Phillies Hot Stove Discussion 2021-22

[andyb]

I am just a fan of not giving up on young talent. Yes we could trade Moniak or Haseley but it is also likely they would not bring us much in a trade. Frankly the guy to trade could be someone like Vierling who is probably not as good as his late season stats (the AAA performance in a much larger sample was mediocre).

I am not really advocating a trade of any specific young player, but I do hate trades where you get a fraction of a player's potential value coming off a bad season.

[bigegypt0417]

I am not really advocating a trade of any specific young player, but I do hate trades where you get a fraction of a player's potential value coming off a bad season.

Agreed...they don't hold enough value to make it worth the time.

I agree on Vierling as well...he may never be worth what he is today...whatever that may actually be.

[Austinfan]

You trade young talent when you have a surplus of young talent and you're blocking players or may lose players in the Rule 5 draft. When you're devoid of young, cheap talent, trading what little talent you have just digs the hole deeper.

Vierling obviously overperformed in the Show. Watching him, he didn't look over matched. He certainly got a big BABIP boost (.420), but his BB rate was well below his AA/AAA performance. However, remember he jumped 3 levels in one season. He shouldn't be counted on to start, but could be part of an OF platoon.

They need to salvage one or two young OFs, whether it's Kingery, Moniak, Haseley or Randolph. And they have to get Bohm on track and handle Stott correctly. They don't need these guys to be stars, just provide enough OF depth that you only have to spend on one guy, and fill the black hole at 3B and maybe push Didi to the bench at some point. Otherwise next season will be a long year. They can only afford one major and a couple minor FAs.

[andyb]

He certainly got a big BABIP boost (.420), but his BB rate was well below his AA/AAA performance.

It is this sentence that should give one pause. Unsustainable BABIP coupled with a walk rate that suggests he'll regress when pitchers get a book on him. There is actually some logic or science behind why some young players do well their first time around the league and then regress. Pitchers learn how to pitch to them, and being aggressive at the plate becomes a negative rather than a positive. He has a shot at being a bench player of course, but it is no better than the other OFs that some are trying to part with (i.e. Moniak and Haseley).

[allentown]

These are the same scouts who found Vierling, Williams and Maton in later rounds - not that they're stars, but they've outperformed the 1st rd picks so far.

But, I think you make my point, rather than your own with this comment. Yes it is the same scouts (or at least the same bunch of area scouts) as identified the failed and 'failed' first rounders...but, it is also the same development staff that tried to develop both these guys and the first rounders. What is different is the extent to which these lower $ guys can be selected, based principally upon an area scout's recommendation. For the 1st and 2nd rounds the higher ups -- the many higher ups, have the huge role in making the decision. I think that's where (plus development) the problem has been. I agree: Bohm should hit; his bat wasn't in question. That is largely on the development staff messing with him. Kingery should hit. Hasely to a lesser extent, and I wouldn't expect the power the Phillies have messed him around in search of. I think all of these guys, and Moniak and Ortiz and Muzziotti and Pujols will be in MLB, but our guys have been having shorter and lesser MLB careers than they should be having. We have had a lot of horrendous H.S. position player draft picks in the first round and high $ international list, but I don't think any of these guys are on that list although Ortiz definitely shouldn't have been a $4 million man. I don't find the Randolph 'fail' particularly surprising. A very risky HS pick and a bad pick (as with Moniak) in that the PHillies organization almost immediately decided that they didn't want the sort of hitters that these guys were and proceeded to try to remake them into the sort of guys they could have taken in a later round.

Moniak in particular is a victim of a change in organizational philosophy. He is a prime square peg being pounded to fit a round hole. When we drafted him, Gillick and everybody else raved about his beautiful swing and how much time his bat spent in the zone. Then we wanted power. We decided every player must have a swing which generated loft. A sane organization simply doesn't do that. If you spend a 1.1 on a guy, because you love his swing, you don't sacrifice that swing to the gods of loft.

[Austinfan]

Yep. They hired people with a hammer, and every hitter became a nail.

With someone like Moniak, knowing he'd naturally develop power as he physically matured, why would you mess with his stroke? At most you help him make subtle adjustments, like being able to pull inside FBs when you're ahead of the count.

This is also why I think a new coaching staff could make a huge difference, Vierling made a big jump when he got his own hitting instructor and ignored the team's coaching. You take a kid like Moniak, go back to the film that got him drafted high, and get him doing what worked for him.

It's not just the Phillies who are stupid, Appel was a dominant college pitcher throwing a great 2-seamer, then Houston decided he should be a 4 seam pitcher, instead of working with what he excelled at and tweaking it (teaching him to throw a 4 seamer high in the K-zone as a "show me" pitch to make his 2 seamer more effective).

