2023 Phillies Regular Season Discussion Part 2

[julio]

I'm reminded of the old story... "I sent you a canoe. I sent you a helicopter..."

[andyb]

I do have to agree that Dombrowski's trade deadline work this season was underwhelming

Though the Braves have a lead that even getting a healthy Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani could not have overcome.

Sometimes the best thing to do is very little. We gave up one prospect we cared about that had questions on his major league projection (Lee). We would have had to give up more to definitely get a starter that would have improved us in the postseason. Castro has not helped, but doubtful Falter would have either (and a DFA for him at some point was possible absent a trade).

[Austinfan]

With the emergence of Sanchez, Falter had no future here, and he's not a RP candidate with his kind of stuff.
Lee is a limited player who is blocked by Stott indefinitely, not sure he has the arm for 3B and isn't as talented as Miller.
So we really gave up little of value.

I'm not against trading prospects, just those with the upside to avoid bringing in $20+M free agents.
To me, Rojas and Crawford are untouchable, but with 24 year old Marsh in LF, Muzzioti is expendable.
The difference is I think Muzzioti will be a solid 4th OF, maybe a starting LF, but Crawford has star upside if he fills out and develops reliable gap (20 HR) power. And Rojas is already an elite defender with a quick bat.

[andyb]

Not sure Muzziotti is even a 4th OF. Remember offense was elevated at AAA this year and he really struggled in the second half.

Sanchez was a little ahead of Falter. Just not sure either is that good or even a long term 5th starter though.

[Austinfan]

Muzzioti probably wore down physically, he didn't play close to a full season the last three years (2019).
286 PA over the last three seasons combined, 520 this year.

[andyb]

Possible, but also possible he plateaued. Remember Muzziotti is not really seen as a great prospect today and when the second half of your AAA year is disappointing then that is a major strike on your prospect status. They probably like Kroon more and he isn't much of a prospect (he is just older so a little more advanced in AAAA utility terms).

[Callison]

I suspect those of them that believe in prayer have already tried that...and that it's worked about as well as one would expect, when resorting to prayer instead of available real-world approaches.

With no evidence one way or the other, the logical conclusion is to withhold judgment. Did God offend you in some way, J?

What real-world approaches did you have in mind? I'll forward those to the Phils cause they don;t know what to do with Lorenzen.

[Austinfan]

Both players have missed a LOT of PT, so they're years behind their peers in terms of experience.
Age matters in terms of physical maturity, but experience is key for being ML ready.

[julio]

With no evidence one way or the other, the logical conclusion is to withhold judgment. Did God offend you in some way, J?

Well, if you want me to be serious here... Praying for things you need is one thing (get your spouse's cancer into remission; peace in the world, etc.). Asking God to intervene to give you something purely secular that you want, but that is patently unimportant... It seems to me that trivializes and demeans the whole idea about what God and religion are supposed to be about. Anything to do with how the Phillies do, in season or in the post-season, is in that category. In the context of asking for God's intervention, it does not matter.

Asking God to let the Phillies win? Asking God to restore Michael Lorenzen to no-hitter performance? That's a joke, right? So I treated it as such.

[bkeich]

Bohm needs 7 RBI to give us 3 guys with 100. Probably unlikely.

Harper needs 1 HR to give the team 5 guys with 20.

Bohm needs 2 to join and potentially give us 6 guys.

[bkox]

MLB just banged the game in DC tomorrow

Nats-Braves game tmrw PPD. Will be a split doubleheader on Sunday.

— Britt Ghiroli ( @Britt_Ghiroli ) September 23, 2023

[bkox]

Kyle got the RBI needed for this tonight.. Truly been an amazingly weird season for Schwarbs:

With his next RBI, Kyle Schwarber will have 100 on the year to go alongside 45 home runs, 100+ runs, and 100+ walks.

In 141 years of Phillies baseball, there have only been three such 45-100-100-100 seasons:

Mike Schmidt, 1979
Jim Thome, 2003
Ryan Howard, 2006 pic.twitter.com/v7s5sk4mqM

— Ryan Lawrence ( @ryanlawrence21 ) September 19, 2023

And in the last 13 seasons, there have been just two MLB players to have a 45-100-100-100 season:

Aaron Judge (2022, 2017)
Mike Trout (2019)

— Ryan Lawrence ( @ryanlawrence21 ) September 19, 2023

[LoneStarPhan]

We sometimes tend to underappreciate Schwarber.

