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

[andyb]

Those are the words of a player that likes a teammate. A good player and would prefer to play with that teammate.

I do read your words. I just wonder why you take things literally when a player is saying to the press what ANY player would say in that situation. Do you expect him to say he hopes JT leaves? Really????

He has a 13-year contract. The team has not suggested they are cutting salary dramatically and not trying to win. You are just inventing your own image of a pouting, self-important ballplayer that does not exist in real life. Does he want to win? Sure. Will he accept the Phillies plan if it is a reasonable one to contend in future seasons? Of course he will. I am not sure putting up a NY Post article of a player being quoted that he likes a teammate gives you any credibility. It is just tabloid writers just trying to stir things up. He is a big boy. He understands the financial part of the game (like the Nationals not making a serious offer to him). He'll be just fine.

[zambonir]

If things don't go well, the Phillies will be asking Bryce to waive his no-trade clause long before he demands a trade. Like, if they go all-in on JT and Didi, and then there's a work stoppage, and then he and Wheeler and JT and Didi aren't what they used to be. In that case the 2023 team will be no closer to a championship, and they (and Nola and Girardi) will probably never win one here.

And if a new president and GM comes in and decides on a total teardown as soon as the 2021 deadline, it will be hard to make a long-term plan that includes Bryce then either.

But for now, they'll take their shot. As a fan I see no reason to want them to just spend money; it has yet to get any results. Going for it, rebuilding on the fly or taking a small step back are all equally valid options given all the question marks on this roster right now.

We have no idea what this off-season is really going to bring. Seems to me we could also be looking at a work stoppage, or at least the threat of one, this season. The owners are not going to want to play 162 games at 100% salaries if they don't have full capacity (and there's little chance they will, even if the vaccine is rolling out masks and distancing will still be advised in those first months). If prorates, deferrals or voluntary leaguewide pay cuts aren't an option they are going to shave as much of that as they can via the normal system.

[Austinfan]

No, I'm against contracts with big money after age 32 (or 35 for HOF level players).

I'm for spending money on players entering their prime years, where the odds of living up to a contract are much higher than signing 30 year old FA pitchers with declining velocity (Arrieta, and I said it at the time).

Herrera didn't work out, but crap happens, Kingery doesn't have to do much the next four years to make that a good contract, a few 2 WAR seasons. Whereas Robertson . . .

So the optimal strategy is to develop players, identify the ones that aren't "fools gold," and lock them up long-term at far lower cost than signing an equivalent player in FA. What kills the small market teams is their inability to sign those kind of contracts with their own players.

Which is why I believe in "small market strategy" combined with big market contracts.
The biggest mistake in all sports is to pay players for past production rather than expected future production.

[EDmuch]

AF you are living in a fantasy world.

[andyb]

Far be it for me to agree with AF , but this is not the worst strategy for the team now. I think there are 3 general strategies for the Phillies to pursue:

1 - Spend over the cap. Sign JT and Didi/SS and get a 3rd starter like Stroman. Questions with this strategy are whether the team would be good enough (still need to fix the bullpen) and whether they have the cash flow in a pandemic to do it.

2 - Rebuild. Sign nobody expensive and trade assets. A real rebuild would not start with trading Harper, it would start with trading Nola. Harper might get dealt in this scenario too. I think this scenario is extremely unlikely as the team will want a quick rebuild and not a long one.

3 - Continue to spend, but do so smartly with a long term emphasis. Here is where you do nothing that makes you older. No more Crawford and Sixto trades. The future is more important than trying to win now on a team with too many current holes unless they get unexpected improvement from unlikely sources. Spending could involve a slight cut in payroll to $180-$190 million to provide flexibility, but could also go up to the competitive balance limit again. One could re-sign JT and Didi, but one should not try to win unreasonable bidding wars like going to 6 years and $150 million plus for JT. It DOES involve QOs to both players. If they move on, then you spread the money around to 5 players and try to get some COVID discounts.