Different strokes for different folks, if Ortiz can't fix his contact issues, he should be coached to be a high impact player who focuses on walks and HRs. Haseley was a contact hitter with gap power, why change it?

[andyb]

Remember all those Robbie Ray rumors over the years? The consensus here (me included) was that he was not worth overpaying in a trade for when the cost would have been modest. Well he might be the AL Cy Young winner (he has the stats, Gerrit Cole has the NY pedigree and the wins). Sometimes these mid-level players with good stuff improve and are relative bargains. Like Zach Wheeler too.

[Austinfan]

I liked the Wheeler signing because his play justified his salary, but there was substantial upside left.
I hated the Arrieta signing because his play barely justified his salary, but his decline in velocity suggested there was a lot of downside risk but no upside benefit.

[Philsmania]

Meanwhile, in Cincinnati, the Reds--another organization that was late to the analytics and sport science party and seemingly outsourced a lot of minor league coaching to Driveline in an effort to catch up--are also now cutting ties to Driveline.

[zambonir]

Segura conundrum? Hitting .290 with an almost .800 OPS. Nah i don't think that is a problem there. the kid had a very good season.

He had a nice season. Problem is he's not a kid. Also, the narrative was that he was out of shape and unfocused in 2020, but just because he got his average up from .266 to .290 doesn't mean he was really that much better. Only a slight bump in OPS/OPS+.

Except for his first year in Philly where he was also miscast at SS he's consistently been a 3.7 WAR, 110ish OPS+ guy, and that's really good, but the fact that he is good, and at risk of dropping off, would be the reason to try and get something for him if you can't trade Didi. It's easy to say "bench Didi"; what's hard is to get rid of someone before he joins Didi (and Cutch) in dropping off.

I think they should probably trade one of Haseley or Moniak, but it probably doesn't matter. You should cross their names out for 2022, not forever. They are not likely to both help the MLB team in 2022, and if one of them does it's probably not going to be as an everyday OF. And at this moment, they both seem to need more time in AAA.

[BostonRoss]

Unfortunately, it's highly unlikely the NLEast will be there for the taking, as it was this year.

Who knows!? The Mets are still a mess. And the Braves, Freeman is aging and they still need OFs.

I agree with allentown. The Braves seem to be able to find outfielders. They traded for four in late July who hit 44 homers for them. Those guys will be gone, but Acuna will return, and if they need more, they know how to get them. And the aging Freeman accumulated 4.7 WAR in 2021.

[zambonir]

Regardless, we should be past the point of trying to build 84-86 win teams that might still take a weak division or wild card (though, next year will also probably be expanded playoffs). And yes, I don't think Freeman is going to stink, but he might drop off. And maybe Morton finally will too.

The Marlins are also gonna be a factor, and we already can't beat them. The Nats also have more young talent and more rebuilding material (having already started it).

Meanwhile, in Cincinnati, the Reds--another organization that was late to the analytics and sport science party and seemingly outsourced a lot of minor league coaching to Driveline in an effort to catch up--are also now cutting ties to Driveline.

That's because they changed front offices as well. Just took them a year. Question is, are we really cutting ties with Driveline? The actual Driveline guys still work here - for now.

[Taudawg]

Speaking of Driveline (again), Matt Vierling was using a different swing during the 2019 season, went home that winter to rediscover his old swing, and then stick with what got him drafted. There was no direct mention of Driveline but full article is behind paywall. https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/mlb/matt-vierling-went-home-fixed-his-broken-swing-and-became-a-contributor-for-the-phillies/ar-AAOceEC?ocid=Peregrine&

Matt hit well in 2018 at traditionally hard Lakewood park, and again in 2021. I suspect if we dig deeper, we can find several instances of Driveline not just stunting development, but damaging players.

[zambonir]

Yeah, we have heard that about Vierling already (this article is one month old). The story also says the instructor who "fixed" his swing in 2019 is no longer with the team, so he may well have been fired by Ocharski, and was never a Driveline-type person.

Where Vierling got lucky was that the Phillies wanted nothing to do with him in 2020, and apparently that was better than actually working with the staff. But conversely, Kingery did the same thing pre-pandemic, except his private coach was the one preaching Driveline-type changes, not the Phillies.

And who knows what Vierling has actually fixed. He still couldn't hit in AAA (no power, either) and had insane BABIP in MLB (as discussed already too). Small samples all around, both good (Reading, MLB) and bad (AAA).

