Minor League Games - April 16th, 2025

[Squire]

AAA: Lehigh Valley (RHP Seth Johnson) at Gwinett - 7:05PM
AA: Binghamton at Reading (RHP Jean Cabrera) - 6:45PM
High A: Jersey Shore (RHP Casey Steward) at Greensboro - 6:30PM
Low A: Clearwater (TBD) at Palm Beach - 6:30PM

Rolling Scores Here - https://www.milb.com/scores/2025-04-16/all/all/phillies

Rolling Boxes Here - https://www.mlb.com/prospects/stats/affiliates?teamId=143&date=04/16/2025

[kmc1019]

Looking for positives on a dismal night in South Philly:

-Ranger with another strong rehab start
-Miller with 3 hits and BB for Reading. Approaching .200 batting average!
....and sadly little else.

[dcsman]

I'll take what I can get. Thanks KMC1019!

[andyb]

Sam Highfill with another good outing in bulk relief.

Way too old for Clearwater but just signed last year after 5 mediocre years at NC State. Better stuff (sitting 94-95 I believe) than his college stats would indicate.

[Austinfan]

Probably starting with Clearwater so they can work on his mechanics, but if he keeps pitching like this, he'll rapidly rise up the ladder.

[fish]

A quote from Jason Ochart in The Atlantic about hitting development technological advancements:

“I learned that the hard way in previous situations where we did like 20 percent of everything, and no one got better,” Ochart said. “When you try to meet in the middle, it’s like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna turn the HitTrax on only for these reps. And we’re gonna do bat speed training for this small group of players in the DR and the complex.’ And then when I met the Red Sox group, everyone was like, ‘Go build it and do exactly what it is you want”

Given that he’s only worked for one other organization it’s not difficult to figure out where that “previous situation”” was, which would explain some things about the Phillies hitting development issues. Awesome.

[Matt_Winkelman]

Highfill has been more 90-93 since his first game. He didn’t get a ton of whiffs yesterday like he did in the previous game, it was more called strikes. There is something weird going on with his fastball gor low-A hitters.

[zambonir]

I think we knew that already really - there was just not full buy-in at all levels (including the front office) during the Klentak years, some of which was also on Klentak and MacPhail for not getting that buy-in. Bonifay and Ochart never really had a chance, and there was not alignment between the minors and the MLB staff either.

This was at the time off Mattingly's hiring, Ochart hung around for one more year.

The Phillies have a new farm director. Now they need to fix a dysfunctional...

Driveline was not the main problem, some inside the organization insist. It was a symptom of a larger issue: The Phillies had no identity in player development because they were trying to be everything while not doing anything well.

[Austinfan]

Before you start training the players, you need to invest in extensive training of your coaches.
If you want to employ modern technology and techniques, you can't just tell "good ole boys" to do so.
You have to train them to the extent that they understand how to use that technology, and then apply their experience to make modifications for each player.

[julio]

I disagree slightly. It's less a matter of "training the good ole boys" on the approaches you're planning to sue, than of clearing those people out, and hiring people who understand, and buy in to, the desired approaches. The Phillies have historically treated the development staff as "family" - and while that's good to a degree, you need people who are, first and foremost, competent to execute your plans.

[Matt_Winkelman]

Yeah it is that second thing of not stepping in and clearing the problems. My understanding is they knew they might lose talented people in Mattingly year 2, but they had to essentially start fresh on the hitting dev side.

[zambonir]

It's just nice that Cotham and Kaplan (both hired when Girardi was still manager, and in Cotham's case, while the Phillies didn't have anyone running the front office) turned out to be good hires who stuck through the changes (and that Kaplan left for a promotion not because it wasn't working or he wasn't happy).

[VoteForKalas]

So great to see the minor league threads back....