2019 Phillies Season Discussion

[phillychuck]

Phillies hitting instructors are not wrecking players. I'm not saying they are helping either. Unless someone has some data that organizationally they have taken a step backward, this is just perception. It's easy to identify individual players underperforming and use those as example of institutional failure. Doesn't make it true though.

You may have missed it, but there was a discussion about a month ago where a poster showed that nearly every veteran on the Phils this year is producing below his normal hitting stats (despite the juiced ball). That was one of the initial arguments for a systematic failure.

[allentown]

No. Kingery had an awful year last season. The Phillies once again revamped hitting instruction this season, so no, the errors of last season cannot be washed away by Kingery improving this year.

[Taudawg]

...and now a month later most of these guys appear on target for career normal years. Realmuto, Hernandez, Segura got hot and leveled up.

I could see a case Franco is underperforming, but I would question whether the problem is coaching or actual talent.

[zambonir]

Look, the Phillies are selling a new way of doing things so it is natural to want to blame the new thing. Correlation, after all. But we might be seeing the same thing with Charley Lau or Charlie Manuel or whoever the assistant hitting coach was that everyone credited for Dom Brown.

In the end it is always going to be too small a sample to get beyond normal variability and isolate individual causes. Santana may or may not have done this well here but I doubt coaching is the reason he's succeeding in Cleveland. He's comfortable there and he's familiar with the pitchers.

Santana added some value to the package for Seattle and we didn't save that much money because we took Nicasio. Crawford alone probably wouldn't have gotten Segura though.

[Austinfan]

Franco's problem is he's simply not coachable, Stairs worked on him, got a month or two, then he reverted, same thing over and over, he starts being patient and taking the ball the other way, then he gets pull happy and chasing pitches and goes cold for a month or two. At some point it's the player.

Herrera was also uncoachable, had that unique approach to hitting with too many moving parts, shows you how good his eye to hand coordination must be to succeed with that swing.

The one player that concerns me is Harper, I think he's a tad bit "HR happy" and has a tendency to overswing and let his swing get too long. He needs to accept that 380' HRs count the same as 450' HRs.

[Taudawg]

Looking at steamer projections for the year on fangraphs most of our hitters are right on target - take away the injured and suspended players. The pitchers are not far off either. Analytics predicted a step back by Nola and further regression from Arrieta.

Santana has slowed after his hot start and may well end up around Santana averages. I've said it before, I don't really care for the FO or manager personalities, however I don't see obvious problems with the institutional culture or coaching. This team is playing about the way they should - 85 wins-ish.

[Patchmk88]

The issue is that we are playing at 85 winish Mark and have very little value in the minors to improve our team. This is either the fault of player development, scouting, not willing to spend on the farm, or a combination of the three.

The fact that we have had good draft positions for the past 5 or so years and have a bottom of the barrel farm system (when only really making one prospect move this summer) is inexcusable.

[Taudawg]

It's Middleton's fault then. The fans are holding the wrong people accountable. Klentak has only been here 3 years and he inherited a bad system. The rebuild started too late. I mentioned in another thread of the last three drafts, a total of 12 first round picks for all teams have made it the majors - one is Adam Haseley. Haseley looks good so far. In the time Klentak has been here, I don't see one team drafting exponentially better than everyone else. The FO has/is revamping the entire scouting department. This takes time to bare fruit.

The fans like Middleton because he wants to win and will spend money. I like him as well. However, I believe the owners created this situation.

[David_Criss]

Who replaces Morgan and why is Neris not on the active roster?

[Taudawg]

Neris is serving his suspension

[andyb]

Dickerson was activated today. I think the roster is a man short without Neris.

[Florida_Sunshine]

I think some of us, not you, are forgetting how badly we wanted to be rid of Santana’s contract and thought that including him in the trade to Seattle was a major plus for us. We did not trade this years Santana, we traded the 2018 Santana.

[Dirk41]

Jonathan Lucroy DFAd by the Angels. Would be an upgrade over Knapp.

[allentown]

I think we are talking about two different seasons: 2018 vs 2019. We've had two changes in hitting instruction in two years.

[Taudawg]

I'm looking strictly at 2019. When you take 2019 year-to-date production and extrapolate over the rest of the season (ESPN has a nice tool for this), our team is trending VERY closely to fangraphs projections - at the individual player level. The fangraphs projections are from before the start of the season. The production we are getting is who these guys are. They are not under-performing nor are they over performing. The are very few statistical outliers ie Kingery. If you expected more, perhaps you fire the hitting coach??? I didn't expect more, I hoped for it, but didn't expect it.

[schillingfan]

It's Middleton's fault then. The fans are holding the wrong people accountable. Klentak has only been here 3 years and he inherited a bad system. The rebuild started too late. I mentioned in another thread of the last three drafts, a total of 12 first round picks for all teams have made it the majors - one is Adam Haseley. Haseley looks good so far. In the time Klentak has been here, I don't see one team drafting exponentially better than everyone else. The FO has/is revamping the entire scouting department. This takes time to bare fruit.

The fans like Middleton because he wants to win and will spend money. I like him as well. However, I believe the owners created this situation.

I don’t think Middleton took over until either 2014 or 2015. Before that he owned less than 50%. Klentak and McPhail were his hires. Middleton was not responsible for late rebuild.

[Taudawg]

I'm honestly not looking to blame anyone, really just trying to point out the McPhail / Klentak era is way too new to be judged so harshly. The rebuild was started too late, I don't care whose decision that was, but it certainly left the new guys in a tough situation. The Phillies were coming off a 99 loss season when Klentak was hired in October. The same year they drafted Randolph in June.

MacPhail and Klentak aren't from Philadelphia and they certainly don't use language that appeals to Philly fans, but they are smart guys. From what I can see, things are trending slowly, but they are trending in the right direction.

[bkox]

Roman Quinn, Aaron Altherr, and Sean Rodriguez have combined to throw more pitches than Tommy Hunter this season

— The Good Phight ( @TheGoodPhight ) August 3, 2019

[bkox]

. @gabekapler - Ranger was having hard time getting loose. Wasn’t able to get it going.

— Michael Barkann ( @MBarkannNBCS ) August 3, 2019

Roman Quinn, a non-pitcher who has been injured more than he’s played in his professional career, was willing to put more on the line than a 23-year-old pitcher in a short-handed bullpen in the middle of a wild card race. See ya, dude.

— Bill Matz ( @BILLadelphia1 ) August 3, 2019

[zambonir]

Middleton was still a very powerful owner - he was behind the ouster of Giles in favor of Montgomery, and was obviously in lockstep with Montgomery when it came to trying to squeeze a few more years out of the '08 core, from the Howard contract to re-signing Utley/Ruiz/Rollins to adding Papelbon and Burnett when Halladay, Lee and Howard were zeroing out. But all you can really blame him for is not forcing out Monty sooner, and unfortunately that required a cancer diagnosis.

But yes, it takes 5-6 years for farm systems to bear fruit especially if you are drafting high school players. The 2016 draft is a lose-win at the top (Randolph/Kingery) so far. Moniak is still incredibly young and Haseley has passed him by virtue of being a college player. I do think Klentak was not aggressive enough with the overhaul given he inherited a franchise picking 1-1, but you can't really magically create an analytics department in 6 months either, when your predecessor didn't have one at all. The flawed players on this year's team are mostly guys he decided were still worth having, i.e. Franco, Herrera, Eflin, Pivetta, Eickhoff, Williams, Quinn, Knapp (only Velasquez is one of his).