Thoughts on 2022 Phillies Arbitration Projections

For more than a decade, Matt Swartz and MLB Trade Rumors have partnered up to publish a reliable, accurate model of expected arbitration salaries. This offseason’s slate of projections is out, and we have some thinking to do .

The Phillies have nine arb-eligibles: One starting pitcher, two relievers, three outfielders, a catcher, a utility infielder, and a first baseman, all important or unimportant in various ways. Roster Resource currently has the Phils at ~$121 million before buyouts, benefits, and these projected arbitration numbers, and ~$143 million after factoring in all but the arbs. Keep that $143 million figure in mind as we go through this; we’ll come back to it.

So, here’s what we have…

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• Odubel Herrera  – $11.6MM

Worth It?
No. Leaving the aside the bad-person aspect of this guy’s case and focusing solely on baseball things for this moment, it’s hard to justify any salary for him that has eight figures. After a year-and-a-half away between his suspension and being left off the roster for the shortened 2020 season, Herrera came back and was…exactly the same as he was in 2018: Very meh.

2018: .255/.310/.420, 94 OPS+
2021: .260/.310/.416, 95 OPS+

The only really noticeable change is a sharp drop in strikeouts, after a change in approach turned him into more of a slap hitter who found some extra ground ball singles against shifts. And while there’s value in making contact in today’s game, the quality of contact obviously didn’t follow; it was a different path to the same results, with home runs exchanged for doubles.

There’s also the fact that he repeatedly led off for this team, despite posting a .287 OBP when batting first. Among Phillies hitters who started at least 60 games at leadoff (Herrera had 63), that .287 OBP is tied with Larry Bowa’s 1971 for sixth-worst out of 117 qualifiers. You have that to thank, in part, for Bryce Harper’s weirdly low RBI total.

Will He Be Around?
You’d hope that a club with capital-r Resources would find a better option in center field than a below-average bat whose questionable decision-making on and off the field (putting it gently) does not seem to have changed after a roughly two-year break. But I’m not convinced.

The word is that Girardi stumped for Herrera in Spring Training last season, and the incredibly long leash he was afforded during his slumps kind of backs up the whispers of managerial favor. Why, exactly, he curried such favor I don’t think any one of us on the outside really fully knows. Add onto that the very, very thin upcoming center field free agent market — it’s basically Starling Marte and a slew of role players or platoon partners, depending on how you fancy Kris Bryant’s ability out there — and it’s not exactly a buyer’s market out there. What’s more, basically every other internal option to start the year burned out: Roman Quinn’s Achilles gave out in late May (more on him in a minute); Adam Haseley temporarily left the team in April for personal reasons, battled injury and the COVID-19 list, finally returned and posted a .226/.284/.283 line in his final 27 games with Lehigh Valley; Mickey Moniak never really got a look as a regular CF and didn’t hit well in the limited action he did get. Matt Vierling, a surprise latecomer, wasn’t even on the call-up radar until August, and his future as a regular CF is very much uncertain.

I, personally, fancy Bryant’s glove in CF pretty favorably. He looks pretty alright out there! But Marte and Bryant are marquee names who’ll likely have plenty of options. The internal backups inspire no confidence right now. Trades will be hard to come by, and the team’s prospect capital may be best spent upgrading elsewhere. Put it all together, and it feels slightly more likely than not that Herrera will be back.

There’s a bit of math that goes into retaining him, explained below:

Herrera is done his guaranteed years, and the buyout was spread along those years. So my understanding is that if they…
…buyout and arb, his arb number counts
…pick up the option it is the $11.5-buyout so $9M
…buyout and let him walk, nothing counts https://t.co/BBsM9qMRW8

— Matt Winkelman (@Matt_Winkelman) October 11, 2021

Money is a significant factor working against Herrera, but the possibility of declining his 2022 option (very likely) and tendering him a contract as an arbitration-eligible player — remember, his suspension stopped his service time clock, so the option that was presumed to cover his first year of free agency when the contract was signed instead covers an arbitration-eligible year because he doesn’t have enough service to become a free agent — can’t be written off.

The maximum a player’s salary can decrease through arbitration is 20 percent; whether that applies to AAV or actual dollars (the latter being my belief) I’m not 100 percent sure, but against actual dollars that means his lowest possible salary through arbitration would be a hair over $8.25 million. There’s a chance the team could non-tender him and re-sign him for less than that as an accounting trick; he’d probably have some nibbles of interest elsewhere, but it’s hard to imagine lots of teams knocking down the door (and if they do, well, fine, bye).

As much as I’d like the team to move on, there are just too many paths toward his return right now that I can’t be completely sure which way they’re going to go yet.

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• Travis Jankowski – $900K

Worth It?
Before this season? No. He was firmly in non-roster invitee land forever and ever, amen. But Jankowski was okay at the plate — .252/.364/.351 in 157 PA — and played a decent center field, even though his numbers seriously lagged in the second half. As far as NRIs go, he was a modest success (especially in light of, like, Matt Joyce), but there isn’t a lot of reason to believe he can do what he did in the first half of 2021 again.

Will He Be Around?
I don’t think another team would want Jankowski on a guaranteed deal based on his 2021. Maybe the comforts of playing for his hometown club give him a bit of a boost that other cities couldn’t quite match, who’s to say? In any case, tendering Jankowski wouldn’t surprise me, with Brad Miller’s likely departure and the lack of confidence in Moniak and Haseley as left-handed OFers at the moment leaves something of a depth void. If one of those two (or some other dark horse) surges ahead after a couple strong months at Lehigh, a prorated portion of $900k is a figure that won’t stand in their way.

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• Zach Eflin – $6.0MM

Worth It?
Not an easy question to answer. The timing of Eflin’s knee trouble resurfacing couldn’t be worse; before the ’21 season, he was a potential multi-year extension candidate. Now, after a decent-but-not-breakout year and another surgery, Eflin’s future is much cloudier. When healthy, Eflin has definitely been worth No. 3 starting pitcher money, and $6 million isn’t much more than the Phillies were spending on No. 4s and 5s. It all comes down to health at this point.

Will He Be Around?
And that health aspect is what will make this an ongoing storyline into next year. It’s possible his recovery from surgery is already going a bit poorly and Eflin may be non-tendered when the season ends and the 60-day IL goes away, but that’s the disaster scenario. Eflin’s knee would need to be in very bad shape to boot him off the 40 that soon. He’s worth the shot, even for a partial season.

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• Andrew Knapp – $1.2MM

Worth It?
Not really. I’m not sure how we’re still in this spot. There was enough reason to be like, “you know what, I’ve seen enough” after 2019, but his (apparently fluky) 2020 sprint season was actually good, all 89 plate appearances of it. So that earned him just a bit over $1 million and the right to prove it wasn’t a fluke in 2021; instead, he had one of the worst offensive years of any non-pitcher this century. There’s a benefit to positive clubhouse presence (which Knapp seems to be), and that’s not nothing for a clubhouse that sure seemed like it was a tense one for most of this year. But how good do you have to be off the field to justify how bad ’21 was on it?

Will He Be Around?
It’s just so hard to picture a Phillies team without Andrew Knapp as backup catcher anymore. He was called up in 2017 and has never been optioned back down! Not once! Not matter how bad things got, the Phillies somehow never had a better option at backup catcher. It’s as much an indictment of the organization’s rosters over the past five years as it is of Knapp, and ’22 might not be different! Rafael Marchan looks promising and could probably hold his own as a backup next season, but he’s still very young (23 in February) and the team probably wants him to get everyday reps in Triple-A. With such a small raise pending and the catching market looking dicey (Yan Gomes? Sandy Leon? Kurt Suzuki?), we may yet get Year 6 of the Knapp Experience. A full season in the Majors will get him enough service time to finally be eligible for free agency next winter.

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• Jose Alvarado – $1.9MM

Worth It?
Sure. The walks are insane and heavily counterbalance the raw stuff, but that raw stuff is also kind of insane in its own right and worth the price tag to continue tinkering with. But an opponents’ on-base of .382 is straight-up bad and needs to be better.

Will He Be Around?
Yup. But the case won’t be as open-and-shut next year if he can’t throw more strikes.

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• Rhys Hoskins – $7.6MM

Worth It?
Absolutely. Hoskins continues to frustrate in his intense battles with streakiness, but the body of work, on balance, keeps showing him coming out ahead. If nothing else, his absence in the stretch run of this season was felt pretty strongly as Brad Miller took over as the primary 1B and hit .209/.303/.454.

Will He Be Around?
Yes. There’s still the question of Hoskins’s long-term future after 2023, his current projected final year of arbitration. It doesn’t feel like there’s a multi-year deal in the tea leaves this offseason, so that’s probably a discussion for another year, but as far as 2022 is concerned he’s a sure thing to be tendered.

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• Ronald Torreyes – $1.6MM

Worth It?
Don’t think so. He’s been waived and released and traded for cash and non-tendered a whole bunch already, and his .242/.286/.346 in a career-high 344 PA last season doesn’t really move the needle away from that. He looks like a capable defender around the infield, but that might not justify a guaranteed deal by itself.

Will He Be Around?
Maybe. Torreyes is something of a minor cult hero right now after stringing up a few clutch hits in ’21, but he’s not a strong bat and the Phillies (finally, thankfully) have a couple of internal utility candidates in Nick Maton and Luke Williams who should get first looks. There’s also Bryson Stott’s role to consider, since he should be knocking on the door for a call-up this coming summer. Guaranteeing a contract and spot to Torreyes just constricts the pipeline (what there is of it), and would likely cost another fringe organizational player (think Luis Garcia, for one example) a spot on the 40-man and protection from this winter’s Rule 5 Draft.

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• Seranthony Dominguez – $800K

Worth It?
Yes. It was great to see Seranthony complete his comeback from Tommy John surgery with an appearance in game 162, and he should factor into the team’s bullpen plans for ’22. Exactly how much he’ll be able to pitch isn’t known, but even if it’s just a couple months’ worth of average innings, that’s worth a sub-million figure in today’s game. You take a flier at that figure on a guy with Seranthony’s potential 10 times out of 10.

Will He Be Around?
Absolutely. Again, the only question is how much he’ll be around at the Major League level. He’s still fresh off recovery and can’t be counted on for 70 appearances, but I’m sure we’ll all take what we can get. He’ll have a minor league option, so the team will be able to manage his workload between Philly and Lehigh a bit more effectively that way.

