2020 Philadelphia Phillies Season News/Notes/Discussion

[Austinfan]

Bill Giles never built a farm system.
The one time this team had extended success, last decade, was due to high picks:
1993: #46 Scott Rolen
1996: #46 Jimmy Rollins
1997: #54 Randy Wolf
1998: #1 Pat Burrell, #104 Jason Michaels, #254 Ryan Madson, #614 Nick Punto
1999: #12 Brett Myers, #156 Joe Saunders, #306 Marlon Byrd
2000: #15 Chase Utley
2001: #4 Gavin Floyd, #140 Ryan Howard
2002: #17 Cole Hamels
2003: #115 Michael Bourn, #205 Kyle Kendrick, #595 Brad Ziegler
2004: #92 JJ Happ
2007: #923 Jake Diekman
2008: #102 Vance Worley
2011: #241 Ken Giles
2014: Aaron Nola, #142 Rhys Hopkins

Outside of a brief stretch from 1998-2003, this team has a horrible drafting record, with 2014 the notable exception. 2005-2013 they simply couldn't draft even second tier ML players.

[bigegypt0417]

So if he never actually was able to build a farm system, why are you essentially asking for the fans of a big market team to act like a small market team to build a team internally for the first time in history?

Your philosophy has always been to build like the A's when you have deep pockets...and the A's have ZERO to show for the philosophy you tout.

[andyb]

Bill Giles was the owner, not the GM. Before he was owner the Phillies in the 1970s actually had a pretty good farm system. And they were leaders in Latin America (George Bell, Julio Franco, Juan Samuel) through the early 1980s.

Then they stopped. Maybe the owner being cheap was part of it, but various Phillies GMs during that era had as much to do with it.

Saying the Phillies also succeeded with high picks is also not saying much of anything (and that list seems to be random as always). We won a World Series in 2008 largely because we drafted well from 1996 through 2002. We hit on both high and low picks enough to build a core.

Then we had zero high picks (and often no number ones) for 5 years after the 2008 team. Of course they drafted terribly then.

What we are talking about is the Phillies team NOW. I don't really care how they drafted in the 1990s. What I see now is an organization that has fared poorly in the past 5 years in spite of having some high picks (which also give one financial flexibility). It is just a poor record, both in recent drafts and international signings.

[Philsmania]

Again...that is a strange hot take.

Every single winning roster in the majors is a combination of your own players (hoskins, nola, haseley,bohm) and players brought in to augment that talent (wheeler, harper, gregorious)

Every single team has to bring in talent and veterans.

Every sustainable winning roster has a mixture of both. The '93 Phillies had only five homegrown guys on the Postseason roster--Daulton, Morandini, Stocker, Jordan and Batiste--and one of them was a relic of the team's first golden age (Daulton who was drafted, signed and developed by the Paul Owens regime). But, obviously, that team was one and done. By contrast, the Phillies teams of 2007-2011 had homegrown guys all over the roster--Rollins, Utley, Howard, Madson, Hamels, Ruiz, Burrell, Myers and Worley among others.

[bigegypt0417]

Call me crazy but you seem to be arguing your own point...

The book on Klentak's drafts isn't near written...

Where the phillies have been failing is the international market and I'm not sure that can be fixed overnight...they don't seem to have the right people in place to attract the superior players.

[andyb]

Looking at the Phillies BR page ranked by WAR is instructive. Scroll down a bit on this page and you'll see separate offensive and pitching rankings.

2020 Philadelphia Phillies Statistics | Baseball-Reference.com

We had 3 offensive players and 3 pitchers with more than 1.0 WAR:
Offense: Harper (1.7), Realmuto (1.2), Segura (1.2) followed by Gregorius (0.9), Bohm (0.7), Knapp (0.7) and Hoskins (0.7)
Pitching: Wheeler (2.9), Nola (2.2), Eflin (1.6) followed by Arrieta (0.8), Hunter (0.6), Parker (0.5), Velasquez (0.4).

Bad WAR: Kingery (-0.9), McCutchen (-0.5), Hembree (-0.6)

Of the 6 players over 1.0, only 1 is relatively low paid in Eflin and he'll be over $5 million next year. It is a problem that we don't have any low paid players in this group. Hoskins and Bohm score a notch lower because of relatively bad defense. This is why Crawford (1.4) would have been so important at a low salary.

The pitching free agent decisions look pretty good in hindsight. Even Arrieta was not awful though I agree you only spend that $25 million a year after ideally you have enough other contributors to make the team a contender. What to do with Cutch is an important question. He seemed to improve later in the year as he got further away from his surgery, but I think his days as even an average LF are over. I think he inherits the Jay Bruce role of being the DH most of the time with a couple starts at most in the OF.

