Since we are playing Texas, I thought I would check up on our former prospect Spencer Howard.
He got rocked in three games with the Rangers earlier this year. His numbers in AAA are not atrocious, considering he is in the PCL but not all that good either.
I note that he's only pitched in eleven games between Texas and Round Rock, a low number. Is he hurt again?
And Gowdy isn't doing to well, either.
Food for thought (mentions Davis who just came up in another thread, and Pivetta. Germane to the Curtis Mead discussion elsewhere too I'd think).
the Yankees have pro scouts whose jobs are specifically to roam the minors in search of pitchers.
“The Dodgers are still the best at using their scouts with analytics to recognize pitchers with pitches they think they can improve,” says one National League West general manager. “But the Yankees are right there with them. It’s obvious what the Rays have done in this scouting, recognition and developmental department, and what Boston has done with Nick Pivetta, Garrett Whitlock, Austin Davis and John Schreiber — for whom they gave up nothing — indicates where they are going.” In that final June 19 game with St. Louis, Schreiber pitched the eighth inning, striking out the side, with Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado the final two hitters. He even runs the team’s postgame win celebrations.
To be fair the Rays have tried to salvage several other Phillies relievers who didn't pan out.
Just more evidence that we need more capable baseball professionals. We can certainly afford to hire them. Are we just hopelessly stuck in our ways.
I’m a bit tired of this theme that Pivetta got better when he left here. He had all of the chances in the world to succeed here. No one ever questioned his ability but it always came back as a million dollar arm and a ten cent head. The Phillies weren’t the only club to have doubts in his ability. Recall that Washington tried him as both a starter and a reliever in their minor league system with less than satisfactory results. Hence their willingness to flip him in the Papelbon deal. If he’s finally figured things out in Boston, then good for him. He was a disappointment here.
Both things can be true, but what he's doing this year is past serviceable. There's even All-Star talk. Of course he needed to leave regardless. I don't think anyone feels like he's one that got away (any more than Curt Schilling was for his old teams - and guess what, he never got rid of his 10 cent head either, lol). But he was also not well-served by a Phillies team that nobody can argue was well-run during his time here (whether the revolving door of pitching coaches or the emphasis on analytics without being good at it or the poor front office or the disappointing manager who also figured it out elsewhere).
That is patently incorrect. Pivetta was a raw arm in the Nationals system. JC draft pick who was having a breakout year at age 22 where he got to AA right before he was traded. He had only a handful of starts before he was traded that were mediocre at Harrisburg but he was having a very good year in high A. He was a breakout pitcher for them with better than expected results. That is why the Phillies wanted him. He was a raw arm from Canada having a breakout year. There was nothing less than satisfactory in his results.
Sure the Phillies gave Pivetta every chance and had to deal him. But it is also equally true that the Phillies did not get Pivetta to realize his potential. He was either a mistake or a failure by the Phillies. It was not bad luck that he did not develop.
It's the team names in that story that really rankle. Yankees. Red Sox. Dodgers. The Rays are the Rays, but those other teams are the Phillies' payroll peers, and they have figured out how to spend and be on the cutting edge at the same time, whereas the Rays do it out of necessity. And when they Phillies do try to tap the Andrew Friedman pipeline with Kapler it still doesn't work. We'll see if the new Assistant GM (as well as Fuld) works out better. But still kind of funny our President is the guy Boston fired, and now they are run by a guy (Chaim Bloom) we could have had.
At least Barber seems like a decent hire, from the Yankees' braintrust. The managers, we'll see.
He hardly had a breakout year before Washington dealt him. He had a whip in the 1.3 area and it was rising. They had decided to move him out of the rotation and into the BP before he was dealt to the Phillies/Reading. The Phillies decided to put him back into the rotation. No one questioned his arm but it never matched expectations.
Sometimes guys just take a long time to figure things out. You see it with position players with guys like Jose Bautista, Marlon Byrd and Brandon Moss, to name a few. It sucks to be the last team to have him before he gets good but, at the same time, you can't expect a team to be patient forever. Sometimes it's just a matter of a guy having the right rapport with the right coach for the first time.
We hardly need to argue the details of any one player - the post-Arbuckle Phillies demonstrably aren't good at this stuff. Not drafting and developing in general, not finding hidden gems in trades, not finding the upside in guys they do bring in. The issue is not that the Phillies should have kept or done a better job developing Nick Pivetta or Austin Davis or Cole Irvin per se (though the latter does look like malpractice as bad 40-man management) it's that they should be finding the equivalent of those players in other organizations. And then they turn out to be bad at signing or trading for provent major league free agent pitchers too.
That is just not true. At Potomac in 2015 he had 86 innings with a 1.147 whip and a 2.29 ERA. That was in high A and was much better than 2014 in low A where he was durable but less effective (4.22 ERA). When a young pitcher advances a level and was much better is kind of the definition of a breakout year.
And that season all but one appearance was as a starter. Same as the season before. Same as it was with the Phillies. There was never a decision to move him into the bullpen until 2019 when he was in Philly or near there. You are just wrong in your narrative. He also never had huge expectations. He kind of developed on the path that a raw arm from Canada would take. You are taking stories from 2019-2021 and placing them on top of his career in 2015 when he was traded.
The Phillies wanted him in the trade because he was a big arm that was having a good year that had additional upside. At no point were the Nats trying to deal him as a failed and underperforming prospect.
That trade was disastrrous for Phillies. Workman and Hembree both stank, performing FAR worse than they had for Boston. Interestingly, Pivetta is SSS did well for Boston, right from the start. Seabold pitching well for Boston in AAA this season.
It makes one wonder whether some Phillies pitchers were harmed by the pitches and pitching sequence our analytical guys and pitching coaches wanted them to use.
The trade was fine in that Pivetta had to go. The problem is they included Seabold to save $, not as part of the talents swap. The refusal to spend/exceed the tax looks extra stupid now that they've done it (though by now they'd be desperate to get under again).
I think it's fair to say Chris Young broke Pivetta and Bryan Price couldn't fix him. Pivetta certainly showed some immaturity along the way but the results of the pitching program in both of those seasons is indefensible. Cotham seems fine, obviously has had no magic. I think in terms of both analytics and instruction (and major league management) nobody has ever gotten the same message for more than one season.
Let 's just hope things simply settle down with Cotham at the pitching coach position. Up through his first year here, we had five pitching coaches in five years (McClure in 2017, Kranitz in 2018, Young in 2019, Price in 2020 then Cotham in 2021). Young, in particular, was a disaster, an outside-the-box hire (from front office to ML coaching staff--not too dissimilar to Kapler's career trajectory) who clearly didn't work out. But, unlike Francona, Kranitz and Kapler, Young has yet to be one of those guys who got smarter going someplace else. Young arguably broke Velasquez as well and could have broken Eflin too if not for Eflin tuning him out. Velasquez, two organizations later, is possibly showing some signs of life now. Price wasn't the mad scientist that Young was but he clearly didn't have it anymore--either because the game passed him by or he simply didn't connect anymore with today's athletes--and wisely walked away after 2020.
https://marinersblog.mlblogs.com/mariners-select-c-andrew-knapp-from-triple-a-tacoma-a9c9b60481da8
Andrew Knapp to Mariners