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• Roman Quinn – $700K

Worth It?
I want to say yes. I really, really do. I like Quinn and I think his skillset — a fast, switch-hitting outfielder who can handle all three OF spots — is the platonic ideal of a guy you want on your bench. But the problem in 2021 was the same problem in 2020, and 2019, and 2018, and 2017 and…

It’s a completely open question as to whether he’d be able to take the field, so it’s less a question of being worth the money ($700 thousand is basically nothing in baseball terms, ~$150 thousand over league minimum) than it is being worth the roster spot. The Phillies have a number of players worth consideration for Rule 5 protection, and Quinn (who turns 29 next May) has lost considerable ground with his injuries.

Will He Be Around?
Look, like we just reviewed, Quinn can’t stay healthy. Freak injury or low durability, whatever the case, he simply can’t seem to avoid the IL. This latest injury, a ruptured Achilles tendon, is particularly severe, and could be what finally costs Quinn a spot on the 40-man after years of chances.

It’s no sure thing either way — Quinn was on the chopping block as recently as this past Spring — but diminishing performance and availability are never a good recipe for job security.

A 2021-22 Phillies 40-Man Roster Offseason Primer

Another October has come, and with it another moment to pause and reflect, to take a breath and meditate on the Phillies season that has left us and the one imminently to come.

…

Alright, moment of zen over. The 2021 season was pretty not-great, on balance, and there’s a whole ton of work standing between this current roster and the one that might finally, truly, actually contend. Bad or no depth, a stunning inability to hit in big spots, multiple players’ knuckleheaded posturing on vaccination lagging the Phils embarrassingly behind the rest of baseball; nearly all of it was truly forgettable and took serious shine away from the great seasons that guys like Bryce Harper, Zack Wheeler, and Ranger Suárez had.

But the Phils aren’t going to stop playing baseball no matter how politely we ask, so it’s best to think about what lies ahead now that another postseason will go by with the Phillies stuck in the clubhouse. To start, it’s best to take a wholesale look at things; the big picture. Let’s open up the 40-man roster situation and examine it to get a better feel for what the team might try to accomplish this winter, and see if the imbalanced roster that tripped this team up so frequently in 2021 can be recalibrated quickly enough to make 2022 a more legitimate one.

Thanks to RosterResource for, as always, being invaluable.

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The Catchers

Player	Age (as of June 30, 2022)	2022 Contract Status	2022 Minor League Options
J.T. Realmuto	31	Signed through 2025	N
Andrew Knapp	30	Arbitration (3)	Y
Rafael Marchan	23	Pre-Arbitration	Y

Realmuto didn’t have a great year in 2021, but he was still very good and is more than palatable as a starting catcher for next year and beyond. That’s especially true given the likely NL DH adoption, which could help spell him while not fully removing his bat from the lineup.

Knapp, who amazingly has never been optioned since being called up for the first time in 2017, had a terrible year. Just awful. He gets rave reviews for clubhouse presence, but quickly waved off a curiously strong 2020 half-season as a mirage with ’21’s .152/.215/.214.

Marchan has been intriguing in spurts, but has barely had enough time to introduce himself to the Big League club. He’s more of a defensive specialist than an offensive threat, which could prove valuable in a backup role, but as he’ll still only be 23 he’s likely headed for regular work in Triple-A to start things off.

The Infielders

Player	Age (as of June 30, 2022)	2022 Contract Status	2022 Minor League Options
Rhys Hoskins	29	Arbitration (2)	Y
Jean Segura	32	Signed, $17M/1M Team Option for 2023	N
Didi Gregorius	32	Signed through 2022	N
Alec Bohm	25	Pre-Arbitration	Y
Freddy Galvis	32	Free Agent	N
Nick Maton	25	Pre-Arbitration	Y
Ronald Torreyes	29	Arbitration (2)	N
Luke Williams	25	Pre-Arbitration	Y

For a moment — a brief moment, but it was there — there was a chance Hoskins would be on the trade block this winter. Through a combination of Alec Bohm’s regression easing the squeeze on his potential move to 1B and the non-Harper Phillies offense going absolutely nowhere, Hoskins looks a bit more essential to the team now, doesn’t he? You never say never, especially with a team in such need of a makeover as the Phils, but Rhys is likely back for next year, at least.

It would also be hard to imagine the offense without Segura, who was great for the first half and pretty good for the second. After those two, though, things start looking a little sketchy. What does the org want to do with Bohm? Will they push to rid themselves of Gregorius, or look for a bounceback to start the year? Can Maton and Williams play a role, or will the team keep themselves attached to Torreyes for utility work?

The only certainty seems to be that Galvis will not be back, so there’s one 40-man spot freed up.

The Outfielders

Player	Age (as of June 30, 2022)	2022 Contract Status	2022 Minor League Options
Bryce Harper	29	Signed through 2031	N
Odubel Herrera	30	$11.5M/2.5M Team Option, Arbitration (3)	N
Andrew McCutchen	35	Free Agent	N
Adam Haseley	26	Pre-Arbitration	Y
Travis Jankowski	31	Arbitration (3)	N
Brad Miller	32	Free Agent	N
Mickey Moniak	24	Pre-Arbitration	Y
Simon Muzziotti	23	Pre-Arbitration	Y
Roman Quinn	29	Arbitration (1)	N
Matt Vierling	25	Pre-Arbitration	Y

Harper’s here. No idea who else will be.

Herrera’s option won’t be picked up, but his domestic violence suspension halted his service time and instead of being a free agent he’s still arbitration-eligible. The lazy thing to do would be to keep him, which is why it can’t be ruled out given the other work on the docket. The hope is he’s non-tendered and gone.

Cutch is almost definitely gone, though he could still be of use to a team in more of a part-time platoon. Jankowski hit .350/.469/.500 in his first 52 trips to the plate and .209/.314/.286 in the next 105. He is replaceable, but may get another Spring invite. Miller also put up poor numbers from June on, and seems equally unlikely to be back.

Haseley, Moniak, and Vierling are all possibly trade bait, but will start the year as depth and role-player options. Quinn’s fate is entirely uncertain, leaning toward non-tender.

In all, there are two 40-man spots set to be freed up here.

The Starting Pitchers

Player	Age (as of June 30, 2022)	2022 Contract Status	2022 Minor League Options
Zack Wheeler	32	Signed through 2024
Aaron Nola	29	Signed, $16M/4.25M Team Option for 2023
Ranger Suárez	26	Pre-Arbitration
Zach Eflin	28	Arbitration (3)
Kyle Gibson	34	Signed through 2022

Eflin’s knee injury opens the 5th starter’s spot for a competition or outside pickup; otherwise, this group looks pretty set for next year. There’s some thought around trading Nola, but that won’t happen this winter (at least, not if the Phils are going to actually benefit from doing it). Suárez and Gibson can hopefully be SP3/4 quality, and the team can enter the year with a bit less ambiguity and reliance on fliers like Matt Moore and Chase Anderson.

The Rest of the Pitchers

Player	Age (as of June 30, 2022)	2022 Contract Status	2022 Minor League Options
José Alvarado	27	Arbitration (2)
Cam Bedrosian	30	Free Agent
Archie Bradley	29	Free Agent
Connor Brogdon	27	Pre-Arbitration
Sam Coonrod	29	Pre-Arbitration
Hans Crouse	23	Pre-Arbitration
Kyle Dohy	25	Pre-Arbitration
Seranthony Dominguez	27	Arbitration (2)
Bailey Falter	25	Pre-Arbitration
J.D. Hammer	27	Pre-Arbitration
Damon Jones	27	Pre-Arbitration
Ian Kennedy	37	Free Agent
Adonis Medina	25	Pre-Arbitration
Matt Moore	33	Free Agent
Francisco Morales	22	Pre-Arbitration
Héctor Neris	33	Free Agent
JoJo Romero	25	Pre-Arbitration
Ramón Rosso	26	Pre-Arbitration
Cristopher Sánchez	25	Pre-Arbitration

This group still needs some serious help. The expectation is that every pre-arbitration pitcher here will be tendered a contract, all things being equal, but of the pending FAs only Neris stands much of a chance of returning. Even then, he may find greener pastures somewhere else.

Assuming Neris leaves, that’s five additional 40-man spots opened.

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Let’s Do Some Untangling

When IL placements expire following the postseason, the Phillies will need to be 40-man roster compliant. Including players on the 10-day and 60-day IL, the Phillies have 44 players on the 40-man roster, which won’t be allowed once the IL is disabled. The pending free agents, if all depart, will drop that number to a compliant 39/40, meaning additional cuts won’t be necessary in that moment.

But the Phillies will want to improve on this 2020 team, and may need to protect some of their minor leaguers from the Rule 5 Draft along the way. There are some notable names who will be Rule 5 eligible, and exposed to other teams later this offseason if not added to the 40-man roster.

Notable Rule 5 Eligible Minor Leaguers

Player	Position
Edgar Cabral	C
Rodolfo Durán	C
Luis Garcia	IF
Cornelius Randolph	IF/OF
Darick Hall	1B
Braeden Ogle	P
Jhailyn Ortiz	OF
Zach Warren	P
D.J. Stewart	IF/OF
Ethan Lindow	P

Now, not all of these players really “need” or will get a 40-man spot. Hall, in particular, is older, has been exposed before and gone unpicked, and isn’t a cornerstone of the team’s future plans.

Garcia still has potential, but his performance hasn’t quite caught up, and his decision could go either way. Randolph got off to a hot start before a cooldown and injury, but does that make him worth protecting? Ortiz had a breakout for Jersey Shore before sputtering at Reading, but seems like a decent bet for a spot. Ogle was a pickup from Pittsburgh who seems to have been hit hard by the missed minor league season last year, but may yet house some potential. The team may be able to get away with leaving guys like Warren (command issues) and Stewart (only reached High-A) off the 40, but run the risk (albeit only a modest one) of another team taking a chance and plucking them.

And don’t forget: Scott Kingery is still hanging around. Should he flip a switch, he’d need to be re-added to the 40-man to make his return to Philadelphia. That’s more a midseason concern than an offseason one.

All of this is before even thinking about adding free agents, or trading non-40-man minor leaguers for MLB guys. Earlier I held fast to not making assumptions about players still under club control, but there are definitely non-tender candidates taking up space on the roster who could provide flexibility, either as corresponding or preemptive moves.

Notable Non-Tender Candidates

Player

Andrew Knapp

Ronald Torreyes

Roman Quinn

Kyle Dohy

Any or all of these players could find themselves on the outside looking in, especially Quinn in light of his injury history and incumbent competition, and Dohy who has already been removed from the 40 once before. Knapp and Torreyes are both expendable, but seem to curry favor with the manager, so they might stick around.

