2019 Phillies Season Discussion

[bkox]

Joel Sherman (Joelsherman1)

Matt Gelb (MattGelb)

[LoneStarPhan]

I feel sorry for Brantley not getting a little more ML time. I hope he will end up back at LV.

Morrison must think he has a shot at ML time with the Phillies that he didn't have with the Yankees.

[zambonir]

Ah, Logan Morrison's famous Twitter, good times!

A thankless job, Brantly had. Most (or at least many) teams would at least have a third catcher to call up for such an occasion. Brantly's unlikely to see the 40 again (presumably Grulion would in September).

[phillychuck]

Phils are in a bad way right now, sort of a Murphy's Law universe of losing, where whatever part of the team needs to play badly for them to lose will do so. They are playing so much worse than their talent right now it is stunning. I don't know if Kapler can survive much more of this.

[Squire]

May need to start a 2020 MLB Draft Discussion Thread

[Ric20]

But hopefully they will turn it around today before the Dodgers come in !

[LoneStarPhan]

Phillies' Tommy Hunter: Out with forearm strain

Another blow to the bullpen.

[nycphils]

Hunter and Neshek getting hurt is doubly painful...as we fall out of the race this week I’d like to have traded them for prospects. This year, they can’t be traded if they aren’t dealt by July 31.

[fish]

If the first move this offseason isn’t to fire MacPhail so that he’s in no way involved in hiring Klentak and Kapler’s replacements, this offseason will be another failure.

[zambonir]

There's no way MacPhail is going anywhere. Think how long Dave Montgomery and Giles held their job. And Middleton bought into everything they wanted to do. If anything this is Middleton's team. He wanted to win faster and make a splash. I'm not so sure Klentak wouldn't have been just as happy to go with the younger team and not do those Crawford and Alfaro trades (and I suspect he still preferred Machado too, clearly Middleton and the marketing staff - correctly, from their perspective - wanted Harper).

Gabe will probably have to go at this rate. Nearly every move Klentak made has turned out badly this year, either due to underperformance or injury/age) but I don't know that they are fireable offenses. A lot of bad luck. How much of it can be blamed on poor internal scouting (of everyone from the new players, who were expected to thrive at CBP, to Herrera/Franco) or the coaching staff, hard to say. But the biggest flaw this team has, it turns out, is not too much faith in the young pitchers but too much faith in older players (and too much faith that the other 6 hitters would make Herrera and Franco okay. Which they were for a while).

All of the 2018 moves have turned out to be disastrous too, given how little we are getting from those four players (one of whom is gone) in 2019. And yet, the rebuild timeline they established when Klentak took over is still more or less on schedule. .500 team last year, playoff contender this year. The latter is in serious danger now though.

[fish]

When both MacPhail and Klentak were hired they must of had to present their vision for the organization. It’s been 4 years, now is the time to judge that plan. I don’t see how it is at all possible to defend their results without excuses that don’t tie back to their own decisions.

[zambonir]

I would say their vision has been mostly successfully realized, in that it was meant to be a slow rebuild, and if it is slower than expected (which it will be if they don't make the playoffs this year) that is based on the fact that what they inherited was even worse than they thought it was four years ago. Klentak's failure in the big picture has been sticking with those guys too long. It now looks like 5 of last year's starting 8, all Amaro-acquired players (Crawford, Alfaro, Williams, Franco, Herrera) need to be gone (and three of them already are obviously). And the same thing has happened with the rotation (including most of the AAA guys). Of the non-FAs, only Velasquez and De Los Santos are Klentak acquisitions.

To fill those holes you either have to extend the rebuild until better options arrive or sign/trade for risky or expensive players. He opted for the latter and maybe/probably should have finished the job with a starting pitcher, but given what has happened with Arrieta, hard to blame them for not wanting to give Corbin six years, while Happ has bombed.

Middleton clearly signed off on a vision that included, basically, doing nothing for two years. They kept Mackanin, they didn't begin the big front office overhaul until Years 2 and 3, they stuck with Almaraz and only just lost Jordan.

In hindsight it looks like it was a waste of time and money to sign the 2018 FAs (would have been better to pick third) and now the Cutch signing and Segura and Realmuto trades look shaky (though Segura has a few years left and Realmuto will probably be re-signed). But this team is hardly as bad as it looks right now. Right now it's not actually the team Klentak built. Still plenty to build around in the off-season. Right now it would not bother me at all if both Kapler and Klentak came back, I think most managers deserve three years. But if the current trend continues, even though it's mostly injuries IMO, Kapler obviously can't survive with a worse record than last season. But there's really no reason to have that conversation until it's true (or least until they aren't actually playing for the WC).

[Austinfan]

They had almost a decade of horrid drafting and missed out on the LA buying frenzy b/c Middleton took his sweet time taking over the team.
So it's not surprising that a few deals/signings weren't enough to turn everything around in one year.
If they had been luck, 95 wins were a possibility, but they've had mostly bad luck, and 80 wins is more probable.

But Haseley is on the edge of the majors, Moniak and Bohm are making good progress, a bunch of guys have turned their minor league seasons around (trade bait), and they've stockpiled a lot of RP arms. Right now the young SPs both in the majors and upper minors have under performed, but that's the nature of the beast, usually a couple will turn it around the second half.

