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

[andyb]

More on the new starters from Fangraphs.

The Phillies Bulk up the Back of Their Rotation

[Taudawg]

Kingery is the key. I would only move Segura at a 50% savings if Kingery shows he is an everyday player. I'm still not sure another team is going to trade anything of value to get one year of Segura at half price - probably only a high spending, contending team makes that move. I'd like to move on from Segura, but I believe Didi and Jean are likely to be our middle infield in 2021 and 22. Dombrowski has shown creativity in the past so maybe he can work some magic.

[zambonir]

I still think we're gonna sign a SS next year - assuming they aren't hedging towards a rebuild. Didi's defense is already declining, he's just better than Segura (or any other option the Phillies had once they decided against Simmons).

I also think that Stott is a non-factor. Many scouts don't see him sticking at SS, but regardless, he has yet to even play a game in High A. If he forces his way to the majors next year, that'd be great, it would mean he's a true top prospect, but more likely he's still adjusting to AAA next July.

You won't get anything in return for Segura because $7.5 million is still above market value for an 1.5-2.0 WAR 2B. But you still do the deal.

Kingery is a whole other set of question marks. He could end up staying in CF, he could continue to be a perfectly good super-utility value (even as his salary rises), he could play 2B, or we could be having this same conversation about him in 2023 (i.e., sunk cost, can we dump him?)

But either way I'm not worried about having a hole at 2B. It's easy to fill (unless you're dreaming of another Utley) we just keep doing it the hard/expensive way.

While Dombrowski has said the right things about not being overly aggressive/short-term, his history is his history, and I imagine that his apparent success with getting Middleton to raise the 2021 budget will be followed by more win-now moves over the next three years - so long as they are actually winning, that is.

[Taudawg]

I can't see Phillies signing another 20 million player next year, unless it is a pitcher. They have 4 players at 90+ million (2022), and while they have money coming off the books, a bunch of players will be due raises.

[andyb]

Twins claimed Ian Hamilton. That is too bad. I liked him as a low cost, high velocity option for the bullpen.

[zambonir]

A SS may be less likely with Didi still in the fold, but right now the 2022 team doesn't have a LF or a CF (until proven otherwise this season), and our current LF already is a $20 million player (albeit less against the CBT). Not that they can just keep buying at the top of the market either, whether that means getting more internally or finding better bargains. But the SS class is still going to be hard to resist, most of them are also young-ish.

Which is also why it's easy to just cut loose Segura for nothing next year, or keep him over Didi if you can get a return for Didi. Even if you paid 2/3 of Segura's salary the $5 million combined with Cutch helps you out if you want (for instance) Storey. Or you could take money back and hope to get something out of it (as they did with Nicasio, who, like Segura, was overpaid but not un-useful, especially compared to most of his teammates that year).

Who knows if Hoskins or Kingery will even last another two seasons, though if they aren't good enough to stay they won't be hugely valuable in trade either. Maybe you actually see if Rhys will take a Nola-like deal (but doubtful, he's with Boras).

[BostonRoss]

What is the evidence behind Gregorius being a better defensive shortstop than Segura? Can someone point me to the numbers that show this? As a lazy approach, I note that Didi's dWAR in 2020 was 0.1; in 2019 it was -0.5. Segura's dWAR at 2B and 3B in 2020 was 0.6; in 2019 at SS it was 0.2. These numbers don't show Didi is better.

These guys are both declining, but there's no reason to thing Segura is declining faster. They're the same age. If anything ,you might wonder about Didi's injury history.

[andyb]

I think the measurements that isolate range show Gregorius better. Also, Didi's arm in 2019 likely affected his ratings that year too.

Plus the eye test. I agree the evidence is not overwhelming. I do think it is true though.

[zambonir]

Whatever the reason, two different Phillies front offices have taken considerable steps to make sure Segura never played shortstop here again. And if other teams thought he'd look good there he'd probably have more trade value. Plus he prefers 2B himself.

To be fair they also had a hole at 3B last year (Bohm wouldn't have necessarily come up so fast in a normal season even though I think we can now say he was ready) so it wasn't totally redundant to sign Didi (and obviously Girardi wanted him, and still does) and let it sort itself out. And now there's probably still enough playing time for Kingery too.

But all of the above is why I still think we could be seeing Storey or Baez next year, with one of Kingery/Didi/Segura traded and the other in the utility role. There will probably be a DH next year, so that would actually make all of them more attractive - good hitter who can still play the field is as attractive as a good hitter with no position, because very few teams do the permanent DH thing anyway.

[BostonRoss]

To be clear, I'm not a huge Segura fan. I didn't like the trade that brought him here, and I like the Gregorius signing. But it just seemed as if there was a lot of talk about Segura being a bad defensive shortstop as a give, without anything backing up that assertion. To be sure, the Phillies don't think of him as a shortstop, but around here we usually don't just assume they know what they're doing!

The bigger issue for the Phillies was that there were loads of options to get decent in the middle infield, but not so many for positions where we are way below average (like centerfield, for instance). It seems off-base (PTP) to me to think of Segura as a problem when he is a decent but not great 2B/SS, to the point where we think the Phillies would be better off paying someone else to play him.

[zambonir]

to the point where we think the Phillies would be better off paying someone else to play him.

Well, by the circular logic of the sunk cost - while admittedly still in the realm of fantasy - we wouldn't be paying someone else $15 million to play him, someone else would be "paying" us $5 or $7.5 million to hand over to someone else (or to avoid a tax). But that's a lot less likely with two years left.