On the Trade Block

Player

Jean Segura

Didi Gregorius

Alec Bohm

Aaron Nola

Adonis Medina

Rhys Hoskins

Mickey Moniak

Now this batch…so much of this is hypothetical. And in theory, any player on any team could be tradeable. But these are 40-man players who could be traded in some form or fashion, and may be more likely to move than others.

• Segura: Low chance. If Dave Dombrowski & co. decide that the team needs a bit more long-term help, Segura might be their most valuable, semi-expendable piece. He had a very good season, only has one guaranteed year remaining, and could have his position filled by an internal candidate like Nick Maton. That’s a huge risk, as Maton probably won’t put up comparable numbers to Segura next year, but Segura would have good market value. It’d be a bit of a radical move if the intent is to compete in 2022.
• Gregorius: Medium chance. Didi had an awful year in ’21, but there’s no clear replacement currently in-house (Bryson Stott’s future at SS is in question, and even then it’s usually bad form to leave a starting spot to a non-elite prospect who hasn’t made his debut). The Phillies would either need to eat significant money, attach some lower-level prospect, or both to move Gregorius, and the team may be more inclined to try him out to start the year in hopes this past season was an unfortunate fluke.
• Bohm: Low chance. The defense is a concern, but Bohm was hitting better prior to being sent to Triple-A to finish the year. Where exactly he’ll play is a question, and if another team still values him he could be moved, but the money would be on the Phils bringing him to camp.
• Nola: Low chance. I sort of regret humoring the idea. I get that Nola’s backsliding and hasn’t replicated 2018, and that’s disappointing. But teams won’t give you a lot in trade now; if anything, you’re more likely to get sniped by a team with better dev who can spot an opportunity to clean Nola up and acquire him at a discount because of his performance the past two years. The odds of the Phillies coming out ahead in a deal involving Nola is incredibly slim right now.
• Medina: Low chance. He still carries some prospect sheen, but seems more likely for a full-time bullpen conversion before the team cuts bait on him. He certainly won’t lead a package for a Manny Machado-caliber guy anymore, that’s for sure.
• Hoskins: Low chance. Again, had he not gotten hurt and his absence from the lineup felt so profoundly, maybe this is a different story. I’m still not convinced the team has him in a long-term plan beyond when he’s scheduled to hit free agency after 2023, but he seems necessary for ’22 at least.
• Moniak: Medium chance. The manager clearly doesn’t like him and publicly torpedoed his chances of being a regular CF with the Phillies both in comment and in usage during his call-ups. He’s going to have to fight for a job again this Spring if he’s in camp, but it sure looks like he’s a bit out of favor with the org right now. Recent anti-vax stuff on Instagram might not help his cause either. But he doesn’t carry much value right now either, and the team may prefer to have him around as an OF4 or part of a platoon, depending on how it addresses LF/CF.

There are so many moving parts in every offseason, and a team that needs a swift kick in the pants to get competitive won’t be an exception.

One Key Improvement For Every 2021 Phillies Opening Day Player

If the Phillies are finally going to break their decade-long playoff drought — or, hell, even just top .500 — each member of the Opening Day roster has at least one thing they can improve on. Here’s something to track for every one.

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Jose Alvarado: Quality Strikes

No one doubts the pure stuff. Alvarado hucked it up to 102 MPH this Spring, and his breaking ball is a scythe. But he tends to get erratic and wild, and more disciplined hitters tend to lay off his waste pitches no matter how nasty they look; opposing hitters rarely chase his elevated fastballs (20% since 2018, league average 28%) and non-fastballs overall (30% vs. 33% league average). Throwing more competitive pitches when ahead in the count could help build up his rep as a zone pounder, which could put hitters more on edge even when they know one of those big breakers is coming. It may not be possible given his delivery and velocity, but it could be what prevents him from becoming J.C. Romero.

Chase Anderson: Curveball

When it’s going right, Anderson’s curve gets grounders at a great clip (over 56% of his curveballs put in play over the last two seasons were ground balls), but it’s often a waste pitch that doesn’t entice enough hitters to go fishing for it. If he’s going to cut down on the home run rate that sunk his 2020, inducing more poor contact on low curveballs is a good place to start.

Alec Bohm: Fielding

Since there isn’t a lot you can say needed work on his performance at the plate last year, the easier focus is on Bohm’s defense. While Bohm should be athletic enough to hold down third base for a couple years, long stretches of poor performance or signs of early decay could be red flags for a team that already has a first baseman entrenched for two more years and nowhere else to put him before a DH is permanently installed. This warning is, for the moment, premature; Bohm had a couple of misplays in the field this Spring but hardly looked to be a disaster. The margin for error here just isn’t all that expansive.

Archie Bradley: Changeup

With the Reds last season, Bradley doubled his changeup use rate to great results: a .125 opp. AVG, 39% whiff rate, and 80 MPH average exit velo. If his fastball velocity loss trend continues, it’s going to be more important for Bradley to refine and deploy his secondaries, and a changeup emerging as a reliable third option to complement the fastball and curveball would be a welcome sight.

Connor Brogdon: Keep Nibbling

Brogdon’s overall numbers show a low rate of pitches in the zone, but that’s more a product of living on the black with his cutter and changeup than potential wildness.

BaseballSavant

If he keeps painting like that, he’ll continue to get good chase rates and, you’d figure, weaker contact.

Sam Coonrod: Get Ahead

Coonrod frequently fell behind in counts, with only a 62% first-pitch strike rate and nearly 1-in-5 PA going to a 2-0 count last season. The difference, as it tends to be, was stark: In the PAs where he started with a ball, opposing hitters torched Coonrod with a .345/.471/.527 line, while those that started 0-1 only ended up with a .141/.253/.282 line.

Zach Eflin: Top of the Order

If he’s truly going to fulfill his breakout promise this year, Eflin will need to better manage the top of opposing orders. In the past two seasons, the No. 1 and 2 hitters in opposing lineups combined to hit .294/.347/.509 and .411/.450/.857. His innings frequently got off on the wrong foot, as leadoff hitters (in all innings, not just the 1st) had a .387 OBP. Not painting himself into a corner and needing to work out of the stretch with no one out could be a stress reducer.

Didi Gregorius: Take Advantage

Last year, when ahead in the count, Gregorius produced a mere .314 SLG. He balanced things out a bit by clawing back in some ABs where he was behind, for sure, but in spots where he held the advantage he too frequently squandered them. Among hitters who had at least 50 PAs where they put the ball in play while ahead in the count (213 hitters in all), that .314 SLG was 12th-lowest. There’s room for extra damage in there.

David Hale: Eat Innings

Hale’s spot on the roster is to be a protector, to fall on the sword in lower-leverage spots where the game is out of reach in one direction or another, while the team awaits the return of JoJo Romero and the ramping-up of Spencer Howard. This season’s pitching situation will be hard to navigate, so even though it’s far from glamorous, Hale being able to successfully complete garbage time innings without catastrophe will help bide time.

Bryce Harper: Staying On the Field

There isn’t a ton I can say about Harper’s game that needs a lot of work. Don’t strike out as much? Sure, I guess. Take better routes in the field? I dunno, the routes seem okay too. The biggest concern right now just seems to be managing his workload and keeping him on the field, all while avoiding aggravation of the back issue that plagued him late last year and earlier this Spring. Back issues can ruin careers if they get bad enough, and we have not had nearly enough time to fully enjoy Bryce’s game here for that to be weighing on our minds.

Adam Haseley: Doubles

Haseley is not going to be a big home run guy. Maybe one year he’ll fall into 15 dingers somehow. More likely, he’s a guy who’ll go gap-to-gap and line-to-line for doubles to boost his power numbers, and that should probably be his focus. With a level, line-drive swing when at its best, Haseley’s focus shouldn’t turn to path adjustments. Though his overall EV dropped last year, Haseley hit more line drives and reduced his pulled balls in play, hopefully keeping defenses more honest and straight-up when guarding against him. He could be more Jon Jay than Jim Edmonds, and that’d be just fine.

Rhys Hoskins: Shorten the Slumps

Real easy for a guy like me to say from here, but the best way to prop Hoskins’s season numbers up with be to cut down the time he spends in the freezer. Since the start of 2018, only three players (including Bryce Harper and Carlos Santana) have had more hitless games started than Rhys’s 137. Some of that is balanced out with walks, but Rhys is certainly capable of more production and avoiding prolonged cold streaks could do wonders for everyone’s mental health, Rhys’s most of all.

Matt Joyce: Hang In Against Lefties

Barring injury, Joyce wouldn’t see everyday action. Even as a occasional platoon spell guy for Andrew McCutchen in left field, or in his duty off the bench, Joyce is likely to be deployed only against RHP who’ve not yet hit the 3-batter minimum. However! In those starts where he does end up facing a lefty, whether by (unlikely) start or by middle relief matchup, it would be good to keep Cutch resting and know that Joyce could put together a competitive AB. He’s slugged just .286 in limited exposure to lefties over the past two years, with relatively few strikeouts but lots of weak contact. With luck, these matchups will be a fringe case this year, but it always helps to be more well-rounded.

Brandon Kintzler: Come Through In the Clutch

It’s often said that “clutch” isn’t a skill, and it probably isn’t, but outcomes are still outcomes and guys who pitch in big spots need to come up big for this Phillies team to succeed. Last year, in 17 high-leverage appearances with Miami, Kintzler allowed an .832 opposing OPS with 10 strikeouts to 6 walks in 56 batters faced. Given the fluid roles of this Phils ‘pen, it’s fair to expect him to show up in big spots where the club may need a ground ball more than usual. With the delicate balance of Kintzler’s pitch-to-contact stuff and the Phils’ semi-suspect defense, these outcomes will be worth watching.

Andrew Knapp: Pinch-Hitting

Joe Girardi was a bit less inclined to use Knapp as a PH than Gabe Kapler was, but the Phillies could turn to Knapp off the bench more often this year as an option against LHP (if you figure Matt Joyce and Brad Miller get RHP priority, leaving Roman Quinn and Ronald Torreyes and Knapp’s main competition there). Knapp has always shown a decent eye and can certainly work a walk now and then, but his overall PH record (.214/.282/.271) leaves a whole lot to be desired. None of Knapp, Quin, or Torreyes is much of a power threat, but even just getting on base late in games, ahead of the top of the order, could do wonders for the Phils’ ability to steal a comeback win or add insurance runs.

