2022 Phillies Major League Regular Season Discussion

flyers19rw 2022-04-18 14:23:38 UTC #83

The positional musical chairs isn't working and doesn't seem to benefit any of the players involved in it. Getting close to time for the FO to make up it's mind and plug people into set positions and let it ride. Somebody may have to be cut; someone may have to be traded; someone may need to be sent down. No matter, what's going on now is not the answer.

andyb 2022-04-18 16:47:07 UTC #84

Nice article on Norwood. His dad died right after he was traded to the Phillies so it has been a rough couple of weeks for him. He looked pretty good in his initial outings though.

allentown 2022-04-18 17:14:35 UTC #85

I agree. The Phillies also haven't given enough consideration to the future, while having a very big salary budget. That means the cheap home-grown kids need to make it or the whole thing goes bust sooner than later. So... play the kids. It's early, but this isn't looking like a playoff team. I disagree with those who say we have enough pitching.

Even with Bohm and Hoskins and Harper being fairly old by the time the Schwarber deal expires, that signing didn't seem bad at the time. He's slumping now, so not tradeable at all. The real problem IMHO is that the signing of Castellanos made Schwarber totally redundant and expendable. Just too many DH-types on the team.

I think the guy we'll have to move is Hoskins, but not until the coming off-season. He's reasonably cheap and he's hitting.

So what to do this season? I think what we've got now is what we will have until the trade deadline. What needs to be done is actually rest the rotation players on their off days. Schwarber needs to sit for awhile and work off-line with the hitting coach. Bohm needs to at least hit every day -- much or all of that can come as the DH. Didi needs to sit more in favor of Stott and Segura. Let him play about half time. That gives 3/4 of the games for Stott and Segura. Works better the more games Bohm can play 3B, since Camargo shouldn't be an every day player.

Lucky_Beagle 2022-04-18 17:23:22 UTC #86

My concern with management is why did it take 8 games to figure out a relief pitcher (lefty) could be brought in and face both Schawber and Harper in the "original" lineup but now that he has them separated by 3 slots its harder to do. Well what changed since the spring in figuring that out? I think he just didn't want to say the lineup stunk so I made changes to see if it is any better even though it was only for 8 games originally.

andyb 2022-04-18 17:32:14 UTC #87

My concern is that when you have a struggling lineup and a guy on the bench hitting over .600 the Phillies might not have a manager capable of seeing how they can improve that lineup.

Now I realize that Bohm has really not played enough to know if his offense is back or not, but I think I trust his offense now more than Camargo, Stott, or Didi among the alternatives. We have no choice in the OF (Vierling or Muzziotti) but we do have a choice at 3B.

Phillies face only one left-hander this week (Tuesday). Hopefully they find a way to get Bohm in the lineup 3 or 4 times. I actually think Schwarber will be fine. Looks like timing rather than bat speed to me. I'd get him back at the top of the lineup against RHP in a few games. Might prefer Segura there too over JT. I just worry that leadoff is going to wear him down over the year.

Recent Phillies history on top offensive prospects:
Hoskins - move him to LF for no good reason
Kingery - let's make him a SS!
Crawford - Let's make him a 3B or 2B so Kingery can play SS!
Moniak - Let's develop that hit tool. Oh wait, he has some power but can't hit!
Haseley - The safe, fast-moving OF pick stalls in the majors
Bohm - Misjudged his defense but can't figure out a way to get a good bat in the lineup
Stott - Too early to tell.....

The recent history of them developing prospects is not good and it can't all be bad luck.

VoteForKalas 2022-04-18 20:57:19 UTC #88

This is so on target. Imagine if they had done this with Rollins, Utley and Howard. And it begs the question of when did the mindset change from having a set lineup to experimentation like this. And how as that era ended, they seemed to experiment like this with prospects more often than they had before. Cody Asche's move from 3B to LF for an earlier example.

andyb 2022-04-18 21:03:43 UTC #89

The one that really hurts is still Crawford. I continue to believe the old school types just hated the flashy rookie. And he is the one on the list that could actually play defense.

This season he has a .500 OBP. 6 BBs against 1 K. This could actually be that age 27 6 WAR season that is often the low cost (contract-wise) reward for actually properly developing a number one pick.

VoteForKalas 2022-04-18 21:10:57 UTC #90

So true. Him, Kingery and Bohm are the blatant ones.

I'll be upset if they cannot figure out how to utilize Bohm. He does not have to be at 3B, but get him in the lineup.
The fact we have not developed a 3B since Rolen still astounds me.

zambonir 2022-04-18 21:19:10 UTC #91

Crawford was complicated. Really, the problem started when they refused to bench Galvis for him during his September call-up. He should have just been made the SS without looking back. But his 2018 fell apart more due to injury. Kingery never plays there if JP is healthy.

I still think at that point they wanted Crawford at 3B and Machado at SS but the combination of Franco playing pretty well and Hoskins needing to be moved back to 1B prompted them to do the Segura deal, by which point Middleton had also soured on Manny due to the stuff in the playoffs. Clearly they never should have traded JP. Probably they should have just traded Hoskins instead of Santana too. Would have gotten a higher return, Santana was great in 2019, and they could have found another 1B after that (they seem really easy to find!)

They also held onto Cesar for too long, which is what led to moving all the other pieces around. It all seems very familiar.

andyb 2022-04-18 21:34:22 UTC #92

I would dispute that it is complicated. The Phillies messed up pure and simple. It does not matter that they were reacting to the ill-advised Santana signing and the pressures of winning. Good organizations have long term plans for their best prospects and execute those plans. It is not as if Crawford ever actually failed at the major league level other than getting hurt. He had a .692 OPS with the Phillies in his limited time and every young SS makes extra errors the first couple of times around the league.

