Rule 5/ 40 man roster?

[biggsphils]

Can someone please explain why the Phillies didn't protect Castellano ( The Paul Owens award winner) but kept on the roster pitchers Jose Cuas age 30 with a 6.89 e.r.a. at AAA, Tyler Gilbert age 30 , John McMillon age 26, 6.53 era at AAA, Tyler Phillips age 27 6.87 e.r.a. with the Phillies, Kyle Tyler age 27 with a e.r.a. over 5 at Lehigh Valley and Miami, Freddy Tarnok age 26 with e.r.a. of 13.50 at AAA Las Vegas and 6.33 at Lehigh not to mention many more like Cal Stevenson age 28. None of these guys I would call prospects

[andyb]

Biggest reason is that the Phillies did not want to tie up a 40-man roster spot all season for a pitcher they feel is not ready to contribute, and could possibly be returned from them anyway if he does not stick on a roster all season. Those names you mentioned are more ready to contribute, but also they are names that can be waived off the roster when a spot is needed.

Every team has several AAAA prospects like that. We add them through waivers because there is no value in keeping a spot empty for a long time. And we move on when we find someone better.

[zambonir]

Still a pretty strong chance he'll end up back here. And if he doesn't, his development may suffer.

For sure more than half of the names above will also leave the 40 as the team makes other moves in the off-season, and more of them in-season. But a few of them will probably make starts

It's definitely possible the Phillies got surprised a little bit by this one. I think they were more prepared to lose McGarry.

[phillychuck]

I'm with Biggsphils. I think their protection strategy stunk. Your organization obviously values him, you CAN afford 1 40-man spot to protect him. This is an unnecessary risk!

[biggsphils]

Yes and most of those players are older (not old) but past the age of being considered as a prospect and most were given a chance at AAA or the majors and failed. Castelleno is young and throws mid 90's . Can't say that for any of those pitchers I mentioned

[zambonir]

Dombroswki: "We didn’t like him enough, of course, to put him on the roster.”

You can take that at face value but really they just didn't think he'd stick. And they probably still right.

Teams just don't want to carry guys who can't help the big league club in 2024. It's a flawed system. Rosters should be bigger - you could even make the taxi squad status permanent for the fringier veterans, which would allow a little more room for prospects - and a system that is supposed to create opportunities for players often just hurts their careers instead. Maybe Noah Song would have gotten hurt again regardless but I'm sure he views his whole time with the Phillies as a huge waste of time and energy. And he's still not on Boston's 40 (last time 'cause they knew no one would take him, this time because he's injured again).

[gmwannabe]

George Bell Part Deux?

[fish]

George Bell Part Deux?

Ruben Amaro reflected on that from his dad- that they knew the talent Bell was but he had been injured and assumed that no one has seen him enough to be on him, except that Gillick had seen him on the backfields. And when the Jays picked him Amaro Sr threw a fit that may have had him fired for a moment.

[zambonir]

Not many secrets these days. But also no reason he is more likely to be George Bell than the many many more who got returned (or didn't pan out).

[saycheese]

Not only did they keep Cal Stevenson they prevented the Japan league from signing him. Really odd that the Paul Owens award winner is left off the roster. Now with that said, I think the Phillies think he is going to be offered back at some point. He isn't ready for the majors.

Some of these guys won't be on the roster by the spring training starts. I believe at the time the 40 man had to be put in last month the Phillies figured they would be much more active in adding to the 40 man roster. Releasing some of these guys and resigning them with invites to Spring Training. Didn't play out that way. In fact right now they are pretty much stuck in neutral.

[andyb]

Teams just don't want to carry guys who can't help the big league club in 2024. It's a flawed system. Rosters should be bigger - you could even make the taxi squad status permanent for the fringier veterans, which would allow a little more room for prospects - and a system that is supposed to create opportunities for players often just hurts their careers instead.

The roster should really be 42 as I have said before. There just is not room to carry prospects for 2-3 years who are not major league ready. The reason we got a pretty good prospect in Seth Johnson last year was because his value was significantly diminished since he had already used 2 of his 3 option years. Chace (acquired in the same draft) is more valuable because we now have 3 years of options left on him.

Bottom line on Castellano is he is a medium ceiling guy at max. Average stuff that will get a chance to start but really needs more time to develop his secondary pitches. He is relatively polished so he can survive in the bullpen potentially (why he was picked in the draft) but he really is more of a middle reliever if that is his role rather than a late inning reliever.

Medium ceiling guys can get replaced more easily than high ceiling guys. So they tend to go unprotected in the rule 5 draft because teams want to use all their options on years when the medium ceiling guy can help the major league roster.

[zambonir]

The Paul Owens award? You mean he could have been the next Tom Eshelman or Ricardo Pinto? (I know, Painter and Kerkering won it too.)

[Matt_Winkelman]

First, I would have protected Castellano, I would have protected some guys in other years that weren't taken and ultimately would have clogged the roster, so the Phillies might be right.

Some upthread things, both Tarnock and McMillon from the original post are not on the roster (Tarnok isn't even in the org). Also the Phillies knew Castellano would be taken and did some light shopping of him around protection day looking for a version of him that didn't need protection. No other player was in protection consideration for them.

