Discussion - Part Deux

nycphils 2018-09-11 15:09:19 UTC #342

Exactly.

zambonir 2018-09-11 18:29:50 UTC #343

I mean, Harper is better than any position player on the current 40-man roster. Including Hoskins since he can actually play the OF. He's not Trout but with Trout you are either trading a ton or getting him when he's 30. If Harper was 30 now of course you wouldn't touch him.

Austinfan 2018-09-11 19:21:05 UTC #344

Except odds are the Phillies will come up with a RF in the next couple years who'll give you 2 WAR or so, whether it's Williams improving, Haseley taking the job, Cozen's learning to hit a breaking ball, etc.

It's not whether Harper will help, it's whether he's worth winning a bidding war to obtain, much like Arrieta last year, he wasn't worth a big money 5 year deal, he was worth a reasonably priced 3 year deal. In the same fashion, Harper isn't worth a 8-10 year $300M deal, he would be worth a 5 yr/$125-150M deal.

andyb 2018-09-11 19:51:48 UTC #345

If Haseley develops we could play him alongside Harper. Or trade him. Given the projections of him at this point there is no certainty he develops into an everyday starter and he would have trade value if he did and we had no place to play him.

A problem with this lineup is that it does not have a great middle of the lineup. Hoskins may be better suited to batting second which leaves no great threat in the 3-hole. If Harper is willing to come to Philly I think we have to consider it, especially if his value is down a bit and he will come for less money than anticipated. I still prefer Machado, but Harper clearly makes this team better and a good GM can trade other assets to get value from them.

zambonir 2018-09-11 20:58:15 UTC #346

AF's position of "don't wildly overpay for Harper but sign him if his price come down" is not exactly a hot take. I think we can all agree with that.

But if Machado is not available and there's competition to sign Harper the Phillies probably can't afford to sit out the bidding, unless they have some creative trade options (which they may well).

Squire 2018-09-11 21:00:02 UTC #347

What are the new rules about signing Free Agents and Forfeiting Draft picks again?

andyb 2018-09-11 21:03:40 UTC #348

Qualifying offer means we give up our 2nd highest pick and $500K of international money. If we received revenue sharing it would be our 3rd highest pick (which we did not). If a team is in the luxury tax it is their 2nd, 5th, and $1 million of international.

Philsmania 2018-09-11 21:06:28 UTC #349

I thought I read somewhere that the Dodgers don't get any compensation under the new rules since they traded for him. Is that true?

zambonir 2018-09-11 21:36:28 UTC #350

Yes, players who are traded mid-season can't be QO'ed. That's not new though. So Machado costs his new team nothing. Harper presumably gets a QO.

LoneStarPhan 2018-09-11 22:43:56 UTC #351

No question that Harper would provide another solid bat, but the contract he is expecting to get is way too high for his worth. Add the lost draft pick and international signing money and the cost gets even higher. I would go hard for Machado but I would not go after Harper. The money can be much better spent elsewhere.

flyers19rw 2018-09-12 01:15:27 UTC #352

We don't know what Harper is. He's had a rough time in DC. He came up early with too many accolades; rubbed some teammates with his attitude; too much was expected of him too soon. The talent that he has is clearly there. Put him in another location with a more mature attitude and he could become what was predicted of him and be something special. If the Phillies are all in on Machado and sign him, I'd pass on Harper. However if Machado wants to be a Yankees, I have no issue with the Phillies doing what it takes to grab Harper. He is a top five talent in the game.
OF-Williams/Herrera/Harper; IF-Franco/Kingery/Cesar/Rhys/Alafaro or Ramos is as good as it would get in the NL.

zambonir 2018-09-12 02:17:28 UTC #353

Nice try assuming Santana is gone (or Ramos back). Not sure that line-up is especially good though. Williams is a negative WAR player. Herrera remains a mystery, Franco is a negative WAR player. Gee, I wonder why this team loses every night! And then taking Santana out makes the line-up worse even if it makes Hoskins better.

Regardless, even with Harper or w/o Santana I suspect the Phillies need another OF or another 3B, especially if they move on from Cesar too.

I'm sure that rumor that the Phillies want to sign both big FAs won't go away until one of them is signed. But clearly they need pitching too.