The key is not to panic, keep rebuilding and understand you can't buy your way into contention.
But a core of Harper, Hoskins, Kingery, Realmulo, Bohm, Haseley, Moniak isn't a bad start.

[VoteForKalas]

The key is not to panic, keep rebuilding and understand you can't buy your way into contention.

The Phillies have not followed your advice.

They tried to rebuild with young and drafted talent and realized that alone would not work.

One, the Phillies have routinely drafted poorly, but, two, they understood their main advantage was money and needed to fortify the young talent with more experienced and talented players.

They had to buy their way into contention which they have done the last two off-seasons due to Middleton's meddling, but also the reality that the young talent was not good enough, especially the position players. Unfortunately, they made a lot of bad choices and overpaid in most cases.

I think the 3 true outcome version of baseball is not only boring, but detrimental to player development and the game itself. I've watched maybe 3 games this entire season - the broadcasters on TV are mind numbingly bad, the strategic elements that I grew up loving in the NL are gone, the players and coaches are largely bland robots and MLB does not seem to realize they are destroying the product. It is sad to watch happen.

[LoneStarPhan]

With two of the eight position starters and a full bullpen of relievers lost to the IL, it is not at all surprising that the 2019 Phillies would struggle. The relievers lost included most of the ones thought most likely to be the most effective relievers.

[allentown]

The key is not to panic, keep rebuilding and understand you can't buy your way into contention.
But a core of Harper, Hoskins, Kingery, Realmulo, Bohm, Haseley, Moniak isn't a bad star

Building from within is the preferred and only sustainable way to contend, as the Phillies found out post-2011, but to do that you have to do above average at identifying the young international and draft talent to sign and then develop that talent properly. We are where we are, because we simply haven't done that. The problem with today's Phillies and the state of the rebuild is not that Middleton got frustrated by the rate of progress and meddled by insisting on spending some $ -- that was exactly the right thing to do to preserve this franchise and maintain/build a shrinking fanbase and keep faith with Comcast. The problem was too many failed H.S. first, second, and third rounders and our big $ LA signings going bust or not yet stepping forward as top prospects. The draft first round problem seems to have been turned around the past few drafts with the avoidance of risky H.S. kids, whom we've not been particularly good at scouting and developing. For $1 million or $4 million in the international market, I want more than one tool (and, at that, a tool which is close to worthless if the hit tool doesn't develop sufficiently to turn raw power into in-game power -- Encarnacion never achieved that; Ortiz at least has enough hit tool that he is getting his HRs).

The commissioner has structured the game such that the only advantage the Phillies have is spending $. We don't get the bonus 'charity' draft picks or the larger international budget, which the Cardinals have. We need to spend $ just to be on a level playing field. Since there is no limit on what a team can spend on various 'baseball people' including stat guys, we should be leading the pack in hiring/retaining great scouts/instructors/coaches/managers/analysts. Not much proof our guys are above average, although there is so much proprietary stats knowledge regarding how the stats relate to actual baseball decisions, that it was to be expected that our late start compared to the leading teams would take multiple years to close that gap. Still, very unfortunate that our primo draft slots came prior to closing that analytical gap.

Haseley is in the majors, he played in today's game. That's a good thing -- while Haseley's D can't match Quinn; Quinn has shown that his bat simply isn't ready (not surprising given how much time he's missed to injury).and he's basically a good OF defensive sub for now -- a 4th or 5th OF.

[VoteForKalas]

With two of the eight position starters and a full bullpen of relievers lost to the IL, it is not at all surprising that the 2019 Phillies would struggle. The relievers lost included most of the ones thought most likely to be the most effective relievers.

If we believe all of the Phillies issues come down to injuries, I think we're being naive

[julio]

With two of the eight position starters and a full bullpen of relievers lost to the IL, it is not at all surprising that the 2019 Phillies would struggle. The relievers lost included most of the ones thought most likely to be the most effective relievers.

If we believe all of the Phillies issues come down to injuries, I think we're being naive

True. On the other hand, if we dismiss the importance of the injuries, I think we're being... typical Negadelphia fans.

Reality is somewhere between "It's all due to the injuries," and "Everybody in the front office is crap, and they all have to go." Like most things in life, it's not a simple either-or; it's complex.

[Austinfan]

Quinn needs time in AAA because they no longer have him hitting LH, but he has limited experience as a RH against RH pitching.

[Austinfan]

I think the real issue is people overestimated the impact of the Harper signing, and underestimate the impact of the Cutch injury.

The biggest problem is Arrieta and the failure of Pivetta, Eflin and Velasquez to develop further - their stuff matches up against most young ML SPs, they just haven't taken that next step of becoming consistent starters - you can get by with "flashes" your first year or two, but at some point the flashes have to become a steady beam.

On the other hand, if the bullpen wasn't decimated by injury, they'd be extremely deep from AA to Philly in RPs, you can't lose 4 of 8 without repercussions down the line.

Cutch/Bruce platooning in LF would be the only "old" guys on next year's team, so they have time to rebuild the farm system and stay competitive, if the pitchers emerge. Howard is finally back 5 IP, 0H, 7K, that's a good start.