Minor League Games - August 6, 2024

Walker rehab start at LHV tonight. If it goes well he is likely to start Sunday in Arizona as it does not look like Ranger will be ready for a week or two.

Calderon mashing - 5 RBIs

Miller with a three hit night

Looks like LHV and Walker are rained out, so he's not starting Sunday unless the Phillies just decide they need him now both to stretch out the rest for everyone and to replace Allard or Phillips.

Walker clearly needs rehab starts, in fact I would have tried to stretch out his recall until Sept 1. He has been a disaster all season, there is no reason to believe he is better.

Pretty good minor league career so far for a UDFA, huh?

Anthony might be a steal, "victim of life's circumstances."

Anthony was ensnared in a criminal investigation into gambling by athletes at the University of Iowa and Iowa State University and missed essentially the final quarter of the season. As far as MLB clubs were concerned, that apparently superseded the numbers he put up in two years at Iowa. Anthony was Big Ten Conference Freshman of the Year in 2022, returning to school despite being draft eligible and getting some nibbles from teams. He was the Hawkeyes’ best hitter last season when everything came to an abrupt end.

First full ML season, .322 in Clearwater, .350 in JS. More line drive power right now, but at 6'2 211, they can tweak his approach and find more pop.

Might have to move him back to LF, given DH and 1B are filled through next season.

We don't need to move Anthony yet...let's see if he can get the ball in the air more without losing his average first. Right now he has dominant ground-ball tendencies and warning track power at best. He's 2-3 years away given a usual development curve.

I wouldn't force him to search for more power by lifting the ball -- maybe getting stronger and older will allow him to do that. I like guys that hit a lot of line drives...

Anthony apparently has pretty low exit velocities. He is going to need to get stronger if he is to succeed at a power position. Clearly a decent hit tool but that is probably not enough without more power.

Not sure that's a strength issue at 23, may be a "weight transfer" issue in his swing, something hitting coaches can work on in the offseason by tweaking his swing mechanics.

I'm really skeptical of swing coaches working to "tweak the mechanics" of .330 hitters. Let the power develop naturally. If we didn't have Harper at 1B and Schwarber DHing, a high-average hitter would look good in either of those positions, even if he only hit 10 HRs per year. I don't want us to change him to a .250 hitter who hits 20 HRs....

I'm not talking swing angle changes, though some hitters (high GB guys, they're working with Mendez on that, for example) do need to do that. More common are simple fixes like footwork, shortening a long swing, etc. Sometimes a hitter is flatfooted, not using his body to generate torque and is hitting just with his wrists - so getting him to learn how to shift his weight through his swing can generate more power without sacrificing contact.

That's why you spend millions on video, coaches and sophisticated pitching machines.

Fixed your last sentence.

To be a bit less cynical, when was the last time a swing fix worked on one of our prospects? They tinkered with Moniak for 6 years, and he developed power but never really got better overall. And he was one of the best results. How did that Rojas swing fix work? Or the ones with Vierling and Maton? And Kingery was subjected to endless tinkering. I strongly believe in minimalist coaching. Don't set out to "fix" a swing, let the hitter work and answer questions when they have them. They fixed Stott's swing, too, and he's no different now, if not worse. The hitting coaches don't know as much as they think they do, just like so-called experts in a lot of fields.