[allentown]

Sorry, I honestly don't get the point you are trying to make. That is one heck of a run of great draft picks, some, like Rollins and to a lesser extent Hamels, which had other teams' execs and outside draft prognosticators scratching their chins in wonder at the guy being picked so high. That is the series of drafts which actually did build a pharm. Built a pharm and led directly to the 2008 WC and the 2007-2011 golden age. It was a remarkable achievement. It was not due to high draft picks. We've had equally high picks since 2012. The first three guys you list were second rounders. Myer, Utley, and Hamels were the sort of mid-round first rounders we've had a number of lately.. One big difference then vs now,: we hit on Burrell when we had a 1.1 and missed on Moniak. Floyd was an ok 1.4, nothing outstanding. Less good than Bohm. The big kudos to Wade was that he didn't trade any of these top prospects, as Klentak did with Sixto. I'll point out that the Phillies build the 2008 team largely through the draft, despite Giles insisting upon, and totally screwing up, the 1.2 pick for J.D. Drew, in order to battle Boras "for the good of baseball".

The difference in building a team through the draft then, vs now is stunning. Note that a lot of top picks were lost back then, some for middle relievers.

[Philsmania]

With regard to Phillies international signings, don't forget that we also signed Jonathan Villar and Domingo Santana from abroad. Villar has had a very solid ML career while Santana for a time looked like a really good player (though he now seems to be fizzling out unless he turns into one of those Jose Bautista-style late bloomers). With the two of them and Sanchez, one could possibly argue that we traded away all our best Latin prospects since Chooch before they got to the Majors, although Galvis, Hernandez, Franco and Neris have at least had acceptable ML careers so far.

[allentown]

Unfortunately, unless the system changes, the Phillies will be at a disadvantage in the international market going forward, since, as a large-market team, they are in the third grouping -- the ones with the smallest allocation. Like the draft, there was a time when teams had the freedom to do a lot more as they wished and spend for additional talent in the international market. Those days are gone. Just another fleeting opportunity that the Phillies organization missed out on.

I agree with Bigegypt that international has been our Achilles heal for some time now. We just haven't gotten solid major leaguers or the stars, which other teams have obtained. Big change is needed in our LA approach. AF was a big advocate of the quantity over quality approach internationally, but with the number of minor league teams and, hence, the number of players under control, now capped, that approach is as dead today as the spend-what-you-will international approach of yore. Our organization hasn't hit on a big $ international star (pro or amateur) since Bill Giles' team bought the Phillies and gutted the DR operation.

P.S. to Andy -- AF may well be accurately referring to the years when Bill Giles actually did serve as the team's GM in addition to owner. He was always an extremely meddling owner, as witness the Drew debacle.

[andyb]

Carlos Carrasco is actually the most valuable guy we traded away. Got us Cliff Lee of course. I think he was a mid-level $300K signing though that would be more like a million these days. 21.2 total WAR so far even counting 2 serious injuries/health setbacks (TJ surgery and cancer).

[bigegypt0417]

Unfortunately, unless the system changes, the Phillies will be at a disadvantage in the international market going forward, since, as a large-market team, they are in the third grouping -- the ones with the smallest allocation. Like the draft, there was a time when teams had the freedom to do a lot more as they wished and spend for additional talent in the international market. Those days are gone. Just another fleeting opportunity that the Phillies organization missed out on.

So i guess that's part of why I'm puzzled...the yankees are in the same grouping and somehow hit HR's in the market with Jasson Dominguez being the latest. We don't even seem to be in the conversation for that caliber of prospect...

[andyb]

P.S. to Andy -- AF may well be accurately referring to the years when Bill Giles actually did serve as the team's GM in addition to owner. He was always an extremely meddling owner, as witness the Drew debacle.

I get the GM reference and he was GM officially for 4 years (1984-1987) and had undue influence in others. The statement from AF though was non-sensical as it just said "Bill Giles never built a farm system" and then proceeded to list randomly 20 years of draft picks none of them from when Giles was actually the GM. And glossing over the fact that we had a good GM in Paul Owens in the 1970s. I don't think anyone disputes that Giles meddled and hurt the franchise in the mid-1980s. It is just a small time period and has little to do with much of anything.

When Giles first got control of the team they had a very good farm system. When he took active control he was terrible at it (and prioritized profits at the expense of organization building). This just has no relationship to a balanced look at the Phillies that has been a mix of good (1970s, 2000s) and bad (1980s, 1990s) in terms of organization building.

[allentown]

And we signed him back in 2003. Not quite as long ago as Ruiz (1998), but quite a while and puts him squarely into the period when we actually were building minor league strength to drive the 2007-2011 golden age.

