Wait 'Til Who Knows When (Certainly not 2021!) ... (Winter 20-21 Off-Season Realism)

[Philsmania]

If they can get another CFer, I think a Haseley-McCutchen platoon in left is worth considering.

[Austinfan]

I'd rather go a bunch of one year deals than commit to JT with a big, long-term contract.
This team needs to patch the roster for a couple years while finally building a talent base, rather than commit $100+M on deals to players over 30.

[allentown]

Better to keep Haseley in CF with Quinn and possibly Herrera and get someone who hits a lot better than Haseley for LF. He really doesn't have a bat that plays in LF. If McCutcheon fails to rebound, a Haseley-McCutcheon duo in LF would be similar to the days we deployed guys like Ruben Amaro, Jr. out there.

[andyb]

That is why I threw out Adam Eaton as a potential cheap free agent addition. He is left-handed so could be that platoon partner in LF with Cutch (or DH) while Haseley gets playing time in CF most of the time where his bat plays better (and shifts to a corner for late inning defense).

If the DH is not used next year I might think more about getting a younger, better defender, but as long as we have that option I think you load up more on offense for the role players.

[bigegypt0417]

If the phillies had signed good relievers, they would have won their division this year.

You are basically advocating getting worse by losing JT so you can go back to your favorite phase of fandom...rebuilds.

You are wasting the prime years of your stars...that's a dumb way forward.

[bigegypt0417]

Brad Hand was non-tendered today...not bad for 1 year at 10 million.

[andyb]

There are limits with JT. I probably go 5/120 for him and backload the salary. I don't go 8/200 though which is what he wants. Not sure the market will bear that, but we have not seen the 2 NY teams compete for a free agent in a while.

If JT does not resign then it IS a good strategy to spend the money on 3 or 4 players. That is largely because there will be likely bargains out there and we don't have a GM to make important long term decisions (other than JT where it is probably how far Middleton wants to go). I still want to spend the same $25 million this year to compete seriously. If I could bring in Stroman and Eaton and maybe a reliever for the cost of JT, I have to think about it. Stroman should get $20 million a year but might only get $12-$15 million in this market. Eaton might get less than $5 million. These would be short deals to give the current core one more chance.

[Austinfan]

We already have Wheeler (31), Harper (27), Segura (31), Nola (28) and Herrera, $82M through 2022.
Cutch $17M for 2021

JT (30), Didi (31) ???

[bkeich]

I have to say, at 54 years old and a life long Phillies fan I have never been more unhappy with the teams direction.

We have just had a rebuild that lasted years, it ended with trading our prospects prior to the 2019 season, which resulted in the pinnacle of this core, a .500 year w/o playoffs.

Now we are looking at watching our 2nd best player and the best at his position in the game walking. We have no minor league system to speak of, widely recognized as one of the worst in baseball. We have 2 of8 positions filled (3B and RF) and a utility player who has not hit ML pitching very well slated for another. After that we have a host of hopefully average players, but most likely below average.

Our starting pitching has 2 good pitchers, one inconsistently good and no one. We have one of the worst bullpens in the league in the last 20 years in a time where bullpens matter more than ever. We have 1 bullpen pitcher that is solid (Neris) who is forced into a closer role by default, he isn’t really suited for that. Every other bullpen pitcher is a big, big question and we just released our best LHP from the bullpen.

Add to this that the owner, who seems to be slow playing the fans, has made it fairly clear that next season is a throw away because he doesn’t want to pay an incompetent Head of Baseball Operations to just sit at home and do nothing. So he is going to leave the GM slot empty until he can try and build a front office from the bottom up after next season. Time to do that, my guess: 4-5 years.

This is going to go down as the worst rebuild ever. It resulted in one .500 season, a few near that, zero playoff appearances and somehow we managed to be near the top of the league in payroll but can’t put together a team that can even really be called “good”.

Is this team already in decline? Yes, sadly, amazingly, it clearly is. Harper should be trying to force a trade within 2 years I would assume. I have to think that Nola and Wheeler also have no interest in watching a rebuild starting from a completely empty minor league system.

[zambonir]

Better to keep Haseley in CF with Quinn and possibly Herrera

We'll have a vaccine before that! Even if they did bring him back I'm not sure Herrera is even a CF anymore (his steep decline plus age plus two years of not playing baseball).

Assuming they sign a SS, Kingery's gonna play some CF, and Haseley will also play some LF. But they still need to replace Bruce (Eaton could make sense there). Honestly if there is no DH they are basically in trouble, because I doubt Cutch will be an elite offensive player, let alone a 140-start outfielder. But the DH also determines what they need to go get.