Before looking at the 40, I think it is important to note that the other three guys protected (Abel, Chace, and Cabrera) are all sort of the same system level as Castellano, but are better prospects, so protecting him would have been clogging the roster with the same type of guy.

To the actual roster. The Phillies are at 39, think of that last spot as Painter's in waiting so let's call it 40 for now. The hitters on the roster with options are Weston Wilson, Garrett Stubbs, and Cal Stevenson. Stevenson is here because they have no other depth and the OF depth in AAA is Matt Kroon, Ethan Wilson, and Marcus Lee Sang. Stevenson was also decent last year. That means that Buddy Kennedy and/or Kody Clemens are going to lose their 40 man spots, but that is probably to a LF addition and ideally more optionable depth. None of those spots are going to Castellano.

On the pitching side, Kyle Tyler, Tyler Phillips, Jose Cuas, Tyler Gilbert and Devin Sweet are the 5 guys you really question (though you can throw Alan Rangel in, but they added him to protect him being a FA). Some of those guys will be in whatever the #5 SP competition is or replaced by an acquisition there. They are also definitely a reliever short in the majors so that is one more spot. Let's say it is Phillips and Tyler gone because Walker wins the #5 job and they add a RP. That is one spot available and your RP callups if there is an injury are Mercado, Gilbert, Sweet, and Cuas. The Phillies had fairly good health last year and used 26 different pitchers. If you are carrying another guy who doesn't project to pitch in the majors you are much closer if you have 3-4 injuries to having to throw players into bad spots to make it through or having to DFA depth elsewhere. I think they could have squeezed one more, but it is more tight than you think.

Their general thought is that Castellano doesn't stick. He throws mid 90s, but so does every RP, and his fastballs are very ordinary movement wise. I like the curveball, but it is a plus pitch, not an elite one, and he barely throws the changeup (which does have promise). He had 8 games in AA where he put up a 3.79 ERA (there are two bad stars at the end doing some heavy lifting) and while improved, LHBs hit him decently hard. This isn't to say he is not a prospect, or a terrible one. He was slated to rank 18th on my list in a mediocre system.

[julio]

The roster should really be 42 as I have said before. There just is not room to carry prospects for 2-3 years who are not major league ready.

Prospects who are not major-league ready really shouldn't be at risk in the Rule 5 draft. The whole point of the Rule 5 is to provide opportunities for minor leaguers who are major league ready, but who are buried in player-rich organizations.

If Castellano is major-league ready, then he deserves a chance to be on an active roster. If he's not ready (if he can't stick on the Twins 26-man active roster), he'll be offered back.

Now yes, there are differences among the 30 clubs as to what they consider "major league ready," and as to how they construct their rosters. But if Castellano is good enough to stick on the Twins active roster...what justification is there for denying him that opportunity, because the Phillies are committed to a bunch of 30-year-old relief pitchers? Keep in mind, we're not just talking about what uniform Castellano wears; if he sticks, the Twins will be paying him $760,000 this season, as opposed to the crumbs that a non-40 man roster player in AA would receive (or even the $62,000 he would have received, if the Phils had added him to the 40-man, and optioned him to AAA for the season).

I don't see that expanding the 40-man roster would make much difference, really. Would that lead to a club protecting (and optioning) a player they don't consider major-league ready, really? Or would it just be used to to stockpile a couple more 30-year-old journeymen?

I note that the expansion of the active roster (from 25 to 26) just resulted in clubs adding a 13th pitcher (typically a really marginal talent), because managers wanted the additional arms - not for prospects, but for older guys who arguably don't belong in the majors at all. At that, MLB had to mandate a limit on the number of pitchers (at 13). If MLB had instead left the active roster at 25, but mandated a limit of 12 pitchers (or even 11), the game would not have collapsed; managers would simply have been forced to use different strategies (ones that worked for many decades!), select relievers with less specialized abilities, do a bit less individual pitcher-batter matching up, etc. Expanding the active roster hasn't really created opportunities for prospects, so much as just provided job security for marginal older pitchers - at the expense of making games, on average, take longer. And the important thing here is simply that all clubs face the same roster constraints, have to face the same managerial choices.

[allentown]

The rules of Rule 5 make mid-level LA talent more likely to be lost than American prospects, because they are typically signed at a younger age and are often less physically developed, even for their age, at the time of signing. A solution would be to modify the rules by adding a minimum age to be eligible for Rule 5. I would not increase the 40-man roster. That would increase the number of deserving minor leaguers stranded in the minors in a system stacked at their position. Perhaps add an age limit that qualifies a minor leaguer for Rule 5, regardless of years since signing. This would benefit deserving college senior draftees who do well in minors but may be blocked long enough to essentially destroy their careers, being burnt out before qualifying for FA.

[zambonir]

Prospects who are not major-league ready really shouldn't be at risk in the Rule 5 draft. The whole point of the Rule 5 is to provide opportunities for minor leaguers who are major league ready, but who are buried in player-rich organizations.

