The Phillies just keep adding pitching depth, this time using money to get another back end starting pitcher. Charlie Morton is paid for what he is, a #4/#5 starter who gets ground balls and has a bit of upside. The Phillies have tons of money, and one year deals are attractive to them as they try to keep flexibility (Morton has a 2017 team option too). All it costs them is David Whitehead.
Whitehead is an org #5 starter, he throws a heavy sinker in the 89-92 range, can touch 93 and generate a ton of groundballs. He was a 34th round pick who fell in the draft because he needed Tommy John (would have been a top 10 round pick otherwise). His secondary pitches are just ok, and his ceiling is something like bad Charlie Morton since he doesn’t miss bats. The other part of this is Whitehead is kind of unneeded in a Phillies system that has the starting pitching depth that he was likely to be edged out of the AA rotation. He would not have made my Top 50 prospects.
This all likely sets the Phillies rotation as Nola/Eickhoff/Hellickson/Morton/Oberholtzer and sends Vincent Velasquez to Lehigh Valley to get some more work as a starter before joining the rotation.
This was another sensible deal from my vantage point.
Just saw that the Phillies got Mark Appel as the last player named in the Giles deal.
Can’t imagine anybody is going to say this wasn’t a great trade for both sides!