[mdougherty12]

They need to bring in a GM who can build a farm system, trade anyone they can for prospects, and finally do it right, if they spend 2-3 years in the wilderness, so what, is 70-92 any worse than 80-82 from a fan perspective?

I think there is a reasonable case to be made for the Phils to start another rebuild, but 2-3 years seems wildly optimistic to me. There just doesn't seem to be much talent left on the pharm at this point.

I don't know that the timing is right to tear it down this off-season, either. Eflin could potentially be worth a lot more in a trade at the deadline next season, if he can continue to pitch well. Hoskins could also raise his value significantly with a longer stretch of strong performance. I don't know that you would get much of a prospect haul for anyone on the roster, aside from Nola (or Bohm, who I wouldn't deal at this point). The other problem with tearing it down this off-season is that you would be stuck trading for prospects who you mostly haven't seen play in a year at this point. Everybody is a year older, but they've been stuck at alternate training sites, aside from the guys who got a little time in MLB this year.

[Philsmania]

The Phillies drafted JD Drew on June 2, 1997.

Bill Giles stepped down as club president on June 23, 1997.

All but three weeks of the negotiations took place on Montgomery's watch. Giles ran the Phillies into the ground but don't blame him for JD Drew.

[zambonir]

I think the failed bullpen and the failed farm system are actually the same problem, and it wasn't just the bullpen, not having viable 6th and 7th starters wound up costing the Phillies a game or two this year (and they missed the playoffs by a game or two).

Some of it was still very bad luck - both injuries and the crapshoot of pitcher development. But depth is the only hedge against that. Two years ago it looked like we had it - literally a dozen arms that would be contributing as spot starters and useful relievers, even if only 2 or 3 of them truly stuck. Harper talked about how the best way to build a bullpen is from within, but it's not like they haven't tried that, repeatedly. We've got a few candidates now, plus a few guys who might get healthy, but if Klentak (let's just say he stays) runs it back with a bullpen pool of:

Neris, Phelps. Alvarez (re-sign as FA), Morgan, Suarez, Romero, Brogdon, Robertson (minor league deal, could just as easily be Hunter or Parker or someone else), Hembree, Hale

Now, maybe you cut Hembree and Hale loose. Maybe you even move on from Morgan if you think Suarez and Romero are ready. Maybe you don't re-sign Alvarez. But I'm still not sure you hand out another $20-30 million multi-year contract. Maybe one $8-10 million one-year guy.

You need internal depth, but you also need the ability to hit on a Trevor Rosenthal or John Curtiss. It's not like the Phillies didn't have guys like that, they just weren't the right guys this year - or they don't have the right coaches.

[allentown]

The Phillies drafted JD Drew on June 2, 1997.

Bill Giles stepped down as club president on June 23, 1997.

So Bill Giles was undoubtedly the one to make the final decision to draft Drew "for the good of baseball", while fully intending to do battle with Boras and not offer above suggested slot. There were still very good players on the board. That was an excellent draft class. We got a comp pick after the first round in the following draft. It was a brutal loss of talent 'for the good of baseball". And Bill did subsequently meddle in negotiations and P.R.

[zambonir]

You would think that if Middleton and the other owners forced Giles out to install Monty, they would have made signing Drew a priority.

[allentown]

You would think that if Middleton and the other owners forced Giles out to install Monty, they would have made signing Drew a priority.

I don't think Monty and Giles were very different. Probably more an issue of personal style in relating to other partners and how much income Bill needed to draw from the team each year. Can you point to any clear change in Phillies philosophy with the switch from Giles to Montgomery.?

[zambonir]

Nope but...preaching the choir here I know - it seems like every time Middleton shakes up the team it's emperor's new clothes.

I was just surprised to learn/remember it happened so close to the drafting of Drew, rather than as fallout from failing to sign Drew. Had the infamous Fed Ex envelope even gone out yet?

I think your belief that Giles lived off Phillies profits/revenue is probably not accurate. The partnership would have not made that easy to do, and if it did, all the partners would have been making the same draw. He was paid a lot of money to actually be the President. Eventually he had to start selling equity, which he shouldn't have had to do if he made money off the Phillies' profits, because they were rolling in revenue post-CBP.

Those owners just didn't believe in putting more of their own money into the business. Not, ironically, all that different from what we see now from the Astros/McKinsey types running baseball. I do give Middleton some credit for doing the right thing with the employees. I'm sure it is actually true the team will lose money for these two seasons. But will they keep the same level of payroll?

And more importantly, are we really gonna have to wait another week or two for front office news again?