Andrew McCutchen: Low Offspeed and Breaking Balls

In the past 3 seasons, McCutchen has an OPS of just .427 on offspeed pitches in the lower third of the zone and below. Among the 109 hitters who’ve handled at least 200 such pitches since 2018, that’s 4th-worst in the league. Low fastballs? Not a problem; his .382 average on those is top-5. It’s the bottom of the zone that he’s been unable to wrest control of. In a division with some slider-heavy powerhouses like Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer (among others), McCutchen figures to see a good number of those kinds of pitches in ’21.

Brad Miller: Heaters

Miller has really begun to flourish as a part-time offensive threat, and the Phils will be strategic in how they use him this year. Regardless of when and how he’s used, though, he’s likely to see a fastball now and then, and those have (kind of ironically) been a bit of a bugaboo for him. Over the last two seasons, Miller’s whiff rate is higher against fastballs than any other kind of pitch, checking in at a rather towering 38% against 484 four-seamers seen. When he connects, he does plenty of damage (.519 SLG despite the whiffs), but connecting more could go a long way (like the balls likely will).

Matt Moore: Mo(o)re of This

Hector Neris: Luck

While he could also use a bit more regular command of his fastball to offset his splitter and new slider (and who knows how much he’s going to use that one), it would also be nice if the guy could catch a break.

Neris had one of the biggest BABIP spikes in all of baseball last season. A lot of weird shit happened while he was on the mound in 2020. He looked good in the spring. So, Phillies will give him the first crack. https://t.co/8dJVZZWfR9

— Matt Gelb (@MattGelb) March 31, 2021

It’s a stretch to call Neris “elite,” but when he’s his normal self, he does a number of things really well. He’ll start the year as the team’s “closer,” and if the bounces start going his way a little more, he could be in for a big year.

Aaron Nola: Pickoff Moves

Thankfully, there’s not a ton that Nola needs to improve upon. He’s consistently been one of the game’s better starting pitchers for a few years now. But one thorn in his side, thought to be vanquished in 2019 but returned in 2020, is base stealing. J.T. Realmuto’s arrival curbed things a bit in 2019, when J.T. threw out 7 of 13 runners, but things regressed in last year’s smaller sample. Fluke? Portend? With Realmuto’s throwing hand and hip issues possibly lingering somewhat, it’ll be important for Nola to do his part in keeping some quicker runners honest with quicker pick-offs, as it’s probably not smart money to bet on him suddenly speeding up his delivery or incorporating a slide step more often.

Roman Quinn: Balls in Play

Quinn is an old school speedster, an anachronism in today’s game, but he hasn’t been able to fully gas up the jets and fly thanks to some gaudy K rates. They’ve steadily crept up over the past 3 seasons, from 24.5% to 27.9% to 33.6%, and there’s no way to unleash his speed on a walk back to the dugout. We saw a bit more live bunting practice this Spring, and that could be a sign of things to come. Either way, more contact (preferably line drives or on the ground, though Quinn is known to tank one every now and then) will give him more chances to pressure opposing defenses and wreak a bit of havoc on the bases.

J.T. Realmuto: Batting With RISP

It’s been feast-or-famine with runners in scoring position for J.T. in his time with the Phils so far. He’s hit 10 HR in 236 PA, but overall has posted averages of just .241 and .235, with OBPs of .276 and .288, over the last two seasons. He’s also K’d in 61 of those trips. So if he’s not parking one, odds are it hasn’t been going too well. This reflects back to Kintzler’s note above about whether clutch hitting is any kind of “skill,” and in continuing to avoid definitively answering that I’ll just instead point to J.T.’s RISP performance in the 3 seasons before the trade: .287/.341/.365, .277/.363/.416, .296/.371/.459. He’s clearly capable, he’s just gotta be himself in those spots.

Jean Segura: Quality Contact

It’s easy (and worth doing) to heavily discount a good amount of 2020 performance numbers. It was just a weird year. And that weirdness is a little extra profound in some of the approach numbers that Segura posted, wildly bucking some trends he had pretty steadily established in years prior. His swinging strike rate jumped to a career high, and his K rate followed to a similar height. But he also walked more than ever, and his overall ball-in-play percentage fell through the floor to 65%. One of Segura’s hallmarks has been that he’s a contact hitter who puts the ball in play 75-80% of the time he shows up at the plate, and if he’s going to bat in the lower half of the Phils’ order behind on-base machines like Hoskins and Harper instead of in front of them, balls in play will be extra important.

Ronald Torreyes: Whole Lotta Glove

Expectations aren’t necessarily sky-high for Torreyes’s impact as a bat off the bench, or even as a pinch runner. His impact will be felt most on the infield, where his defense will either keep him afloat on the roster into the summer, or be the reason he gets the boot the moment Scott Kingery is ready to jump back in. And that second one might happen anyway. But for the time he is on the roster, Torreyes will need to be ready to go at any infield position for spot starts, and if he can’t be counted on to fill gaps, that would be a problem. To his credit, Statcast grades his infield defense out as pretty close to baseline, albeit in limited attempts the last two years. There stands to be extra importance in these defensive innings for a team that could use every marginal break it can get.

Vince Velasquez: Better First Pitches

Regardless of whether he’s starting or relieving, one of Velasquez’s most painful Achilles heels has been the first pitch of an AB. Since 2018, only Trevor Richards (.828) has allowed a higher opposing SLG on first pitches than Vinny’s .767, and Velasquez has never had a season where hitters didn’t cumulatively SLG at least .600 on his first pitch. Not that it’s much better to waste more first pitches, either; hitters have an .862 career OPS against Velasquez after getting ahead 1-0, including OPSes of .931 and 1.035 in the last two years. It is, technically(?), an improvement over those first-pitch numbers, though. It’s hard to say what a remedy would look like, given Velasquez’s stuff hasn’t really evolved over the years. It could be a matter of good breaks, but that just sets us all up for a bunch of teeth grinding with every new hitter that steps in against him.

Zack Wheeler: Rediscover Strikeouts

Wheeler found an odd amount of success last season despite a precipitous strikeout drop, as his K% fell below 19 after consecutive years above 23. That’s not exactly a recipe for success in today’s game. And we can all see Wheeler’s got the raw stuff, still, to overpower hitters, and he posted 22 strikeouts in his 19.1 Spring innings. A blend of the power he had in his later Mets days with the finesse of his first Phillies season could produce something tasty, it may just be a matter of measuring the ingredients properly.

Blake Snell Should Request A Trade

It had to end the way it did. Everyone watching Game 6 of the World Series last night knew it.

By now, you’ve seen or read about how unmistakably dominant Blake Snell was for the Rays, essentially impeccable into the 6th inning. Through 5, he’d allowed 1 hit, struck out 9 and walked none. Not a single Dodger hitter looked particularly comfortable, even in the second trip through the batting order. He’d thrown just 69 pitches.

Then came a first-pitch pop-out to start the 6th, and the trend was continuing. But suddenly, when next-guy-up Austin Barnes hit a ho-hum single up the middle, plans had to change. The Dodgers were coming up for a 3rd time and Snell, no matter how silly he’d made them all look through two trips, could not be allowed to face them again. It was the will of the organization. The rest is history.

Very rarely does one single event win or lose a game. Baseball’s complex like that. But in this World Series, the Rays tried to exert their will, their own process, with such brute force as to try and render moot the most complex thing about this whole game: The players themselves. And Blake Snell shouldn’t be okay with that.

Maybe it’ll take a few days or a couple of weeks to decompress and think it through. And it doesn’t need to be done loudly or broadcast over Twitch. But once he’s searched his soul, Snell would be 100 percent justified to ask the Rays to trade him.

The Rays are a smart club. They often get credited, rightly or not, with innovation and ideation — four-man outfields, the “opener” e.g. — that stretches the limits of credulity for old-school fans and can even give new-school fans agita now and then. They’ve done so out of an artificial necessity, trying to squeeze every last drop of the players in their organization before the time comes to pay them legitimate money, which the team frequently prefers not to do.

This particular pitching strategy, though, had to fail. The use of openers and the tightening vice grip of starting pitcher leashes is accomplishing a bit of its stated intention: To limit opposing hitters’ additional looks at a pitcher’s stuff so as to, naturally, prevent runs. The numbers, such as they are, kind of bear this out, though 2020’s weirdness ended up yielding a lower opposing OPS for hitters in their 3rd trip up versus a starter than their 2nd. Go figure.

But no, the worst thing about this particular move was the absoluteness of it, the demonstration that, no matter how good or dominant or effortless you make a start look, in the biggest moments the team still values its organizational theories to get things done more than the players themselves. Nevermind that the process ended up yielding Nick Anderson in Snell’s place last night; Anderson, who truly is a dominant reliever when right, has not been totally right for some time and ended up immediately blowing the game. But he never should have been put in that position.

There is value to having a plan in place. It helps to have some guide of structure or guiding philosophy as you build team (if you’re a front office exec) or deploy said team (as a field manager). That plan, for pitchers anyway, used to be roughly: Starting pitcher for 6, three relievers with designated setup/closer roles for an inning apiece, ballgame. That philosophy was tweaked and polished to a fine shine by guys like Tony LaRussa and Bruce Bochy leaning on specialists and matchups later in games for shorter appearances.

But never has an organizational philosophy seemed to so boorishly proclaim itself to be more important than those tasked with actually carrying out that philosophy than Game 6 of this World Series. The Rays essentially declared that no player, no single performance, is above their law, and everyone who puts on the uniform must “buy in” and bend to their will. Debates about aesthetics aside (I certainly think it’s ugly more often than not), this strategy is also slowly working to not just blur the line between starter and reliever but smear it all over the wall.

You can find exceptions, sure. Charlie Morton got $30 million to be a true SP, but on a short two-year deal. Snell himself even has an extension in place, but in typical Rays fashion it buys out a year of free agency (2023) at a rate well below what Snell is likely to get ($16.6 million) given his current career trajectory as a Cy Young Award winner who will only be 31 following the ’23 season. You’d have to figure that he’d likely make less in free agency as a starter with a track record of only going ~4-5 innings than one who goes 6-plus, yeah?

But that’s too early to call. For now, in this moment, the Rays made their priorities crystal clear to their players last night: It doesn’t matter how good you are or what you accomplish, you are a cog in their machine beholden to the process, and that’s just the way it has to be.

Players, who have so little say about where they get to play in the prime years of their career, have limited options, and Snell is indeed under contract for 3 more seasons (with the post-2021 seasons still in limbo pending CBA talks). He is under-leveraged, and any trade would figure to be incredibly unlikely, requested or not.