But it's not impossible that the Phillies will be able to include him - or Herrera - in a deadline deal if the other team has money to unload as well. Like Texas did with the Hamels deal. Or say Craig Kimbrel's having a good but not great season and the Cubs are out of it - you give something up for him but they have to take some money back to help the Phillies stay under the CBT this year (not that I think they should).

The bigger issue for the Phillies was that there were loads of options to get decent in the middle infield, but not so many for positions where we are way below average (like centerfield, for instance). It seems off-base (PTP) to me to think of Segura as a problem when he is a decent but not great 2B/SS, to the point where we think the Phillies would be better off paying someone else to play him.

I don't know about loads of options to improve, just a lot to stay the same (literally in Didi's case, but the two guys we passed up weren't necessarily better, and the Plan Bs definitely weren't, whether for 2B or SS).

The real question, I think, and it's one you ask about Didi, not Segura, is would the Phillies be better with Jackie Bradley Jr. in CF, Segura at SS and Kingery at 2B? With Pederson (though really he can't play CF either anymore) and that infield?

The X-factor is really still Kingery and Haseley - it seems the Phillies aren't willing to commit to either as an everyday player, regardless of the spot. If they were they wouldn't need Segura, but for now they do, and he's not terrible.

[BostonRoss]

I wasn’t thinking about a deadline deal at this point, but the possibility of one is another reason to keep Segura. It would be great if when the time came we didn’t need to think about dumping salary, and that instead we were contending. It’s different if you know whatever value you could get from Segura was going to be wasted since the rest of the season is a bust.

It seems to me that if the Phillies were giving away Segura, they shouldn’t have signed Gregorius either. Going back into rebuild mode is a valid alternative, but obviously the Phillies have decided against it for now.

[Taudawg]

I did not like the Segura trade, but he is here. We don't have in house replacements at 2B or SS unless Kingery shows he is an everyday player. Didi and Jean should provide above average offense for the next two season while being average/adequate on defense. So these are not areas of immediate need - there are more important holes to fill. Next years best free agent Shortstops will require deals of 4-5 years at 20+ mil. Paying down Segura's contract in a trade only adds to the that cost and Didi at 14 mil yr as our 2B makes that deal just as bad (or almost) as Segura's. This team should score plenty.

Regarding Trevor Story, of all the 2022 free agents, I would stay away from him. His home/road splits are not good.

[andyb]

These are all consequences of not keeping Crawford. The team mishandled him completely and let his defensive value go in a trade that pushed us into only considering more expensive scenarios. That trade was Klentak's biggest mistake and was a reaction to his first mistake (signing Santana when there was no position for him).

Klentak also devalued the importance of defense throughout his years in charge. Even if Didi was not that great, signing him originally was sending a signal that defense was more important. Once they talked down Segura's defense, which is a little worse at SS, there was really no putting him back at that position. One error led to another.

[Taudawg]

No disagreement there. In Klentak, many (me included) of us got what we wanted, which was analytics driven GM. Matt proceeded to do a really bad job and that's not just hindsight. There were plenty of head-scratchers along his timeline.

[EDmuch]

I never liked Klentak. I thought he was sort of a data geek who had no understand of the human side of athletic competition.

[zambonir]

We don't have in house replacements at 2B or SS unless Kingery shows he is an everyday player

Kingery already showed he's an everyday player in 2019. I just can't read too much into what he did in 34 games and 124 plate appearances with COVID-19. Any more than Didi is who he was in 2019. Of course with the worst things you hear about COVID you could also wonder if he'll still struggle.

I like Kingery well enough in the 500 AB supersub role, and we still don't know if he can be a great every day player, but this would still be a better team if he was the 2B and we were paying $15 million for other things.

But instead Kingery might be our CF and we need people to play LF, which is a whole other issue.

By the time Kingery's higher-salary/option years kick in (2024-2026) we might not even want to keep him, if the market is like it is now (but who knows).

Klentak was a bad GM, but the blame still goes to Middleton, who said he wanted analytics but hired a president with no idea how to make that happen, and then that president hired the only candidate he actually knew. Klentak also might have been better if MacPhail had approached his job the way Dombrowski (and most of the big-name baseball ops Presidents) does, except that MacPhail was still the wrong person for that job too.

[Taudawg]

I don't have as much faith in Kingery, but I do have hope. Kingery's 2019 was a tale of two season. He was very good in the first half, and really pretty bad in the second half. I had concerns before 2020 happened... I would just throw away 2020, but he looked scary lost.

[zambonir]

I think in both cases there's a natural tendency to view his play as linear - "he was bad in 2018 but good in 2019" or "he had it going in the first half of 2019 but flopped in the second half" when it all might be kind of random. And in 2019 he struggled in July and September but had a strong August, which is another cherry-pick/small sample. Only way to find out for sure is to have another season.

But if he plays good defense at 2B - something we didn't see last year and that he's barely had the opportunity to do, but still seems likely if he's healthy - he's probably as good as player as Segura (or Hernandez).

And really the same standard applies to CF - he's not gonna put up an .800 OPS so he just has to outperform Quinn, and/or outperform Haseley enough to take some of the extra ABs against RHPs (but either of them could also play LF on those days). I sure hope Haseley is better than he showed in 2020 too, but it's not a high bar.

[allentown]

Klentak also devalued the importance of defense throughout his years in charge.

That's what his analytics department and his belief that the Dodgers had shown anyone can play just about anywhere. This was the crux of the Phillies problems under Klentak -- from Santana to trading Crawford to messing up Kingery as a super sub, to thinking Hoskins could play LF. Well this and the bullpen. We had among the worst defenses last season, as shown in our pitcher's very high BABIP. I'm straining to discern how this year's lineup will be significantly better on defense.