GDT 8/6/19 Philadelphia Phillies (Arrieta) @ Arizona Diamondbacks (Leake)

[LoneStarPhan]

[phillychuck]

4 runs on 15 hits ain't good...

Seems like we have not been as efficient as other teams with RISP, but it may be a perception bias.

Yeah, 21st in BA, 25th in OPS with RISP. That is usually random fluctuation, but if it is, we should be making up for the deficit (regressing to average?) soon...

[Austinfan]

Well, can't really blame anyone for the bullpen meltdown, I mean when you lose 6 of your 8 RPS (plus Ramos), you're going to be throwing either kids who aren't ready or scrubs out there. Suarez has a bright future, but after the first batter he just lost the K-zone.

With a very thin bullpen, it hurts that Arrieta could only go 5. Things pile up.

The good news is they have a flood of good arms in Lehigh and Reading, the bad news is they're probably a year away.

[Patchmk88]

You say every year that we have a bunch of great arms in AAA and AA, but then say they are a year alway. Not much logic there. The issue is that we didn’t trade any kid tier prospects for a few relief pitchers at the deadline. It was our biggest need and the best moves we could make were it waiver wire pick ups.

[Austinfan]

We would need to trade for 2-4 RPs to really rebuild the pen, and who was available at a reasonable price?
And it wasn't like teams with more assets to trade weren't competing for the same arms.
It's not like this is a 90+ win team with one or two holes that you overpay to fill for the stretch run.

Klentak has been drafting for the bullpen, and doing a good job later in the draft finding promising arms.
He tried the veteran route, hows that working for ya?
Now it seems we're going to rely on the kiddie kore next season.

The starting pitching melted down, but if the bullpen had stayed healthy they could have limped to 90 wins or so.
But I don't ever remember a bullpen getting decimated like this, one or two guys yes, but the entire pen?

[Patchmk88]

Relief pitchers were going for penny on the dollar outside of Greene. No excuse not to grab a couple when the playoffs are in site.

Fans don’t expect a World Series, but after all the hoopla this offseason, most expect some postseason baseball. When you are in a position to make a wildcard game, you don’t sell the house, but a few mid to bottom tier prospects for a few decent relievers is not much to ask.

[andyb]

We would need to trade for 2-4 RPs to really rebuild the pen, and who was available at a reasonable price?

We could have traded for some arms that were better than the couple we added off the scrap heap that were DFA'd in Minnesota. Lots of mid level relievers were traded for nominal prospects and we had the ability to assume their contracts which would have lowered the prospect cost.

We are tied with the Nationals who are in an inferior financial position with us. They added 3 relievers and we did not. You are right that we are sending out some starters like Eflin and Pivetta who are not really prepared to be relievers. We are also sending out some marginal major league arms like Garcia and Suarez and Hammer and Davis and the new guys from MN because we have so many injuries and essentially had to bring up much of our AAA bullpen.

But Klentak could have done more without trading any of our top 20 prospects. He chose not to when faced with a very similar problem to what the Nationals faced. We got Corey Dickerson for cash which is nice. We whiffed completely on the bullpen though.

[schillingfan]

What blows my mind is people giving up on the season when we are right in the thick of the wild card race. Yes. There are issues. The bullpen may straighten out and Klentak may find the arms in AAA are better than the scraps we picked up at the deadline. I still think along the lines of PC, that eventually we have to progress (!!) to the mean and start getting timely hits with RISP. It’s getting ridiculous to get so many men on base and strand them there. Exasperating, but I’m not giving up.

[Patchmk88]

I personally am not giving up on the season. I hope that the manager proves me wrong and can get better production from the guys that are more talented than what they are producing and from the ragtag bullpen that our GM did nothing to at the deadline.

My biggest fear is that we don’t make the playoffs and that the manager is around again next year.

[julio]

What blows my mind is people giving up on the season when we are right in the thick of the wild card race.

People aren't giving up on the season, SF. I know it may seem that way sometimes here at philliesphans.com, but that's (at least in part) because some of our members use pp as a place to vent their frustrations when things don't go according to plan (or according to their expectations, or their hopes, etc.)... and there sure have been plenty of reasons for frustrations this season. You just have to look past those particular posts - the same people are quite lucid and reasonable when they're not blowing off steam!

[Yeah, some of the time, I'd rather they found other outlets for the frustrations - but all things being equal, it's better to vent here than to get upset with family members, etc.; here it's just written rantings that have no real potential to hurt anybody.]

My biggest fear is that we don’t make the playoffs and that the manager is around again next year.

If this is your biggest fear (as opposed to possible nuclear war in South Asia, or crop failures in the midwest, or any of a couple of dozen other not-all-that-improbable calamities that could engulf us all), you should consider yourself lucky!

[Patchmk88]

Biggest baseball fear. I have many fears outside of baseball most of which involve our president but I’ll leave those along unless I want to venture to the politics thread.

[julio]

Biggest baseball fear. I have many fears outside of baseball most of which involve our president but I’ll leave those along unless I want to venture to the politics thread.

Yeah, I hear you.

I don't let myself have baseball "fears." The Phillies - following the big club, following the minors/tracking the movement of players, and even doing a little maintenance here - all this is a form of "tuning out the real world," because there's a lot out there that... well, you can't dwell on it 24/7 and stay sane.

But I don't let myself get to worked up if the Phils struggle - they've done a lot of that since...oh, I don't know, 1970 or so, when I started paying attention? The bit about the "serenity to accept that which I cannot change" I guess?