But it’s the principle of the thing. Regardless of the eventual outcome, Snell sticking up for himself and his true value to the team and organization is just good process. You’d think the Rays would at least get that.

The Case For Adam Haseley As The Everyday CF In 2021

One of the many projects Phillies decision-makers will have to tackle this winter is, for the tenth consecutive year since Shane Victorino was traded to the Dodgers in 2012, center field. Since the dawn of the 2013 season, here is a list of players who have started a game in center for the Phillies:

Aaron Altherr, Roger Bernadina, Peter Bourjos, Ezequiel Carrera, Pedro Florimon, Freddy Galvis, Tony Gwynn, Jr., Bryce Harper, Adam Haseley, Cesar Hernandez, Odubel Herrera, Scott Kingery, Michael Martinez, John Mayberry, Jr., Andrew McCutchen, Cameron Perkins, Roman Quinn, Ben Revere, Sean Rodriguez, Grady Sizemore, Darnell Sweeney, Ronald Torreyes, Casper Wells, Nick Williams.

The group above is a case study in throwing things at a wall and having basically none of them stick. A slew of utility players (Florimon, Martinez, Rodriguez), experiments (Bourjos, Sizemore), and guys just plain ol’ out-of-position (Hernandez, Mayberry, Jr., Sweeney, even McCutchen and Harper of late). The vast majority of the group’s production has come from Herrera, who should probably be released before the 2021 season. It’s a bad scene.

Amazingly, a quarter of those guys are still in the organization, but their likely fates run the gamut: Harper’s an obvious lock to stick but play right field full-time, Cutch may be shopped but is the likely regular LF/DH, and Haseley/Herrera/Kingery/Quinn all amount to some form of “¯\_(ツ)_/¯.”

But among the last group, Haseley is my guy for regular reps in center field next season. Here’s why.

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It feels safe to assume that the Phils won’t be in the market for George Springer’s services. Let’s also figure Starling Marte has his option picked up by Miami, and Jackie Bradley, Jr. is priced out in some form or fashion. The remaining free agent crop is a frail one, with names like Jarrod Dyson (career 77 OPS+), Billy Hamilton (67), and Kevin Pillar (89) left to lead the way, basically without an option that’d give a big enough upgrade over what the Phils already have in-house to justify extra spending. I can’t believe I have to keep asterisking money when it comes to the Phillies, but it seems like a very real demon for this winter.

They could always find a trade partner, sure, but the CF ranks are a bit thin right now, and it may be tough to predict who’s planning on going for it in ’21. As things stand here today, I couldn’t pick one trade target who’d be any more or less likely than another, so that’ll have to be a wait-and-see thing.

Absent an obvious trade block dangle and assuming the big expenditure will either be Realmuto-or-bust, we’re left with our four known candidates: Haseley, Herrera, Kingery, and Quinn. And given the way this team is currently constructed, Haseley fronts the group.

Offense

None of the four primary candidates are great hitters. Herrera used to be, but he’s ostensibly been out of the game for almost two years and nobody really wants him back here; Kingery has had very short flashes of being a decent Major League hitter, only to see them get drowned out by the brutal glare of the other 80 percent of his career PAs; Quinn needed a .356 BABIP just to hit .261 in his first 65 games, and he’s hit just .213/.280/.343 over his last 85.

Haseley, for his part, hasn’t been so much better. On balance, he’s a .269/.330/.382 hitter in 334 career PA, and after a fat zip/zero/zilch in the HR department last year, has just 5 dingers and 24 extra-base hits to his name. He may never hit for much more power, but he holds one key advantage over Kingery and Quinn: Contact.

	Swinging Strike %	Contact %	Avg. Exit Velo
Haseley	19.0	74.6	86.4 MPH
Kingery	24.8	68.2	87.6 MPH
Quinn	22.5	69.3	83.3 MPH
MLB Avg.	19.2	74.1	~89 MPH

Baseball-Reference and BaseballSavant Data, 2019-20

Now, it’s worth mentioning that Kingery had a positive covid-19 test prior to the start of the season, which likely had an effect on his preparation and eventual performance. How big an impact we can’t say for sure, but it’s worth keeping in mind as we view some of these things.

Over the last two seasons, Haseley has done a significantly better job of getting the bat to the ball than his teammates. He’s also trending in the right direction, as his 2020 numbers in those categories were all moving positively: 10.5% swinging strike rate and 84.8% contact rate, each of which would have been 3rd-best in the National League had he had enough PAs to qualify (186 were needed, Haseley had just 92), although EV took a tumble to 84 MPH.

Adding to the recency trend, you could look at Haseley’s 2020 offensive performance in halves. In the first half, from July 25 to September 8, Haseley hit .229/.325/.314, with half of his 8 hits coming in one game as he also spent time on the IL. Haseley started just 12 times out of the 29 games he was healthy for through 9/8. Then, from the 10th through the end of the season, Haseley hit .318/.367/.364. He only made 11 starts in those 21 games, but that run helped bring his line up to .279/.342/.353 in games he started last year.

Kingery, for his part, had just a .182 BABIP on batted balls with an EV of 90+ MPH last season, which is pretty terribly unlucky; Haseley’s was .457 over nearly an identical amount of hard-hit balls in play. That’s reason enough to be a bit bullish on Kingery bouncing back, just as a second baseman instead of a center fielder. And that’s in large part because of…

Defense

Leading up to the 2017 draft, Haseley was pretty widely considered to be athletic enough to play well at any outfield position, and as he rose through the Phils system, he proved capable enough to stick in center and ended up playing more than half his defensive innings in the minors there.

Already armed (haha) with the arm strength of a pitcher — he was a two-way player in college, which unjustly conjures some jittery Joe Savery memories — Haseley needed to demonstrate good reads and routes, as his speed is modest and certainly trails Kingery and Quinn in a straight line. In the shortened samples of 2020, Haseley showed slightly above-average numbers in FanGraphs’ advanced numbers, although he graded out as a -1 in CF on Statcast’s Outs Above Average measure.

It isn’t a body of work that the defensive numbers love, but also not one they hate. Quinn, for his part, only grades out as a +1 in the OAA measure, despite rating incredibly highly in speed and outfield jump percentiles. If Quinn makes the ’21 Phillies, there’s an argument to be made for him to be an outfield super sub or late-inning defensive replacement, but Haseley shows no glaring weakness with the glove right now. Kingery, meanwhile, graded out poorly at second base last year, which was his longtime position and one he excelled at in the minors. You’d hate to think being bounced around for three years would have set him back so far defensively, but again, the leash is longer after what he had to go through this year with his health.

Subtext

In today’s rubber ball environment, it’s a little odd for an outfielder with even modest power to go a “season” without a homer, and only 5 doubles to compensate. But at least Haseley wasn’t alone: 16 other players in the Majors had at least 90 PA and didn’t park a single ball, from Ehire Adrianza and Tony Wolters through Nick Madrigal and Andrelton Simmons. Not a huge deal.

What’s encouraging, though, is that Haseley still had a good batted ball profile. FanGraphs shows a dip in hard-hit%, but an uptick in line drives with a corresponding dip in ground balls. On top of that, Statcast shows 18 of Haseley’s 92 PA resulting in outs on balls in play with an EV of 90+ MPH. That’s nearly 20 percent of his season’s trips to the plate resulting in “unlucky” outs; the league average on batted balls hit 90+ MPH or harder in 2020 was .441. That number only drops to .381 when removing home runs.

Haseley significantly readjusted his strikeout and walk rates, dropping the former from 24.8% to 18.5% and raising the latter from 5.8% to 7.6% year-over-year. He also came through in some big spots when he had the chance, hitting .400/.458/.450 in 26 PA with RISP, even though his overall high leverage numbers (.544 OPS) didn’t quite follow suit.

Haseley will turn 25 next April. He’s nearly three years younger than Quinn and has yet to cross the 1-year mark of MLB service time. He may not have the production or the helium of a sexy breakout pick for 2021, but the notion of, at worst, a decent Major League center fielder is one to be comfortable with. Were the Phillies able to significantly upgrade and land someone like Springer or his peer in a trade, well, I don’t think I or anyone else will spend a ton of time lamenting Haseley’s lost ABs. Kinda callous, but probably true. All the same, these apparently are not going to be the Phillies of 2018-2020, and big spending is likely off the table. So absent that big splash, I feel pretty good about Adam Haseley’s chances of putting a good year together for the Phils in ’21, and maybe even surprising us along the way. Either way, it’s time to find out.

The Three Paths Of The 2020-21 Offseason

No matter how big or small the changes end up, the Phillies are going to be a different team in 2021 than they were this year. They have big (and small) free agents they’re a toss-up to re-sign, young players with uncertain roles, and a relatively limited war chest of tradeable assets. Their big weapon again, should they choose to actually deploy it, will be money. But early indications are that payroll’s getting cut back, and whoever takes on the new role of General Manager (or equivalent fancy title TBD) may have more restrictions to work with than his or her predecessor.

From a very generic standpoint, a high-level view, there are three ways this offseason can go, and each will yield a distinctly different end product.

Go For It

This is the true Big-Market Mentality path, one that sees the Phillies continuing to use their financial leverage to sign established Major League talent in the eight-figure range. This approach includes re-signing both J.T. Realmuto and Didi Gregorius (obvious fits for obvious needs) and figuring out how to split 2B and CF time between Jean Segura, Scott Kingery, and Adam Haseley in the aftermath.

This also includes a significant SP investment for one guaranteed MLB spot, and a careful look at NRIs for depth in case Spencer Howard isn’t ready to go or falters. The team probably won’t go full bull-in-china-shop and be a serious player for Trevor Bauer if they bring back J.T. and Didi, not that he’s worth the contract he’s likely to get anyway. Think more along the lines of Jose Quintana, Marcus Stroman, or Kevin Gausman, all of whom are way better options than a lot of the stuff the team has tried to peddle as rotation-worthy the past few years.

With Realmuto and Gregorius back and Alec Bohm securing most of the time at 3B once Rhys Hoskins is healthy, the only spot left to really think hard about is CF. In the world of going for it, the Phils would be players for George Springer, who is far and away the best pending free agent for the position. Jackie Bradley, Jr., the one who got away, is less exciting but would probably be a bit of an upgrade over Haseley/Kingery over the next two years.