You don't sign Realmuto and it's a whole other story. Gotta spend some money on a bat, whether it is a middle IF or an OF.

If they had a normal front office the focus, IMO, should be on finding some way, any way, to move either Segura or Cutch. But that may be asking too much in pandemic times anyway.

[andyb]

Possibly Moniak...

In normal times he would have spent all of 2020 in AAA and challenged for a job in 2021 if he had a good year. I don't think he'll be great, but he could push Haseley to the point where the better of those two is actually a decent CF platoon player. Physical development was as important to him in adding power as the playing time that he missed.

[EDmuch]

So we are at the point where we are forced to ask: Is any of our three consecutive first round OF picks going to make it as an every day ML player? The Phils are starting to make the Washington Football Club look like a competently managed sports franchise.

[zambonir]

Source confirms Phillies have placed these players on waivers

Phil Gosselin
Adam Morgan
Heath Hembree
Blake Parker

Source says Phils were not going to offer Phil arbitration and if he clears waivers he will be a free agent pic.twitter.com/meIFT0ZZ0P

— John Clark ( @JClarkNBCS ) October 29, 2020

[bkeich]

I don’t really get why they released Morgan. He had a questionable season this year (only 13 innings), but his 3 previous seasons were all around an ERA of 4.00. He has had injury issues, but he has value and is certainly a ML reliever. We need bodies and his replacement will almost certainly be more expensive.

[Austinfan]

Probably won't be ready until summer and unlikely to have a very good season.
So if you sign him, it should be a 2 year deal at a discount, focusing on a 2022 bounce back.

[bkeich]

Seems very short sighted to me that is lacking talent (or bodies) in the bullpen

[andyb]

He was unlikely to pitch much this year because of the injury (if at all) and it was his final year of arbitration. So you would end up paying him $2 million (he would get a raise from his $1.575 million last year because arbitration only considers performance and not health) and maybe get 10 innings.

This was really an easy decision with Morgan. If they like him enough they'll give him a 2 year minor league deal where he'll make some money to rehab but make the major league minimum if he does not pitch (with incentives for the second year).

[zambonir]

It's certainly a sign of the times, and of the Phillies' desperation to save $1 million here and a $1 million there anywhere they can. In a normal year (financially, front office-wise, competitively) I don't know that they'd have cut loose Parker or Hembree either. The Phelps and VV decisions are also going to be interesting (Neris I assume will not have his option picked up but he'll certainly be tendered).

If they bring Alvarez back his raise will likely eat up all the money they would have spent on Morgan.

[flyers19rw]

I hear you. As for the “rebuild”, I must have missed it. The talent was never there. Talent evaluation and poor development failed the organization. Crawford hasn’t shown much; Sixto is still an enigma, no more or less than Spencer Howard. I’m not down on Hasely. He’s ok but he’s no AS. Stott? Bohm is a different story; he’s a generational talent. Aside from these guys who is there? Too many top level draft choice slots lost in compensation for signing mediocre FAs. Cue Arietta here.
There is a limit to how much money and under what terms is signing Realmuto a sensible business move? Five years at $120-125 is a generous offer. The Phillies could offer extensions beyond five seasons based on meeting levels of performance. If he gets 8/200 from someone, more power to him. The organization can put the money into other options.

[zambonir]

hear you. As for the “rebuild”, I must have missed it. The talent was never there. Talent evaluation and poor development failed the organization. Crawford hasn’t shown much; Sixto is still an enigma, no more or less than Spencer Howard. I’m not down on Hasely. He’s ok but he’s no AS. Stott? Bohm is a different story; he’s a generational talent.

A lot of premature evaluations there. Crawford has been as productive as our shortstops the last two seasons, even if it mostly comes from the glove. Sixto had a much better rookie year than Howard. And Bohm hasn't even accomplished as much as Dom Brown yet. God forbid he ends up like Brown, Franco or Herrera, but he could still be closer to Hoskins (not a generational talent) than Howard or Utley.

The rebuild failed in lots of different ways. Most of it is still on Monty and Amaro and Gillick for not being aggressive enough, and drafting/trading/developing poorly before they got the boot. The GMs in Chicago and Houston were given much richer cupboards, in addition to being way better at their jobs than MacPhail and Klentak. As that Murphy column pointed out yesterday, they just don't have the knack for either evaluating talent or recognizing value. They put their chips on Williams and Crawford and Franco and Pivetta and Herrera and Alfaro and mostly had to fold their hand.

Haseley is still a failed pick if he's not an everyday player. It happens, but like Ed said, they may have missed three years in a row, all picking pretty high. And if Kingery fails 2015 looks as bad as 2016.