While number 3 is not exactly AF's strategy, it is also not too far apart. The club should be willing to spend to the limit for good players. They also need to be willing to deal those players at the deadline if the team is hovering around .500 again. No more patching the bullpen with discards and hoping it works when you can trade for future assets. Look at how the Marlins reacted around this past deadline by both trading for prospects in areas of need AND adding current assets to help them.

We need a GM with a better long term perspective who makes better trades and decisions. They hybrid number 3 strategy is not guaranteed to work, but it also allows the team to build talent by using its financial resources without trading future assets. Klentak did not mess up with his spending per se. He messed up with his decisions that forced us to trade young assets for expensive, older assets. And he messed up by not identifying the correct assets to trade.

[bigegypt0417]

Which is why I believe in "small market strategy" combined with big market contracts.
The biggest mistake in all sports is to pay players for past production rather than expected future production.

It's not a mistake...it's the price you pay to sign stars...period.

Every single star contract has years that you know are a sunken cost...there is no agent that is going to let you sign their player for only the prime years.

[Austinfan]

And it can't produce a winner, because you tie up so much money in stars that you lack depth and constantly have to make decisions based on avoiding the luxury tax and associated penalties. See California Angels et al.

It's not just the out years that are sunk costs with most star contracts, many of these players fail to play up to the contract in the first three years - because they're paid based on peak production, and they rarely maintain that level of production in the first few years, much less the out years.

One reason I like the Wheeler deal was he was paid based on a reasonable expectation of future production, with the possibility of additional upside (because there is no sign he is on the verge of losing velocity).

[bigegypt0417]

And it can't produce a winner, because you tie up so much money in stars that you lack depth and constantly have to make decisions based on avoiding the luxury tax and associated penalties. See California Angels et al.

You always seem to point to the one example that makes your point while ignoring the teams that win...it's an obstacle for the small market teams...that is always going to be how it works. Every star signs a contract that includes years the team knows it will overpay.

[allentown]

All of these strategies have their place. The Phillies have tried them all in the past and generally executed poorly. The greatest truism to me is this: regardless of the strategic approach chosen, a team cannot succeed with reasonable frequency unless is excels at identifying MLB/MiLB/amateur talent and developing that talent. In the period leading up to 2008-2012 the Phillies were excellent at this. Since then, and most of the longer-ago seasons, they have stunk at these basic organizational requirements. We had the staff to pull it off for a short time. For the past decade those skills have vanished. Without them, it is next to impossible to succeed. Next season is painful toast. I hope it is such, because Middleton has chosen to wait for Epstein/similar to become available. I hope if that strong a GM-President were available today that ownership would give MacPhail a hard shove out the door and make the changes necessary to start a rebuild on the fly tomorrow. The JT trade is a big loser today for two big reasons: the Phillies soured on Sixto, and seem to have been wrong and we once again (as with trading Lee, rather than following the WC with another year of 3 aces, because ownership wouldn't go over budget for one season) the team was penny-wise, pound-foolish and failed to re-sign JT because they obsessed over the 2020 salary cap and waited to negotiate (actually, the trade should not have been made without an extension in place).

The Phillies need to be wise about what (whom) they chuck out from the Klentak era. I'm sure that there must be some good people in the analytics department. I'm equally sure that there will be firings to save money. it is critical that the right persons be fired. We don't want a repeat of Giles firing the Dominican Republican key scout and keeping his superior, the desk jockey. That ended us in DR for a very long time. Our Analytics Dept. needs to learn to get things right and offer guidance that actually helps the team. We need to keep the right people. We need to keep Driveline

[Philsmania]

The Phillies need to be wise about what (whom) they chuck out from the Klentak era. I'm sure that there must be some good people in the analytics department. I'm equally sure that there will be firings to save money. it is critical that the right persons be fired. We don't want a repeat of Giles firing the Dominican Republican key scout and keeping his superior, the desk jockey. That ended us in DR for a very long time. Our Analytics Dept. needs to learn to get things right and offer guidance that actually helps the team. We need to keep the right people. We need to keep Driveline