[bkox]

We sometimes tend to underappreciate Schwarber.

Agreed. Probably because BBref says according to WAR Christian Pache has been more valuable to the team and Weston Wilson has been the same value even though he only had 12 ABs.. Which means I really need to stop comparing players based on WAR.

[zambonir]

Defensive WAR is always tough, but I am still willing to believe that Schwarber cost the Phillies two wins out there in the field even as he added two. It's just that his bat didn't come fully to life in the second half - and they also got him out of the field. I assume if he'd been a full-time DH and had hit like this in April and May his WAR would look like last year's, maybe even better.

Wilson you just write off because of SSS but that's probably also true of Rojas to some extent.

Ironically Castellanos might have wound up being this year's most underappreciated player. He was our all-star and then he really hit a wall but suddenly he's #2 on the team in HRs and #1 in RBIs. He had an .840 OPS in the first half and it looks like he's going to match that for August/September while also hitting close to .300 again.

[zambonir]

lol

Alec Bohm has become such a proficient third baseman that his inevitable transfer to first base has been put on hold for a decade.

Rob Thomson and Dave Dombrowski have been brilliant in guiding the Phillies back...

I agree with this (though it remains to be seen if it pays dividends in October. But it has already). Also he was injury insurance, or Sanchez regression insurance. Fortunately neither of those things happened.

Dombrowski stole days of extra rest for his flagging starters when he acquired Michael Lorenzen at the trade deadline, and while Lorenzen might never again come close to pitching like he did in his no-hitter Aug. 9, he went 4-2 and devoured 43 front-end innings that a well-worn Wheeler, an exhausted Aaron Nola, young Cristopher Sanchez, flagging Taijuan Walker, or inconsistent Ranger Suarez didn’t have to pitch. Dombrowski and Thomson created a six-man rotation in early August that should pay dividends in the depths of October.

[andyb]

Guessing the analytics people in the front office have a more balanced perspective. It is fascinating the perspective on Bohm. If you go to the BR team page and rank our lineup by oWAR Bohm actually ranks 8th (1.7). And the 9th spot varies because nobody has gotten much playing time. Now the real story is having 8 guys with 1.7 oWAR or better creates a lineup that scores a whole lot of runs.

But it also gets to the central question with Bohm and that is unless he starts to add real power (30 HR) or really hit over .300 he is probably someone we use through his cheap arbitration years and that is all. He'll probably get overpaid in said arbitration because of his counting stats being pretty good. I am fine with him at 3B the next 2-3 years but by then we'll all probably be clamoring for Aidan Miller to take over.

[HopeSpringsEternal]

Which means I really need to stop comparing players based on WAR.

This is what I thought of when I read your post.

I have trouble understanding how WAR is calculated, which leads me to not trust it.

There's some truth in what Nick Castellanos said recently - he believes driving in runs and scoring runs are the two most important stats that lead to winning baseball games.

[zambonir]

Well I was mostly just laughing at the "10 years" part. By then he'll be older than Josh Harrison. And, agreed, he probably doesn't sign a long-term contract with the Phillies. It's just that, happily, he has turned out to be Cesar Hernandez rather than Maikel Franco, with different strengths and weaknesses.

I have trouble understanding how WAR is calculated, which leads me to not trust it.

There's some truth in what Nick Castellanos said recently - he believes driving in runs and scoring runs are the two most important stats that lead to winning baseball games.

I mean, that is analytics in a nutshell isn't it? But if you are just evaluating offense things like OPS+ and WRC+ aren't that complicated, even if we still don't fully understand the math behind them.

The problem with Castellanos's quote is that neither of those things are actually individual stats. They tell you that he has made a significant contribution to a good offensive team. They don't tell you how good he actually is individually.

And that's fine, and true of anything. Analytics are about evaluation and projection and trying to eliminate outliers and luck and small samples. But ithe production that happens because of those three factors is still real when it is happening.

[BostonRoss]

The prayer discussion reminds me of a story about Yogi Berra. He was catching, and a hitter crossed himself as he stepped into the box. Yogi jumped up and crossed himself, aging something about seeing whom God favored. Yogi knew the odds were in his favor.