LoneStarPhan 2018-09-12 04:40:35 UTC #354

Noteworthy fails of the 2018 season, not seen for 69 years:

allentown 2018-09-12 12:45:00 UTC #355

After losing the DH yesterday, I think today is the day on which there is no choice but to admit that the wheels have come off this team and the season is over. Just an amazing turn-around, which comes close to negating the premise that this team took a significant step forward this season. As CD noted after last season, the Phillies played great in the second half. That carried forward into the first half of this season, giving a 162-game period during we were a very good team. Now we are ending this season as the worst team in the NL over the past month or so. What is the hangover of that in 2019? What are TPTB going to do to turn this around? 1964 was the glorious high point of my youthful followership of the Phillies, but it was followed by a long down period. 1964 ended with close to a whole-team meltdown, including the manager and the impression that the team totally melted under the pressure, pressure intensified by Mauch's panic. It's a very sad end to what seemed a very promising season -- then and now. I agree with the comment in the game thread that this bad turnaround has made the Phillies a far less attractive FA destination. Philadelphia and its fans aren't the Chicago of bygone days and none of today's stars wants to be Ernie Banks. Ernie Banks gets killed in Philly. Where does the rebuild actually stand as of today? That's the big question for TPTB.

bigegypt0417 2018-09-12 13:30:30 UTC #356

Bryce Harper is 25 years old...he's not even in his prime years yet. Even with the absolute horrible start he had to the season he's turned it around. You have an obsession with trying to justify not paying for premium talent by talking about a bunch of "ifs".

Austinfan 2018-09-12 13:52:12 UTC #357

Harper has a long enough track record to suggest "he is what he is", there's no upward trajectory.

Sure, there's always the possibility that the light could go on, but he's had a long time for pitchers to adjust to him and him to adjust back, whereas someone like Rhys has barely one ML season under his belt and that game of adjustment and counter adjustment is still progressing.

I think the rebuild got ahead of schedule, some young players were exposed as still developing, especially the three young SPs, but it's not time to panic, I always thought 2020 was the target date, and nothing this season changes that assessment. And as we saw, free agents can't do much to accelerate a rebuilding timetable, you arrive when your young talent arrives. Franco showed real progress, Altherr and Herrera regressed, Rhys emerged, Kingery and Crawford struggled, SD flashed then crashed, and so on. Arrieta, Santana, Neshak and Hunter barely moved the needle, even though all had decent seasons.

I'd extend Ramos, keep Santana one more year but use him less (but he showed a decent glove at 3B) and dump the rest of the TDL pickups. Build up the depth at Lehigh and Reading next year and let the young prospects take their lumps. This team should have a great pitching staff in a year or two, they just need to field a solid group of 8, and they're not far from it. Average offense, plus defense and top pitching is more than enough for a contender.

2020 projected lineup
C: Ramos (Alfaro, Grullon)
1B: Rhys
2B: Kingery
SS: Crawford
3B: Franco
LF: Williams
CF: Quinn/Herrera
RF: Haseley/Pujols/Cozens

Now if I can add a young FA like Harper at a reasonable (i.e. not gross overpay) I'll do it, but I'm not breaking the bank to upgrade with 30+ FAs, we saw how little that helped for the most part after the TDL. The real difference makers are usually home grown or obtained in mega-trades.

allentown 2018-09-12 14:04:39 UTC #358

Looking at your lineup, the big question in my mind is whether Crawford and Kingery were simply brought up too soon or whether they just aren't what they were expected to be. I think both were handled very poorly this season. Can they be righted or whether some more AAA time is needed. I thought they both were more than they showed this season and wonder how much the current approach to hitting in the org messed them up. I expected Crawford to have growing pains in the bigs at the start of this year, since he had such a long adjustment period in AAA. Perhaps that plus injury, plus some mishandling explains his season. In the case of Kingery, his bat seemed unready for MLB, but coupling and adjustment to MLB with a change of position seems a bit much to ask of him. The contract may also have brought added pressure on everyone, as Burrell's big contract did. Burrell snapped back the next season. Hopefully Kingery will also, although he hasn't had a successful year in MLB and Burrell had. I do still strongly believe that sometimes players fall into a deep funk, which is only curable by winter. As we saw with Domonic Brown, sometimes it never is cured (although in that case having his position given to Young didn't help. Young players can be fragile.)

bigegypt0417 2018-09-12 14:08:28 UTC #359

No...that's an absolute no.

you keep harping on keeping players at his age and even older because they are getting better.

You really seem to love to move the goalposts when you cant reconcile your flawed idea teams are built internally with mediocre FA signings.

Bryce Harper is a star. he would be the face of this team for the next 5-10 years.

Lawman 2018-09-12 14:13:35 UTC #360

If the goal is to realistically compete next year, I don't see enough consistent offense out of the 3B/SS/2B positions. I also am not sure that any lineup that doesn't have Santana in it is realistic.

bigegypt0417 2018-09-12 14:15:45 UTC #361

It's a line-up based on his idea that free agency has no value to the core of your team...this season is an exception because there is a good amount of young players available. His line-ups are also more "fingers crossed" some perform above projection.