There were several points where they could have played him more and given him a regular role and they just didn't. And then they traded him for less than his worth.

Taudawg 2022-04-18 22:00:11 UTC #93

Just curious - Who would be the old school types that didn't like a flashy rookie. Klentak was GM and Kapler was manager when JP was traded away. MacPhail? Middleton? It's the same crew that signed Odubel's deal. Odubel was/is much more flashy than JP.

I simply think they mishandled JP and under evaluated his skill.

allentown 2022-04-18 22:00:56 UTC #94

Crawford and Kingery are the key failures. Trading Crawford is what led to Didi. Kingery was just insane: take a kid, whose bat you love enough to give him a multi-year contract, and then decide to move him off of 2B so a vet could keep his job and decide that will be a utility guy, when the scouting reports on him prior to the draft were that he didn't have enough arm to play on the left side of the infield. He had shown that he was a plus 2B, but the Phillies analytics people were on a follow-the-Dodgers kick that anyone can play virtually anywhere. So, give a rookie the weight of that contract, then immediately move him out of his defensive comfort zone. He has said it was a problem. He had to work with 4 different fielding gloves. That and the contract were too much for his mind (not a criticism, that would be true for almost any rookie). The Phillies have turned into fad-chasers and expect their players and scouting/development staff to adapt to the fad-du-jour. It's also what killed Kapler as the manager. He has done well, now that he is in a situation where he can think for himself and implement his own innovations. It must have truly galled him to be required to follow the tune of a hopelessly inexperienced analytics staff -- but that likely was on Middleton (with implementation by Klentak).

allentown 2022-04-18 22:03:52 UTC #95

MacPhail and an impatient Middleton. Hard for me to put a ton of blame on MacPhail generally, since he seems to have done little more that cash his paycheck and serve as a grey-haired figurehead. He seemed both lost and unwilling to make the effort to find his way.

andyb 2022-04-18 22:08:01 UTC #96

Old school does not necessarily refer to age. It probably encompasses much of the minor league development staff. There were reports out of the minors all the time that Crawford was too flashy and needed to tone things down. We heard much the same stuff about Rollins too but at least he had some smart people like Charlie Manuel making the decisions (yes he was old).

A guy like Klentak owed his very job to the old school types, so while he should have been the analytics type to overlook some criticism, the people he hired failed him.

Taudawg 2022-04-18 22:17:01 UTC #97

You don't say

zambonir 2022-04-19 02:11:23 UTC #98

There's an expression, not sure to whom it was first applied, that certain public figures are "an old person's idea of what a young person is like." That was Klentak. Not because of his age per se. But he was yet another Phillies patronage hire, it just happened to be MacPhail/Angels/Orioles patronage and someone who was ostentibly new school instead of old-school Phillies lifers.

I do still think some of it was just bad luck in 2018. Crawford only appeared in 43 games. 36 starts (27 at SS, 9 at 3B). That wasn't because they didn't give him opportunities, he was literally unavailable for well over half the season, if not 2/3rds of it. As ATown noted, they really shouldn't have stuck with Hernandez once Kingery emerged. And then they made it even worse by doubling down on their playoff hopes, deciding that neither Crawford nor Kingery could be a part of that (and they also acquired Wilson Ramos and a slew of bench bats. But really it was just a miserable offense - Hoskins and Santana and Franco were actually the best of it! (Rhys by a lot.)

andyb 2022-04-19 14:59:11 UTC #99

One player we have not discussed much is Vierling. I always thought there was way too much certainty in expectations for him. Obviously he was forced into a larger role at the beginning of the year and getting Odubel back for the weekend will certainly push him back into mostly a platoon, but one has to think his roster spot is a little tenuous.

Vierling probably has a couple of weeks to show something after Herrera is back, but after that I could easily see them bringing up Quinn or someone outside of the organization currently.

Philsmania 2022-04-19 15:35:46 UTC #100

We discussed what went wrong with Crawford a while back. It did seem that Kapler also had a lot to do with it as he became smitten with Kingery and, somehow, wasn't too hot about Crawford. It was notable how Crawford went from 2018 starting shortstop to completely out of their plans by the end of that season.

zambonir 2022-04-19 15:51:55 UTC #101

Crawford was on the DL or on a rehab assignment from April 29 to June 5 and then again from June 20 to August 11. He started 11 games in June so they were still giving him every chance after the first injury. By the time he came back from the second his competition was Asdrubal Cabrera not Kingery. I can't really blame anyone for not wanting to throw a rusty unproven rookie into the middle of a pennant race (which it still was, even if they never should have really chased it). Deciding the 2019 team should be all veterans, OTOH, proved to be a pretty poor decision. And they did option Crawford instead of Kingery for half of August - that was all about the contract but they both would have sat on the bench a lot.

Crawford started 20 games in March/April, Bohm and Stott probably won't hit that #.

allentown 2022-04-20 14:27:56 UTC #102

The Athletic has an article about how the Phillies hitters are getting a lot more off-speed pitches than they did last year and how they will need to adjust. The quote from Hoskins left me incredulous:

“I would be curious,” Hoskins said, “to see how many of them were strikes.”

The Phillies, entering Tuesday’s games, had swung and missed at 19.6 percent of the non-fastballs they had seen. Only the Twins (19.9 percent) had a higher whiff rate.

I mean, wouldn't the hitting coach communicate this sort of information to him? If he was curious, wouldn't he ask? Of the six hitters discussed in the article, Rhys is the only one who is seeing a higher proportion of FB compared to last year, and at almost 63%, by far the highest percentage of FB among these six hitters.