Same goes for the scouting and development departments. Bonifay and Barber are in an awkward category. They've only been at their jobs for two years and one year respectively. And, we had no minor league season to reasonably evaluate a return on their efforts. But, at the same time, you like to give the new guy a blank page to assemble his own team, regardless of whether or not they are holdovers. It appears that when the Phillies hired Klentak, they did so with the proviso that Jordan and Almaraz--who had been at their posts four years and one year respectively--stay. Considering the results those two generated and with the benefit of hindsight, we may well have been better off letting Klentak replace them even though doing so would have been somewhat unfair to Almaraz at that point in time as his grade after one year could only be incomplete. I lean in the direction of letting our next guy having free reign to assemble his team and leave it up to him to keep Bonifay and Barber, even though it wouldn't be the fairest of circumstances if they were let go with grades that could only be incomplete.

And yes, in the modern era, the Phillies only seem to be able to pull off successfully scouting and developing amateur talent in limited spurts--the mid to late '40's leading to the Whiz Kids, the early '60's leading to the '64 near miss, early to late mid '70's leading to the first golden age (1974-83) and the mid '90's-mid '00's leading to the second golden age (2001-11). Some great stretches but then we lose that mojo for a long time--roughly a decade or two, to be exact. Not surprisingly, the droughts on the pharm are followed by droughts in Philadelphia of time-periods of congruent lengths (Phillies lose that scouting and development mojo for x number of years and no more than five to seven years after they initially lose it, the Phillies stink for x number of years).

[zambonir]

You don't never sign expensive free agents to contracts that will take them past their prime, you just can't build an entire team around it. The 2008 Phillies eventually got into trouble because the entire core was on the same basic service time schedule, and the farm did not provide any reinforcements, either because the Phillies couldn't wait while the window was open (trading Happ for Oswalt, getting Pence) or the players failed (most notably Brown).

And this time Klentak created a similiarly unbalanced team, much of which was not originally his fault. But once you had to (and in some places, chose to) replace Altherr, Williams, Crawford and Alfaro with Harper, Cutch, Segura and Realmuto, plus Robertson on top of that, you completely upended the payroll structure. They were really counting on that being balanced out by a cheap rotation and a deep young group of relievers, but that plan failed, and then they added Didi to boot (though he was really just Cesar+Franco this year).

It's still kind of surprising (and disappointing) they didn't just pay the tax pre-COVID. They would have had a better team and they'd have JT, and they wouldn't have had any trouble getting back under it for 2021. And then Cutch and Herrera come off the books for 2022.

[LoneStarPhan]

Tom McCarthy calling a football game with a much bigger audience than the games he calls normally gets.

An unlikely broadcast team for an unlikely NFL game

[flyers19rw]

I caught this on today's SNY website regarding the Yankees plans for the next season:
"One idea the Yankees should not and likely will not consider is bringing back Didi Gregorius to play short. Last winter, the team viewed Gregorius as a winning player who had simply lost too much of his first-step quickness. This year in Philadelphia, his defensive metrics and underlying hitting numbers were fairly ghastly."
That's an interesting analysis. I don't know that I buy it.

[zambonir]

My understanding is Didi graded out reasonably well defensively, but he's nothing special (just better than Segura was). With the Yankees he was obviously not still himself, and they could only get him back with a QO which they decided wasn't worth it.

Not sure what offensive numbers were "ghastly," his BABIP was normal, I guess it's probably things like barrels and exit velocity?

If you look at his splits, however, he's definitely on the edge of being someone you would bench against LHP (.203 AB, .243 OBP, though still some power), and he was also not good on the road (a straight up 100 OPS+).

His success this year was largely due to being a stud with RISP but that's not necessarily a repeatable skill (his career OPS there is .769, it was 200 points higher in 2020, which is also a small sample of course).