The real renovation comes with the bullpen, though. Hector Neris gets his option picked up to avoid one more arbitration case, but otherwise things barely end up looking the same as David Robertson, Brandon Workman, Jose Alvarez, and Tommy Hunter lead the exodus. With Seranthony Dominguez’s status an unknown, and incumbents like Heath Hembree and David Hale uncertain to be tendered contracts after subpar showings, the team could need as many as four or five(!) additions. Jojo Romero and Connor Brogdon will get the first looks internally, and David Phelps has enough of a recent track record for his option to be picked up, but even that would leave a need for at least one more LHP and multiple others. The market is set to feature guys like Liam Hendriks, Shane Greene, former Phillies great Trevor May, Sean Doolittle, and Blake Treinen, any of whom would be a huge boost.

The outlay for J.T., Didi, a good SP, and multiple RPs probably lands somewhere in the $50 million range for 2021. The team stands to free up just shy of $30 million from free agents they don’t seem likely to re-sign (Jose Alvarez, Jake Arrieta, Jay Bruce among them). Combined with an arbitration slate that features Hoskins (Arb1), Zach Eflin (Arb2), and Vince Velasquez (Arb3, although his future would be cloudy in this scenario), the team would have a payroll near 2020’s.

Stay The Course

The boring, and therefore far more likely, option would be to keep most of the non-disaster options around just to keep the boat steady. One of Realmuto and Gregorius would be a casualty here, with Didi seeming most likely to leave if only to avoid anarchy from a fan revolt if J.T. ends up departing. That would leave a vacancy at SS, but the team could brute force their way through another weird SS season by putting a past-his-defensive-prime Jean Segura back there. Picking up a late-inning defensive replacement like old friend Freddy Galvis or Leury Garcia might help reinforce that side of things.

The Phils traded some of their pitching depth — Nick Pivetta, Connor Seabold, Addison Russ — in ill-fated deals, but will probably be tempted to see more of what they might have in Victor Arano, Garrett Cleavinger, Adonis Medina, Cole Irvin, Ramon Rosso, and Ranger Suarez. There’s enough in that mix to mix-and-match between the rotation and bullpen, and if payroll mitigation is more serious than just not being higher than lasts season, well, all of those guys are pre-arb. Flawed, but cheap. With no desire to trade Bohm or Howard, the Phillies aren’t really left with the trade capital to make a significant deal that way.

One stay-the-course move I’d personally be pretty happy about would be handing the keys to CF over to Adam Haseley. He’s a competent defender and an okay hitter, which, hey, sounds fine! It’s not George Springer, but we’re trying to play out the Goldilocks scenario here.

There’s also probably a need for backup catcher (still), after Andrew Knapp’s incredibly weird hot streak (.462/.548/.692 in his first 14 games and 31 PA) fizzled out to more of what we’re used to seeing from him (.174/.328/.304 in his final 19 games and 58 PA). The free agent catching market outside of J.T. is thin, though, so unless Deivy Grullon has curried more of his bosses’ favor, Knapp might be back again as an Arb2 even if J.T. does come back into the fold.

Reel It In

This is certainly not a boring option, but that doesn’t mean it would be the good kind of exciting.

Let’s say the financial stress is dire. The lost revenue from gate receipts and merch and concessions and shortened TV schedules forces the club’s hand into paring back big time. The team leans heavily into the internal options for SP5 and the bullpen. They decline David Phelps’s option, as well as Hector Neris’s as they try to leverage his half-step-back season into an arbitration case pay cut. Adam Morgan’s (Arb3) health and Heath Hembree’s (Arb3) performance lead the team to justify non-tendering both and dodging mid-7-figure payouts in favor of those internal options. Velasquez (Arb3) also gets set free.

Depending on how drastic the team wants to get, there are also some options lingering on the periphery that could really shake things up. Maybe they seek a trade for Andrew McCutchen, who made it through the season healthy and hit fine (102 OPS+). If they pay down some of his money, but less than half, they may fill his vacancy by reintroducing Odubel Herrera, to whom they still owe $10 million for 2021, and shift Haseley to LF. They’d still save money, albeit in a rather draconian and fan-unfriendly way, but losing both Realmuto and Gregorius will have already seated plenty of ill will. Cutch may be the only player on the MLB roster making significant money that stands any chance of being moved. Harper, Nola, and Wheeler are all staying put. Segura doesn’t have lots of trade value and would be needed to play SS in this timeline. Kingery is also mostly immoveable. There isn’t really another candidate to be moved if the Phils aim to both trim payroll and stay somewhat competitive. We’re avoiding the fire sale conversation for another year, at least (ugh).

The team could still plumb the depths of the market for an inning eater, like Rick Porcello or Mike Fiers, and would probably end up with another NRI or two making the team in some form or fashion.

What To Make Of It

This offseason is shaping up to be incredibly difficult to predict. The Phillies are leaning toward a payroll shed, but we don’t know just how big of a molt that’s going to be. We also don’t know how teams are going to approach this offseason, for a couple of fairly obvious but very important reasons:

• Short season
• Global pandemic

Teams have less performance data (quantitative and qualitative alike) to go off of for players this season. How much do opinions of players like Brandon Workman really change, as guys with respectable recent histories who took steps back in far smaller samples this year? Do teams try and wait out forecasts for the course of the Covid pandemic to see if there’s an increased likelihood for fans to be in the stands in ’21, which could affect payroll decisions? Do teams collude-but-not-really-collude to offer a slew of one-year deals to try and bridge the gap between now and the end of the CBA, which remains unresolved and stands to alter the way contracts could be constructed by teams and earned by players?

It leaves specific predictions harder to make than normal. It will take creativity to both trim payroll from the Phillies roster and improve the team to the point of being a contender, but that’s apparently the mandate for the incoming GM. It remains to be seen exactly how they might go about trying that.

Just How Bad Have The Phillies’ Draft Misses Been?

Baseball drafting is a weird thing, you know? It’s not like basketball or football or even hockey, where draftees are more often than not playing at the top level within a year or so of being selected. So the effects of missing on a draft pick can sometimes take three, four, or five years to really manifest themselves and become clear.

All of it is an inexact science. And this article is no different. But over the past few years, there’s been a lot of attention paid to how badly the Phillies have been whiffing on their drafts (with some exceptions, few and far between), and so I wanted to see if they had been missing on their highest-value picks more frequently and more starkly than the rest of the league. You know, to put numbers to feelings, like we tend to do in this sport.

I looked at first-round draft picks from every team from 2010 through 2016. The first round is typically the most important, as it’s often each team’s best chance to snag high-end talent. The 2017 through 2020 drafts were excluded since too few players from those drafts have reached the Majors so far (see what I mean about it taking years to show?). Using rWAR for a high-level measurement and Baseball-Reference’s draft data, I compared these first-rounders (including supplemental and Competitive Balance picks) with the average and median rWAR of the subsequent 10 picks, along with the delta between each pick and the rolling “Next 10” median. No one would accuse this of being the most airtight, scientific study, but it should give us an idea.

Highest Team Pick/Next 10 Delta (2010-16 Combined)

1. Astros, 71.2
2. Nationals, 57.0
3. Athletics, 53.2
4. Orioles & White Sox (tie), 38.5

Highest Player Pick/Next 10 Delta (Year-By-Year)

2010: Chris Sale, 45.1 (13th overall)
2011: Anthony Rendon, 24.3 (6th)
2012: Carlos Correa, 19.3 (1st)
2013: Kris Bryant, 23.0 (2nd)
2014: Matt Chapman, 20.7 (25th)
2015: Alex Bregman, 23.0 (2nd)
2016: Dakota Hudson, 3.3 (34th)

One thing this rough-hewn metric can help point out, apart from identifying which players were picked just in time, is how big a “steal” a given player was. Again, this doesn’t factor in things like signing bonuses and pre-draft motivations/intentions (or injury history, in Rendon’s case), which have a significant impact on teams’ draft strategy.

George Springer (22.5), Carlos Correa (19.3), and Alex Bregman (23.0) account for nearly 65 of the 71.2 rWAR delta in the Astros’ total. Sonny Gray and the late Jose Fernandez were the best picks of the 10 following Houston snagging him 11th overall in 2011, but zeroes from Jed Bradley (MIL), Chris Reed (LAD), a negative from Tyler Beede (TOR, though he did not sign in ’11), and barely anything from Taylor Jungmann (MIL again) show that Houston pretty clearly didn’t miss a no-brainer instead of Springer. Fernandez may have altered that equation. The picks following Correa at 1st overall in 2012 were all Major Leaguers except for Mark Appel (who did not sign in ’12 when PIT picked him 8th) but none has accrued even half of Correa’s rWAR to date. Bregman was followed by a lot of mush, save maybe for Andrew Benintendi and Ian Happ on a good day. The Phillies’ Cornelius Randolph pick contributed a fat zero here.

The short moral of this little parable is that it can be good to pick in the top 3 multiple times, but it can be kind of perilous too. Just ask Appel.

The Phillies Misses

So now that we’ve built out some idea about how this is all working, let’s get micro and try to tackle the big question: Have the Phillies’ first-round draftees in the 2010s resulted in more painful misses than other teams’, given the players drafted soon after?

The Phillies are 16th in the team equation, in the black at 14.35 on aggregate. But this is where things get tricky: Aaron Nola rates out at 19.1 rWAR above his Next 10 delta…and four of the remaining seven picks grade negative. Two of those four (Larry Greene, Jr. and Shane Watson) never made the Majors, while Mitch Gueller (who also never debuted) grades out as 0.0 thanks to a weak crop following his selection. It may be a little strange to think of guys who never even made it to the Majors as somehow “better” than those who’ve posted negative WARs so far, but if you think about it more literally as to what the stat is trying to show…it almost makes a warped kind of sense.

The Phillies’ picks each year go like this:

• 2010: Jesse Biddle, -1.2 (27th)
• 2011: Larry Greene, -4.3 (39th)
• 2012: Shane Watson, -2.2 (29th) and Mitch Gueller, 0.0 (54th)
• 2013: J.P. Crawford, 3.2 (16th)
• 2014: Aaron Nola, 19.1 (7th)
• 2015: Cornelius Randolph, 0.1 (10th)
• 2016: Mickey Moniak, -0.4 (1st)

So the answer to our question is…not necessarily. At least, not as far as this one perspective goes. Their worst miss is Greene, as expected; with Jackie Bradley, Jr. going immediately after selecting a now-infamous bust, there’s no getting around that. Randolph has turned out to be a poor selection as far as his development’s gone, but he wasn’t immediately followed by many picks who’ve enjoyed a ton more success, either.