I think the hype about this stuff is a overblown on both sides, it's neither as bad nor as good as people think, nor as much of a binary. And sometimes these changes are about trying to raise the ceiling on players, at the risk of also lowering their floor.

[andyb]

I think we go too far in assigning certain blame for players that improve (Vierling) or struggle (Moniak at times). We need to remember that all players in all organizations were on their own if they were not at the alternate site last year to some degree. Two years are a long time and some players can take leaps over that period just because it is twice as long as the normal gap between performance we see (part of why I am curious if Simon Muzziotti is almost ready rather than just looking at when he actually played).

With Moniak we are speculating completely. He was drafted pre-Driveline and did not light it up and showed an inferior hit tool compared to what was advertised. He is also the type of player that is always asked to build power because someone who is not great defensively in CF can stay there by adding offense. I have no idea why Moniak's development has been so bumpy. Could be the Driveline guys. Could be not responding to other types of instruction. Could be he just is not as talented as advertised. We criticize the organization for forcing Driveline on everybody regardless of the individual fit or need, but we also probably have no clue to the degree that the club did this.

They are changing philosophies because the collective approach did not work. It is much harder to say whether they messed up individual players.

[zambonir]

Driveline (and Chris Young) are more the symptom, not the cause. Of the lack of unified philosophy (both between the minors and majors and drafting/development) of the constant churn, and of just not having a good organization in general. Arguably that's the reason they made the Driveline move in the first place - things were in such tatters that bringing in some guys with a plug-and-play system was appealing. But once they fired Kapler, Mallee and Young (and took that decision out of the hands of Klentak) the new people weren't necessarily going to be in sync (and Dillon still got fired anyway).

I'd like to say that Bonifay's failure in Philadelphia probably has more to do with the Phillies than him, since they got him from Houston, and Houston had made all of this stuff work. But he was really just a minor league manager there, not an executive, as well as a major league coach, and had been out of work for a year when the Phillies hired him. So maybe just a bad hire, and another old-boy's club mistake (his father was the Pirates GM and was likely pals with MacPhail).

[rkeden]

I think there is the possibility that the Phillies have a secret weapon that might help us more quickly and effectively develop our young players who are on the cusp but not yet quality major leaguers. Bryce seems to be unusually determined to change the skills and culture of our better players in the minors. I think we should allow him a nice long rest to get his body and mind back in shape and then ask if he might run a development program to shape minds, bodies and swings. The youngsters would listen to Bryce, and would develop greater chemistry with each other. Bryce can bring in a few friends to assist and create a winter camp for skills improvement. He has already worked with Bryson Stott for mostly geographic reasons but it seems to have worked. If 5-8 players got some concentrated mentoring from someone they respect and want to emulate, maybe by Spring Training, they will have gained what was lost in the disaster of 2020. Could Ortiz develop consistency and a strategy for two strike counts? Moniak new confidence and power? Vierling lock in his new swing and gain power?

Bryce and the readers of this board are in a hurry. I watched Richie, Del, Robin, Curt and Puddin' Head. I can't wait forever either. Just an idea!

[allentown]

Yes, the Phillies are a highly dysfunctional organization. It wasn't that long ago they built a championship team, built it on their own home-grown talent. Something VERY major was lost in the organization. We had guys who could find talent. We managed to develop that talent. The championship team wasn't a free agent extravaganza. Gillick probably got them over the hump to the championship, but the organizational decay also seems to have taken hold on his watch. Our ownership seems to crave the grey hairs as some sort of security blanket. MacPhail was certainly a fail. Monty seemed a fail. Dombrowski got ownership to open the purse, but is he the guy who can rebuild by building a strong farm which can produce a string of plus MLB talent? The Phillies are a team which should have expensive FA, but we need a productive farm to make a go of it. It's not lost on me that once the Phillies went big on the FA route after 2008, they never won another WC, despite better teams, and ownership never unzipped the purse at crucial moments. Chopped RAJ's legs out from under him. The decline of organizational competence from the early and mid-2000s decade to now is stark.

Bryce, the readers of this board, and all fans should be in a hurry. Longest post-season drought, one winning season (barely) in a decade, constant churn, no sense of urgency to build the farm or participate in the international over-25 marketplace.

If Driveline really is gone, that was another awfully quick switch to them, then away from them. Nothing constant but the endless churn.

[Austinfan]

I'd be happy with three losing seasons if they really committed to building a top ten farm system.
What I don't want is buying enough players to win 80-85 games, draft around 15-20, don't invest in the farm system and wait for another 1993.

[nycphils]

Sadly it isn’t a matter of not investing…they spend all the $$ they are allowed to spend. They just spend it poorly or can’t develop what they get. But I agree with your larger point.