But the reality is most of them aren't major league-ready, especially if they were signed as teenagers. Maybe that means what they should really be given is full free agency, not free agency with conditions (or yes, as Atown suggests, add an age threshold).

Guys like Victorino and Ender Inciarte ultimately succeeded because they could go back to the minors (Vic because the Dodgers let him the Phillies have him instead of taking him back, Inciarte because the Phillies didn't keep him). And while it's nice to get the pay and service time, guys like Tyler Goedell and Carlos Tocci probably would have made more money/been more successful if they could have developed more slowly.

Used to be being on the 40 but not the 25 meant you weren't quite ready for the majors, but could go up occasionally or in an emergency and would be in the next year or two. And the older guys you put on it were also there to help teams avoid bringing up a prospect too soon. Now, not just with the pitchers but also the bench guys, they exist mostly as the secondary major league bench.

[julio]

Used to be being on the 40 but not the 25 meant you weren't quite ready for the majors, but could go up occasionally or in an emergency and would be in the next year or two. And the older guys you put on it were also there to help teams avoid bringing up a prospect too soon. Now, not just with the pitchers but also the bench guys, they exist mostly as the secondary major league bench.

Well, those are management choices. If you make those choices, there may be costs in terms of your ability to hang onto "not ready" prospects.

As it stands, a player who signs at age 18 (or younger) is eligible for the Rule 5 draft in the fifth draft after he signs; a player who signs age age 19 or older is eligible in the fourth draft after he signs.

If you don't know after five seasons whether you need to protect a player, and he's playing well enough that other clubs see him as potentially able to stick on a 26-man active roster...well, somebody's player evaluation is off-kilter here.

If you do think he's good enough, but you simply don't have room for him... well, that's exactly what the Rule 5 draft is supposed to address. You're not supposed to bury major-league ready players in your minor league system because you "don't have room for them."

All the arguments for change come down to, "We need to find a way for our team to hang on to these kids longer." But "hanging on to our kids longer," when another organization has a major-league job for them, is just wrong...unless you want to make an argument, decades later, about why the reserve clause was a "good" thing.

[andyb]

I think you are missing a change in major league team behavior in that just about every member of the 40-man roster is there to supplement the major league roster in any current season. With 13 pitchers on the staff and the injuries we see today teams need 4-6 pitchers to rotate on and off the major league roster. They also need position player backups to do that. So with only 14 spots available you really need to have like 12 of them ready to play now.

There is only room for a couple of prospects (and they better have high end tools) who are not ready for the majors. In the past with 10 or 11 pitchers there was a little more room to grow pitching within the 40-man roster. And the 6-7 person major league bench allowed teams much more flexibility to deal with short injuries.

The expansion of the rosters from 25 to 26 and the multiplication of pitcher injuries has changed the math on whether you can stash prospects that are not quite ready on the 40-man roster. The DH spot too needs to be filled at the expense of a pure bench player. They did add a year to the protection equation a few years back (that 5 years used to be 4) so MLB did acknowledge this to some degree. There is really a use for a slightly larger roster to get back to where teams could grow prospects a bit more without pressure to make the majors too soon. I think MLB is saving pennies here because 40-man prospects cost more than non-40 prospects. Players get waived and DFA'd more, but those players tend to bounce around multiple organizations so I am not sure it is helping their development that much.

[julio]

I'm not "missing" the change in major league team behavior. I'm just saying that behavioral change is a choice, and that choices come with costs.

Also, I really don't want to see active rosters expanded, additional pitchers permitted, and games running an average of four hours long. I really don't want to see constantly-increasing specialization that leads to more and more injuries. We're not talking about football here; pushing players until they break down is not supposed to be SOP. If that means managers have to learn how to use a pitching staff without overly abusing arms, that's fine with me - it's overdue. If that means that certain managers, who cannot so adapt, need to find other work...so be it.

But this is a side argument anyway. Further restricting player agency (by tinkering with the Rule 5 draft to give clubs longer control) is, to me at least, backsliding toward the reserve clause era. I see it as driven not by concern about player development or career prospects, but basically about a desire to "keep" young players. But these kids are not property; baseball has a history of treating them as if they were, and a lot of fans seem to be fine with that - as long as they're entertained, they're pretty indifferent to the implications of a kid being trapped for an entire career in an incompetent organization.

[Note that I'm not characterizing the Phillies as an incompetent organization. Not now, at least. For a long time, in the Giles era, they pretty obviously were exactly that.]

[andyb]

You make it into more of a "choice" than it actually is though. Teams need more pitchers to compete because they have figured out they are better with more 1-inning relievers that throw hard. The whole development system is geared to this and you need more pitchers to pull it off well. So you are posing the choice as fielding a less competitive roster vs burning through more high velocity 1-inning arms.

Yes everything out there is a choice. Just guessing the board would be less happy if the Phillies just announced they were happy to give Tanner Banks a bigger role in high leverage innings. It is not as stark a choice as that. I am just proposing roster changes that accept the reality of how pitchers are developed these days because frankly I do want to protect them from injury. Nobody has suggested more pitchers and expanded rosters (that was all you). Just a development system that matches how we use and develop pitchers these days.