What stands out as a bigger issue, and is a bit more difficult to quantify, is the organization’s lagging player development pipeline. Far too many players, first round or otherwise, have failed to successfully graduate from the Phillies pipeline that it’s often forced their hand into trades and free agency. The vicious cycle that then emerges when compensation pick players are signed — including recent examples like Carlos Santana, Jake Arrieta, and Bryce Harper — is second- or third-round picks being sacrificed to buttress the Major League team while tightening the valve on the prospect pipes. A different issue for a different day.

Again, this is hardly definitive or authoritative. It ends up being something of an entertaining look at the first and supplemental first rounds from most of the previous decade, with results that at the same time confirm and rebut the notion that the Phils have had worse success than their peers in the first round. With more promising draft classes like 2018’s (Adam Haseley, Spencer Howard, Connor Brogdon) beginning to make an impact, there’s hope that perception (and reality!) will take a turn for the better sooner than later.

Baseball’s “Brain Drain” Is Real; I Was Part Of It

CBS Sports’ R.J. Anderson, as he so often does, wrote a great feature today on the future of post-Covid MLB front offices. The whole thing is worth your time, but there are two pull quotes that lodged their hooks in me:

MLB might retain its supply of youngsters who don’t know any better, but those who have lived the life and have options elsewhere seem more likely than ever to walk away

…

“If you are coming from a disadvantaged background and you want to do this for a living, it’s really against you. Not only because of those connections in those networks, but let’s say I personally say we’d love to have you, come on down,” a former front office member said. “Oh, by the way, you’re getting paid minimum wage. Oh, by the way, you need to move to a major metropolitan area, and find some place to live. And oh, by the way, we also expect you to not only work a full day but also sometimes there are situations where you skirt some of the the laws and rules and say, ‘all right, you know, you’re supposed to work 40 hours, we need you to work 48 because you have to do something or work on a Saturday or what happened, because that’s the nature of the game…”

The piece focuses on those in front offices for teams — the ones handling financial and roster-related decisions, mainly — but there’s a broader application to the line of thinking at play here that extends to those affiliated with the game without necessarily being embedded within it. I know this because I’m one of the people who already left.

In early 2012, I got an email from a former colleague. We had both spent the 2010 season working for Baseball Info Solutions (now known as Sports Info Solutions), based out in a small Pennsylvania suburb nestled in the Lehigh Valley. We were “Video Scouts” for BIS, frequently working 11-, 12-, or 13-hour days at minimum wage ($7.25 an hour) to provide real-time scoring data for partner sites like FanGraphs and to chart pitching performances from the previous day’s games. Working that long was voluntary, but certainly helped your odds of continuing to work into the postseason once the slate of games dropped off. There were about 15-20 of us in that part-time-at-or-near-minimum-wage boat, along with three or four full-time employees who handled oversight of the operation. It was baseball and it was fun, so I hardly cared that I worked ridiculous schedules and long hours, hardened to barely seeing the girlfriend that was entrenched in her own career path an hour or so up the PA Turnpike in Scranton.

I shared a two-bedroom apartment in a small complex about 15 minutes away from the office with three other folks in the same boat; guys, early 20s, aspirational. The place was fine; cheap enough that, in a two-bed split four ways among minimum wage employees, we could all pay our rent each month but was still clean and maintained. The emailing former colleague wasn’t one of those three in the shared space, but the two of us both managed to snag spots on the coveted postseason work roster with BIS, where we’d score and chart playoff games but also have the chance to copy edit and review pages for the upcoming version of the Bill James Handbook. In all, we spent a little less than seven months at the job, which we knew was seasonal from the start.

After that 2010 season, I briefly worked for a Toronto Blue Jays affiliate in Michigan before coming back closer to home and working (again, part-time without benefits but for 40-plus hours per week) for MLB’s publications arm as a bit of supplemental help. In truth, while knowing about the game and already having writing clips from respectable publications like the Scranton Times made it justifiable, my even getting an interview was something of a personal favor from someone in my network. After that seasonal job ran out, we finally catch up to that 2012 email I kicked things off with.

The old colleague asked if I was interested in a position that was opening up within MLB Advanced Media in their New York City HQ in what was called the “Traffic” department. Of course I was, hell yeah! Fast forward a few weeks, and I landed the job.

For the next three years, I was a part-time employee while regularly logging more than 40 hours per week (hours past the 40th in a week were paid at time-and-a-half) at the beck and call of MLB’s schedule from March through October, having input into my own schedule but frequently needing to work at least one day each weekend and rarely having two consecutive days off. The newer members of the Traffic group (like I was) usually needed to work from 6 p.m. ET until every game had ended which, if you include departmental tasks like game archive verification, was often after 2 a.m. The first year or so on the job, when I lived across the river in Jersey City, the commute and extended time between trains overnight usually meant I was home in my apartment between 3:30 and 4. On one particularly memorable occasion, after a West Coast game went deep into extra innings, a delay in posting an archive meant I didn’t leave until about 6 a.m. There were also playoff days where 16 hours wasn’t unheard of. At the time, the erratic hours almost barely registered with my conscious self, even if they were certainly registering with my psyche.

In early 2015, I was offered a full-time position in Traffic that was being vacated by another member of our team. It was, I think, partially on merit and partially because I’d already managed to stick around three full part-time seasons, which was something of a rarity. The offer was salaried but a slight pay cut from what I took home as a part-timer, though it did come with much-needed benefits (I had turned 26 during my second of three part-time seasons, which cut me out of my parents’ medical benefit dependency) and a stake in the league’s pension plan. I was in a pinch. I took the job.

Little changed. My shifts were mostly 3-11 p.m. instead of 6 p.m.-2 a.m., but there was no path for further advancement and attempts to move laterally to other groups we worked with within MLBAM were often met with “well, you’d have to start at the bottom and work your way up.” With weird hours and work weeks, stagnant pay, rent that required more than an entire paycheck to cover, and no clear path up or forward professionally, I finally gave in. I left the industry in the summer of 2016 for a similar position in a different field, but one that paid nearly 20 percent more. The pension stake I mentioned? I cashed that out, tax penalty and all, to help pay for the thousands of dollars of credit card debt I’d carried for years in an attempt to live a semi-social life while also sending an entire paycheck toward rent, shelling out hundreds a month for self-bought healthcare, and paying off student debt. My situation is not one worthy of pity, but it had become a struggle to try and live “the dream.” And this was years ago already, an earlier part of the long-running burnout trail laid out in R.J.’s article.

I’m fortunate to have had some of the jobs that I did. They were, if you didn’t focus on the objective realities of how untenable the whole situation was, a ton of fun. They were not team front office jobs — though I tried a couple of times to join those ranks and failed — but they were baseball jobs just the same. And they required you to either not care about or be totally fine with spending years and years on lower rungs in the hope that maybe, if things both in and out of your control broke just right, you could slowly climb to something more prosperous. For a while, I convinced myself I was absolutely fine with it, even though I started my first season at 25, already badly delayed both by graduating into the financial crisis’s recession and by stubbornly wanting to work in a field I loved.

In the four-plus years I’ve been out of baseball (professionally, anyway), I’ve been able to advance further and faster than I could in more than six years within baseball. Less than four years after leaving, I’d already put myself on a faster career path in technology and had more than doubled my pay, something that just wasn’t going to happen for me if I stayed in baseball. Folks way, way smarter than I am are probably well-served by looking elsewhere for steadier, better-compensated work, even if it’s outside this appealing field, if they feel their well of opportunity is running dry. I’m personally at a point now where, if the field ever were to present an opportunity to come back, I’d have enough leverage to not need to return to those lower rungs. But for folks just starting out, they’re forced to start off on a steep, uphill climb and face down possibly staying that way if they never leave the industry and boomerang back.

Unless baseball changes its ways and stays appealing to a wider swath of folks as they gain more experience — not just the narrow field of candidates who manage to squeeze through and land senior positions, for teams or otherwise — what R.J. writes about in his piece will continue to happen. That’s not great for the game, and it’s not great for the dwindling population of people who fashion themselves as baseball “lifers” capable of spending an entire career within the industry.

Matt Klentak’s Five Best and Five Worst Moves as Phillies GM

Being a General Manager is hard. You’re ultimately responsible for everything from day-to-day roster moves, to the June and Rule 5 drafts, on up through trade and contract negotiations. And at the end of it all, you’re judged on how well all of that came together to form a winner.

For Matt Klentak, that judgment was rendered late last week in the form of “Not Good Enough,” and with two years remaining on his contract with the club, he was reassigned to a new role within the organization.

Klentak was hired on October 24, 2015, and in his nearly five years helming the team he made moves that ranged from Great to Fine to Oh-No-Why? Now that the book is closed, here are five good and five not-so-good moves that will help define this (relatively brief, though it probably didn’t feel that way) era in Phillies baseball history. For this, we’ll focus on trades, free agent signings, and contract extensions, but exclude the moves not made (i.e., not seriously upgrading the bullpen for 2020, or possibly not re-signing J.T. Realmuto). And as tempting as it is to include drafting Mickey Moniak, it’s not quite fair to include draftees as a group when a large number of them have barely been professionals for even two seasons. So we’ll exclude them entirely. Both of these lists have a number of honorable mentions, and I’m sure you’ll have your own.

The Five Best Moves

5. Signed RHP Zack Wheeler to 5-year, $118 million contract (December 2019)

We’re only one Covid-shortened year into this five-year agreement, but Wheeler looked great in 2020. He went about his business a bit differently last year than he typically had, getting fewer strikeouts but further trimming walks and allowing almost no home runs in an offensively-charged environment. Oh, and he averaged almost seven innings per start, which is real hard to find these days. Things could disintegrate, but right now, this looks real solid.

4. Traded cash to HOU for RHP Pat Neshek (November 2016)

Neshek’s run with the Phillies in 2017 stands as one of the best relief stints in team history: 40.1 IP with a Bob Gibson-esque 1.12 ERA and 45 strikeouts to 9 walks. That performance gave Klentak the ability to trade Neshek to Colorado later in the summer for three players: Pitchers J.D. Hammer and Alejandro Requena, and infielder Jose Gomez. None of them has turned into a star or even a mainstay, but the double benefit of acquiring a quality contributor for little and later swapping him for three modest prospect-types feels like a win for both process and outcome. It’s a shame there weren’t more moves that went that way.