Regardless, I would not want to put any chips on a 31 year-old guy with a surgically repaired upper body. A QO, yes. A three-year deal if you can somehow unload Segura, maybe, though we could still regret it as soon as 2022. If his bat declines, a defense-first SS with an even worse bat may provide more WAR. As it is JP already put up more WAR than Didi this season.

[allentown]

When you sign a 13 year deal, win now really isn't a priority, it's not like a 32 year old pitcher with only a couple good seasons left in his arm

I think it still is, when you are in your prime. He has the money, but it will hurt if JT and Didi are gone ant the 2021 team is another sub-,500 bust with significantly lower payroll and disarray in the executive suite. I think Nola and Wheeler are also going to care.

Zambonir -- I totally agree on that approach to Didi.

[Austinfan]

They have few options.

Didi and Segura are on the wrong side of 30.
JT probably played above his true level due to the short season, he was starting to regress to his norms, and he turns 30.
If you spend $60M on these three, what do you think the return will be?
If you sign Didi for three years at $45M, 2022 can get really ugly.

They're stuck with Cutch's last year, Herrera's last year, etc.

And breaking the cap for a year doesn't really work, they don't have the future room to stay under the cap if they add a big multi-year contract.

The question is do you dig the hole any deeper, or cut your losses and move on.

[bigegypt0417]

JT probably played above his true level due to the short season, he was starting to regress to his norms, and he turns 30.

What are his norms? The best catcher in baseball?

[bigegypt0417]

They have few options.

Didi and Segura are on the wrong side of 30.
JT probably played above his true level due to the short season, he was starting to regress to his norms, and he turns 30.
If you spend $60M on these three, what do you think the return will be?
If you sign Didi for three years at $45M, 2022 can get really ugly.

They're stuck with Cutch's last year, Herrera's last year, etc.

And breaking the cap for a year doesn't really work, they don't have the future room to stay under the cap if they add a big multi-year contract.

The question is do you dig the hole any deeper, or cut your losses and move on.

So basically...just settle for being a 70 win team?

You seem to be super happy with a constant state of rebuild...

[andyb]

The Athletic had an article about JT's value. Conclusion was that he was worth 4/96 or 6/128. On any long term contract where the player is in demand because he is the only option (like JT and top tier catcher free agents), the bidding war usually goes higher than that. So I would say something like 4/110, 5/130, or 6/150. AAV goes down with the longer contracts and teams will probably want that.

I am not interested in JT at 6/150. I would consider something like 5/120. Just don't think that would get it done and it would probably be the right decision to let him move on. And if the bidding does get near $200 million like he wants, then the Phillies should pass. We are a wealthy team but are not the Yankees. There is just too much injury risk in a long deal for a catcher.

How do catchers like J.T. Realmuto age into their 30s?

Edit - was reading the Didi comments before I posted.

[zambonir]

JT is still basically a no-brainer, though not if it turns into an insane bidding war. It didn't for Manny and Bryce. Middleton even recently claimed they walked away from Manny, that the Padres' offer exceeded the Phillies' valuation, though I'm not sure that would have been true had there not been a second player available.

You mean JT in your first sentence yeah Andy? I agree with everything else in that post. It's really all about the pandemic, and the collusion, and the eye towards 2022's CBA. If one owner doesn't play nice - and that's certainly often the case - the Phillies are likely out.

They've said all along that JT wants to break Posey (8 years, $168, $21 miillion AAV) and match Goldschmidt (5 years, $130, $26 million AAV). The Phillies could have gotten it done by meeting the latter #. Their gamble is that no one else will.

Betts' AAV is $30.4 million but it's a very long deal with a ton of signing bonus and deferral. I'm still not sure I believe that deal changes the market realities.

If you lose JT then Didi is obviously a greater consideration, but you could also go after George Springer. But given everything else - the front office, the pandemic, the possible work stoppage - 2021 is not an all-systems-go type season. There will be lots of money to spend and lots of players to sign in 2022 if they aren't tearing it down.