 88 OPS+

Harper 2nd Half:

253 PA, .262/.379/.552, 142 OPS+

Hoskins 2nd Half:

281 PA, .188/.326/.389, 89 OPS+

zambonir 2019-09-24 04:52:35 UTC #656

Not even a new hitting coach has been able to snap Hoskins from his slumber. In 35 games since Charlie Manuel took over, Hoskins is batting .195 with five homers, 22 walks, 42 strikeouts and a .407 slugging percentage, nearly identical to his numbers in his last 35 games with deposed hitting coach John Mallee (.198, five HR, 29 walks, 35 strikeouts, .413 slugging).

But JT has been great in the second half. And Hernandez came around some. Don't know that Segura did. The idea that our "powerhouse" offense would prop up a rotation of 80% fifth starters and a bullpen of six low-leverage relievers was probably always flawed, even before Nola also hit a rough patch. It's just that you could hope the hitters could hit a higher ceiling than the pitchers.

Austinfan 2019-09-24 12:50:09 UTC #657

I think over expectations have colored the evaluation of Klentak:

1) He did improve the lineup, imagine this team with Crawford at SS, Alfaro at C, Hoskins in LF and Santana at 1B. Uh, butt ugly? Maybe Santana at 3B and Hoskins at 1B? Still not pretty, would Santana hit NL pitching like he hit AL pitching?

2) The only pitcher out there was Corbin, but if you're going all in on Harper, it's hard to go all in on Corbin with the Nats willing to pay (and probably more to keep him from the Phillies) - we'll see how long he holds up, we knew he'd have a couple good seasons, but 6 years is a long time for a pitcher.

3) Klentak had no inkling that Arrieta was going to break down this year, the 3 year contract was smart (some here wanted to give him a Corbin contract). Nola, Arrieta as your one/two allows you to go with three young starters, Eickhoff returning and a deep AAA staff. Crap happens.

4) Even with Harper, Vegas had this team at 82-88 wins (two different books), which dictated against giving up significant assets to garner another couple wins. It was one thing to make short-term moves after 2008 to keep the window open, quite another to do so when the window was just opening.

5) His mid-season moves were fine, he kept them in contention without giving up any significant assets.He'll have some money to spend this offseason, and all his best prospects - he just needs more of them.

Was it a great job? No. An unmitigated disaster? No. More like treading water, trying to build a presentable team while continuing to rebuild. The real key to his regime will be whether the organization as a whole enters the 21st century, and the "purge" of dinosaurs will make or break his legacy - this team needs better scouting and player development, and all the free agents they can buy won't be enough if they don't consistently develop fresh talent.

andyb 2019-09-24 12:59:42 UTC #658

On 1 - He did not really improve the lineup much when you consider the original Santana mistake. He improved at catcher. Not that much at SS and the cost of doing that was trading someone who would have been the best bat in our lineup. And the money spent could have been used on something else like a pitcher.

2 - There are other pitchers out there beyond Corbin. Bottom line is he thought his starting pitching was good enough and it wasn't. That is as much a poor GM evaluation as bad luck.

5 - His midseason moves were mediocre. He left some unspent cash. He did add some relievers marginally better than what we had, but there were many better relievers out there. And Smyly and Vargas did not improve things. He did not trade any prospects and perhaps that was the goal, but that is the justification for doing nothing

It is hard to escape the fact that this team is the result largely of this GM's moves. Not bad luck primarily. Not lack of resources. It is the sum of moves that traded some of our low cost assets and then replaced them with veterans that did not get us into the playoffs. The GM misjudged some talent and made bad moves because of that. He made some good moves too and I am not sure he should be fired yet, but it is hard to argue he has been better than the average GM if not a bit worse.

A GM that treads water when handed a top 10 farm system and significant financial resources is really not a GM who has done a good job. He has had 4 years now. It is largely his team (or players that he has judged to be worthy of his team).

EDmuch 2019-09-24 13:39:48 UTC #659

AF, do you just make this stuff up? Corbin was not "the only pitcher out there". All Star Charlie Morton was out there for the taking. Keuchel was out there. And Klentak gave up after choking on Corbin. That i Klentak's fault.

andyb 2019-09-24 13:49:39 UTC #660

Not at all equivalent. There are two sides to every trade. There are many "good" trades where a team receives less WAR than they give up. The whole premise of the Realmuto trade was that. The Phillies would get a 4-5 WAR catcher for the next 2 years that would make them like 3 games better than they would be with Alfaro for the sole intent of competing those 2 years. We now really only have one season to benefit from the trade now (though if we extend Realmuto we will do that with $100 million and it is hard to evaluate what else could be done with that $100 million so the extension adds little trade value).

On Halladay, yes it was about competing. And we did compete successfully. Halladay also signed a below market extension at the time of the trade, so we were getting 4 years of Halladay and not two. It is also proper to evaluate the prospect side of the trade. If D'Arnaud had generated 30 WAR before he hit free agency then the trade might look bad. He and the other prospects didn't. D'Arnaud's value really stopped mattering when he got released also. At that point his future value related to the trade was zero.