I had a high school friend who was the most optimistic Phils fan I ever knew - even when Joe Lis was the next great hope! We were well out of HS when the whole mid-70s glory years unfolded; it had been a long wait.

[Lawman]

all this is a form of "tuning out the real world,"

Sports should be a distraction from real life. Agreed.

[Sabin]

Well, this doesnt preclude others from sharing their "fears" (or hopes!) on the Phillies' season here. Which you seem apt to dissuade with comments a few posts above.

You're smart enough to know the difference, I think. So I don't know the point to selective soapboxing.

[Patchmk88]

I guess that’s part of why I like venting about sports. Its childish, but I can’t get in much trouble for expressing my anger and feeling about Gabe Kapler (obviously nothing that would go overboard). However, if I expressed my anger and feelings about my boss at work their would be repercussions (I love my boss - just using this as an example).

Sports is my favorite way to escape real life because the good and bad moments are so instant but they don’t really affect my life outlook that much. I obviously have very fond moments of the highest of highs in my sports fandom (Phillies World Series, Louisville basketball Championship - I was there, Eagles Super Bowl) but they are nothing compared to those things that I have some type of control over.

[zambonir]

I think I enjoy watching the games a lot more than the people who post in these game threads do, because what I like about baseball is that it is a game of failure, and no one inning or game is the end of the world or season (unlike, say, college football. Or a 2-1 hockey game). But the level of frustration experienced in the heat of the moment of a blown save or big strikeout with men on base is not necessarily the same as it is in a bigger-picture discussion.

Tough spot you're in there Patch - you want them to make the playoffs but you also don't like the manager. If they make the playoffs, he stays, and if they fall just a little short he probably stays too. Really you need a September that's a disastrous as June was. It really depends just how sensitive ownership ends up being to fan and media unrest because in reality I still think this team has fulfilled or even exceeded expectations.

Here's Joe Sheehan the other day for instance:

The Phillies feel more like a disaster than they actually are. If the season ended today -- sorry, Tigers fans, it does not --they’d be in playoff position, tied for the two wild-card spots with the Nationals. This despite getting very little for their massive offseason shopping spree.

I suppose if another manager had faded disappointing performances by stars and a meteor landing in his pen, we’d find a way to praise him, but that’s not how we handle Gabe Kapler. Kapler, though, has kept the Phillies above water, and he deserves a measure of credit for that.

[Patchmk88]

I appreciate Joe and probably your opinion but in my opinion Kapler has not kept us above water. He is getting below par results from a majority of his everyday players and the lineup as a whole (despite some serious talent) is underperforming. We are near the bottoms in HR differential is a day and age where HRs are king (I don’t like that this is fact but it is). Yet we have players on this team that have proven in the past that they can hit a significant amount of homeruns before the ball was juiced this year.

I don’t blame Kapler as much for the pitching. I thought we should have spent money on a starter this offseason. Still, none of our young pitchers have progressed this year - this May be the fact that they don’t have the talent (unlucky for Kapler) or it may be the fact that those instruction and development hasn’t been significant and/or meaningful.

The bullpen is definitely an injury issue. I believe we had some top half of the league talent in there of everyone was healthy. Right now our talent is definitely in the bottom quarter of the league.

My biggest problem with Kapler is his feel for game situations. Last night is a perfect example. Analytically I’m sure the computers said that Suarez was a great option for the 6th inning. I believe 2 of the first three hitters up were lefties. However it was quite obvious after the first batter that Suarez has no idea where he was throwing the ball. I agree with giving him one more hitter to see if he can find it, but there was no reason to let him face three more hitters after that. With our bullpen we probably still would have lost, but that doesn’t make the decision making any better.

The long extra innings game the other night was another debacle. I know the excuses, Eflin’s Bicep hurt and Suarez couldn’t get loose, but if that was the case, why did Eflin bat in the first place? Instead Vince who is a much better hitter, a much better bunter, and a much better athlete should have pinch hit for him instead of waiting for him to fail at a bunt attempt, and then get to 2nd.

I believe this team has the talent throughout the lineup to be comfortably in the postseason despite their pitching.

[andyb]

The reality is that it is hard to prove managers are worth more than a game or two a year. And even that is hard to measure. Like with the Nationals I felt (unscientifically) that Dusty Baker was a good manager. Maybe he cost you a game or two on strategy (mainly managing the pitching staff), but that was balanced by his ability to get 25 players playing hard for you. Among them wealthy superstars.

With Kapler we don't really have an argument that he is good on either strategy or players playing hard for him. There have been as many instances of inconsistent effort as I can remember. Strategically he has also made some blunders managing for short term gain, our data on shifts is terrible, and then some of the small mistakes he made in the 15-inning game last week come to light.

While we can't prove Kapler is a bad manager, and the most he probably costs us is a game or two, it sure does not look like he is an especially good manager either. I kind of have the feeling that this was an 88 win team where injuries have cost us 2-3 games (relative to injuries other clubs have faced) and that Kapler might cost us another game or two. This just feels like we end up with 84 wins. Of course that might make the 2nd wild card the way everyone else is playing.

[flyers19rw]

Has anyone attempted to create a WAR for managers? .

[Austinfan]

I think people just developed exaggerated expectations because we signed Harper.
Harper is what I expected, a 3-4 WAR OF.

However, I'm optimistic b/c he's turned out to be more committed than I expected, and that's the key to making adjustments and improving over the long run, I think he can become a better hitter as he learns to focus more on contact and swing mechanics and less on trying to crush the ball.

The pitching staff has been a disaster, some of this is bad injury luck, some of this is young pitchers failing to improve. But if Pivetta turns out to be Myers II, fine.