3. Signed RHP Aaron Nola to 4-year, $45 million extension with 5th-year option (February 2019)

Even before he erupted for a monster 2018 season, it was pretty clear that Nola was going to be a feature in the Phils’ rotation for the foreseeable future. Now, we weren’t really aware back in early 2019 that the team would soon begin to lay the groundwork for crying relative poverty as a pre-excuse for why they likely won’t re-sign J.T. Realmuto. But it seemed like good baseball sense to lock up an upper-tier talent during a contention window, and Klentak did that. Nola has two more years guaranteed, plus a $16 million team option for 2023 that’s still less than what Jake Arrieta got on a yearly basis for his deal, so if Nola’s healthy that one should be a relatively easy decision.

2. Traded C Jorge Alfaro, RHP Sixto Sanchez, and LHP Will Stewart to MIA for C J.T. Realmuto (February 2019)

Look, every trade for a star can’t work out as well for the Phillies as, say, the Roy Halladay deal with Toronto prior to 2010. Same goes for the (first) Hunter Pence deal with Houston. Those both turned into pretty big wins for the Phils without a ton of sacrificed value, even as the prospects they traded away developed and eventually debuted.

The Phillies gave up a prized arm with a spotty injury history, an intriguing catcher with a spotty performance history, and a lottery ticket pitcher who hadn’t played above A-ball, and in return got two years of the best catcher in the game. That, confined unto itself, is a great move that any GM should make. If Sixto continues to develop and turns into a real good pitcher, well, so be it; we all kind of expected that might happen. The real sin wouldn’t be giving him up, but rather not prolonging J.T.’s stay with the Phillies. That’s adjacent to the trade, but not a direct result of it. Anyway.

Realmuto was as-advertised for two seasons. He was tremendous defensively and really really good offensively, all while playing catcher, that notoriously rigorous and draining position. He alone is not the reason the Phillies missed the playoffs the two seasons he was here, nor do those playoff misses mean this trade failed. It was the right move to make at the time, and it panned out. Check and check.

1. Signed OF Bryce Harper to 13-year, $330 million contract (March 2019)

Like Wheeler, we’re early on with this one. Wayyyy early on. But the Phillies landed a superstar in his early prime, and he’s done his damnedest to try and carry this team to the playoffs. He’s had a couple of slumps, like normal human baseball players, But over his first 900-plus PA with the Phillies, his .903 OPS is fourth-highest in modern club history (11th-highest if you include deadball legends like Ed Delahanty and Chuck Klein). He delivered arguably the signature moment of the last nine years of Phillies baseball with a walk-off grand slam against the Cubs in ’19. He’s a marketer’s dream, with on-field magnetism and a seemingly endless parade of new merch to feature (not to mention, the second- and third-highest selling jersey in the last two years, respectively).

His performance when he’s in his late 30s probably won’t quite match this run. But these are the years you pay for, and anything league average or above at the tail end is a bonus. Guys with his talent at his age simply don’t hit the free agent market every year, and landing him — even if you factor in a handicap for John Middleton’s supposed personal involvement — is a prize.

The Five Worst Moves

5. Declined team option on RHP Charlie Morton (November 2016)

Ah, so close. The Phillies traded minor league RHP David Whitehead for Morton prior to the 2016 season, knowing they’d need a body or two to eat innings. What they may or may not have realized is that Morton had begun to unlock something in his stuff that would transform him from a middling mid-rotation sack to something approaching an ace…he just didn’t get the chance to really show it in 2016. During his fourth start, Morton tore his left hamstring trying to make a play in the field and was lost for the rest of the season.

His first start of the ’16 season was a mess, but in the next two he allowed just 1 run in 12.2 innings, getting double-digit swings-and-misses in each. Considering he’d only had four starts like that out of 23 in the previous year, that was at least a little curious.

The $9.5 million club option for 2017 was declined, and Morton received a $1 million buyout after the season. Over the following four seasons, he posted a 3.34 ERA in 546.1 innings, made two All-Star teams, finished third in AL Cy Young Award voting in 2019, and won a World Series. The same Phillies that felt Jeremy Hellickson was worth the $17.2 million qualifying offer risk that same offseason did not feel Morton was worth a flier at half the price tag, and it bit them.

4. Signed OF Odubel Herrera to 5-year, $30,5 million extension with two club options (December 2016)

At the time, this one looked like it made sense. Herrera had gone from Rule 5 pick to cult hero, simultaneously delighting with occasionally brilliant defense and majestic bat flips, and irritating with not-infrequent mental lapses and a few too many truly garbage ABs.

Still, through his first two seasons, his line was .291/.353/.419 and he had an All-Star appearance to his name. It was a decent bit of process. The results, though, have been basically terrible. Herrera immediately began to regress offensively, faced questions about his fitness, and ultimately was arrested for domestic assault. He was DFAed prior to the 2020 season and seems unlikely to play for the Phillies again, but he’s owed another $13.5 million through 2021 salary and 2022-23 option buyouts. Flop.

3. Traded RHP Nick Pivetta and RHP Connor Seabold to BOS for RHP Brandon Workman and RHP Heath Hembree (August 2020)

I dunno, do I need to say a lot about this one? The compounded failure of developing Pivetta from a Stuff Guy to someone who actually puts up stats overlaid with the inclusion of a pretty legit relief prospect in Seabold only to import two of the absolute worst relief stints in history…it’s very recent, but the cut is very deep. It helped sabotage any remaining chance the Phillies had of recovering their ’20 season from the maw of previous relief collapses by other relievers and instead just lit the whole thing on fire with a flamethrower.

2. Signed Scott Kingery to 6-year, $24 million pre-arbitration contract with three club options (March 2018)

Kingery gets something of a pass for 2020. After all, he had to fight off Covid, and it’s unclear just how much of a toll that took on his preparation and actual play this past season. And how much he’ll remain impacted is impossible to predict right now, much less was it something any GM could have foreseen two-and-a-half years ago.

But even when healthy, Kingery has been underwhelming. Some of that’s on the organization for failing to stick him in one spot defensively, but the reality is that the guy who wrecked house in Spring Training 2018 is not the guy currently on the Phillies, and no one’s sure if we’ll see him again.

The biggest fault in all this lies with evaluation. Kingery posted one very good half-season at Double-A (after he had already spent time at the level in 2016 and posted a .606 OPS in 166 PA) and a mediocre latter half at Triple-A in 2017. He then proceeded to rip up a bunch of Double-A caliber pitching in Spring ’18 and Klentak apparently felt as though that made him a prime candidate for an extension before he’d played any sizable amount of time above Double-A.

For a “big-market” team like the Phillies keep wanting to be, the raw dollar amounts aren’t too hard to swallow. But as Kingery enters his age-27 season with a .677 career OPS (.698 pre-2020) and three more guaranteed years left to be paid, all we really have right now is another act of premature evaluation on the team’s part. Which brings us to…

1. Signed 1B Carlos Santana to 3-year, $60 million contract (December 2017)

Carlos Santana is not a bad player. This move is not his fault, although he did have one of his worst offensive seasons while with the Phillies. No, it’s the subtext of this move that continues to reek and play with our minds.

Rhys Hoskins had just finished emerging like a Locust from Gears of War, smashing 18 homers in his first 212 PA and reeling a whole bunch of fans back on board the hype train for things to come (myself included). Now, Hoskins had played a decent amount of left field that season to accommodate Tommy Joseph, who the Phils were still trotting out and had nowhere else to play. Hoskins was very “whatever” in that third-of-a-season 2017 sample in LF, but the Phillies apparently thought he could handle the job full-time. So, with the assumption they could add at first base, they dove in and plucked Santana from the free agent pool.

Carlos had hit .259/.365/.477 over the two prior seasons, played good defense, and was a switch-hitter. On his own and in a vacuum, he was a really good addition to almost any team that winter. But because the Phils failed in their evaluation of Hoskins as a full-time LF, a series of crappy dominoes began to fall. Santana struggled to get hits, though he walked more than he struck out; Hoskins swung the bat well again, but rated abysmally in left field according to many defensive metrics; and the clubhouse apparently deteriorated to the point where Santana reportedly smashed a clubhouse TV with a bat toward the end of that season out of frustration with other players playing Fortnite.

The failure of this move from a roster construction and clubhouse chemistry standpoint forced Klentak’s hand into dealing Santana one year after signing him, and included young-and-once-promising shortstop J.P. Crawford in the deal. In return, the Mariners sent the Phillies Jean Segura, Juan Nicasio, and James Pazos. Segura was owed less per year but for one season longer than Santana’s remaining deal, thus allowing the Phillies to…I don’t know, keep their luxury tax figure down marginally?

Anyway. Segura’s been fine, but can’t really play shortstop (the position he was acquired to play since the Phils, y’know, traded away their most advanced SS in the return package) all that well anymore and has two more guaranteed years. Nicasio was kinda crappy in his second stint with the team, and Pazos was nothing but a mustache. Now, Segura’s shakiness at SS impacts the futures of Kingery (whose best position is 2B), Adam Haseley (who plays a good CF but routinely gets squeezed out for Kingery), and Alec Bohm (who will try to stick at 3B but may soon be forced to move across to 1B, where Hoskins already is).

This is a roster mess created by an evaluative mistake. It happened almost three years ago, and it still may take another two before the Phillies are out from under its shadow.

A 2011 Phillies Roadmap

Ever wonder how we got from the 2011 Phillies — one of the best teams in franchise history — to where we are now? How closely linked are the 2020 and 2011 teams, just based on the Kevin Bacon/Six Degrees method?

I was at least curious, so I took a few minutes to map the journey of every 2011 Phils player from 2012 to today, linking them to players they may have been traded for to see just how long some of their threads go. The end results are, like you probably guessed, pretty disappointing!

Now, this is a super-high-level map. Terms like “Released” and “Left as Free Agent” become somewhat interchangeable for guys who were outrighted after the season. There is no background info to include, no motivation to explain some of these moves or salary info to show the cost in real dollars of some of these players. Those things are their own stories.

You’ll also see basic stats for the years (2012+) some of these guys actually contributed to the Phillies, then the transaction that ultimately ended their time with the team.

You can take a look at the map below (676 kb). You can click to enlarge, but may need to open it in a new tab to fully zoom in.

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It’s interesting that J.T. Realmuto ended up being the last active link to any player from the 2011 team through transactions. Obviously, this doesn’t include free agent pickups made from 2012 or, nor the players they might have been traded for.

By and large, these links fizzle out real quick and without great results. Some (Realmuto, Howie Kendrick) were actually great, others (Jerad Eickhoff, Zach Eflin) have had mixed results or have incomplete bodies of work, and most of the rest either flamed out or never made the Majors at all.