Even the Alfaro part of the trade might come back to haunt us. 5 years of Alfaro versus 2 for Realmuto. Realmuto was 3+ wins better this year. Could Alfaro make that up in the next 4 years versus 1 for Realmuto? Sanchez like any young pitching prospect is an injury risk. So is Howard who is older and has pitched even less than Sixto has. I'd rather have 2 top pitching prospects than 1. If Sanchez gets hurt the deal will probably be a small win for the Phillies. If Sanchez is good it might be a disaster.

This winter was a "win now" set of moves by Klentak. I don't really care what the projections say (the 86-88 wins that some sites projected us for). I care that the deals were done specifically to win now. When the team does not win now, it is entirely proper to question the strategy. If I had to re-do this winter personally I would have kept Santana and played him at 3B with Crawford and Alfaro in the lineup. I would have added a top pitcher. And I would have probably traded some guys like Williams and Eflin and Velasquez and Pivetta for more established veterans (not all the pitchers, just some of them because they had trade value). That team would retain more of its younger prospect base and probably would have been just as good as the team we sent out this year. Of course I would have never signed Santana in the first place if I was going to keep Hoskins, but that was not the state of the team last winter.

bigegypt0417 2019-09-24 14:27:23 UTC #661

I'm trying to understand this...so lets say the phillies resign him and for the next 5 years he remains among the best catchers in baseball...the trade is bad because we can only count 2 years?

andyb 2019-09-24 14:58:50 UTC #662

Because if we could have signed him as a free agent for the same money we would have both Realmuto and the prospects/young players we traded to get him. You trade for contracts and years of control. You might have a slight advantage re-signing him, but frankly the surplus value he accrues compared to a $100 million contract will be much smaller than the surplus value the Phillies get the first 2 years when his salary is depressed by arbitration rules.

Everything after the first 2 years is value added for money, not the players we traded to get him.

BostonRoss 2019-09-24 15:21:41 UTC #663

My clumsy attempt to use a highly exaggerated example fell flat and was poorly worded. I was reacting to what I inferred that the way to evaluate the success of the trade was whether the Phillies made the playoffs. Your subsequent post made it clearer that a trade could succeed or fail based on other criteria.

Clearly the Phillies are better in 2019 with Realmuto instead of Alfaro (and Sanchez is not a factor for this year). To evaluate the trade, I see the questions being 1) Were the Phillies likely to become a playoff team or a team that could go further in the postseason after the trade? and 2) If so, was the cost of that improvement too high?

At the time of the trade, I thought the Phillies were on the cusp of being a playoff team. So my answer to question 1) is yes, but it seems that you were not as optimistic as I was. Your pessimism turned out to be more accurate though I think it is an open question whether factors like the rash of injuries or Hoskins' falling off a cliff were foreseeable. I can see both sides there.

The answer to question 2) is yes if your answer to question 1) is no. Since I would answer yes to question 1), I can have a different answer to 2), and in my mind the answer is no. While Sanchez has done well so far, he may end up like most of the other prospects the Phillies have traded over the years, some of whom were more highly regarded. I also feel that pitching prospects are less reliable to succeed.

For me, I thought the Phillies were in a good enough position at the time of the trade to make it a worthwhile risk. It would not have been a good trade five years ago.

I would pose a different question that gets more to my point. Was the Cubs' trade of Gleyber Torres for Aroldis Chapman a good trade? And would it have still been a good trade if the Cubs had not gone all the way in 2016?

bigegypt0417 2019-09-24 15:31:31 UTC #664

I've never seen an idea where I have to ignore a players performance after 2 years because I could have waited and signed him in two years. It's borderline silly but mostly designed to make the counter argument have to fit through the eye of a needle.

andyb 2019-09-24 15:31:57 UTC #665

I was not totally opposed to the Realmuto trade. I was more against the Segura trade. The reason one could justify the Realmuto trade which might theoetically trade 15-20 future WAR for 5-10 current WAR (Realmuto) was to compete in the current 2-year window. So I was kind of OK with the trade even realizing that one expected to give up more long term value than the short term value the team was getting.

I guess where people had said I was against the trade was in simply pointing out what we gave up. An advantage of keeping Alfaro and Crawford was to have 2 low cost regulars performing for multiple years so we would free up money to do other things. Everyone here who posts about free agency being an expensive way to add talent, was ignoring the fact that those 2 trades locked us into needing to rely on free agency more in the future to make the team better.

Looking at the playoff miss this year is recognizing that one of the goals of the deal fell short. It is also with the knowledge that we have less available money to add someone like Gerrit Cole simply because we will be paying $30+ million next year for Segura and Realmuto when Crawford and Alfaro combined would have cost less than $5 million. That is what happens when you spend money to win now. You have less money to add now. Plus you have fewer prospects (i.e. Sanchez) to prevent spending money in the future. This is all a situation caused by Klentak's series of moves starting with the Santana signing.