GDT 6/26/18 New York Yankees (Severino, L) @ Philadelphia Phillies (Arrieta)

[andyb]

Arrieta is about what I expected,

You actually expected a guy with diminished velocity. His velocity has increased however. He just needs better command and there is actually a path for him being very good as the command he has shown in the past coupled with 93+ velocity and the movement he gets on pitches could be pretty good.

Pitching is hard. But the guy has demonstrated he could do this in the past so if healthy and with his velocity rebounded he still has a pretty good chance of putting things together.

[flyers19rw]

The defense behind Arietta has been abysmal. It has forced him to make too many pitches with little room for error.
He looks frustrated while on the mound. IDK if he knew what he was buying into when he signed here. He’s getting paid but he wants some more Ws.

[andyb]

The defense behind Arietta has been abysmal

This is a place where the manager/GM really do deserve some blame. We are the worst defensive team in the league by most stats. The whole Kingery experiment may have been misguided. And Santana, while good offensively, has made another position much worse defensively (LF) which negates some of his offense.

[zambonir]

I think they hoped Arrieta would strike more guys out though. His 2017 numbers were the same (8.7) as 2016, even as his FIP shot up. Now he has the same FIP he did last year (4.16) but the K/9 is 6.3.

The Santana move hopefully hasn't cost the Phillies wins because he's turned out to be so good offensively, exactly as advertised, though obviously they could have signed an OF instead. And the Kingery "experiment" isn't really an experiment, I think it's just been situational, out of necessity. They didn't want him to be anything other than a super-utility guy this season. Where he has ended up is more because of Crawford's health and Franco's inadequate play. Even Florimon's injury mattered, I have no doubt he'd have played a lot of SS and 3B, Valentin not so much.

Ideally they get a 3B and put Crawford at SS but if he's out for 6-8 weeks you can't necessarily expect him to be that good either defensively or offensively with such limited reps.

[andyb]

Arrieta has obviously not struck out as many as they wanted. But every criticism was related to velocity. He appears to be having other issues. Not great obviously, but also no sign he is physically done which is what you worried about signing a 30-something pitcher.

And the Santana move and yes, the Kingery "experiment" were misguided. Santana probably was never going to be good offensively enough to make up for Hoskins' defense. It was misallocation of resources. This team is in first place if they sign Lorenzo Cain instead of Santana.

And regardless of whether they intended Kingery to be the full-time SS they clearly intended to play him out of position. Then compounded their error when Crawford was healthy by playing the inferior defender at SS. It does not matter who gets hurt. That is luck. All we can evaluate are the decisions they make when the team makes the decision and there is considerable evidence those 2 decisions were wrong.

And being the worst defensive team in baseball, with some of that due to your GM's decisions, does not give Klentak a pass like you seem to be doing.

[zambonir]

That's true about Cain but he signed a five-year, $80 million deal.

I just think the whole season is an experiment. They were trying for 81-85 wins. If they knew then that 90 was actually within reach maybe they would have done it differently. If they knew then that they were going to go all in on Kingery maybe they would have traded Cesar (conversely, if they knew Kingery wasn't really ready and Cesar was so damn good, maybe Kingery never gets that deal. Funny to think the issue was being fair about his service time when it turns out it would be more than fair to send him back to AAA). I have no problem with their decision to play him "out of position" though. I still believe the super-utility player a la the Dodgers and Maddon can be valuable, and obviously he still can't play 2B. The goal was just to get him in the line-up and none of the guys he displaced - Franco, Crawford, even the RFs occasionally - were invaluable.

But, it's moot now. I don't know why they didn't just play Kingery at 3B and Crawford at SS once Crawford was back, but I assume it's because they think Crawford plays 3B better than Kingery does, even if he obviously also plays SS better than Kingery does. All this stuff will sort itself out before next season; right now, at least until a trade or Crawford's return, they don't really have options.