A Critical Look at the Phillies Organization and Minor League Baseball
With his rehab appearance on Sunday, Taijuan Walker is coming back to the majors. The Phillies appear to have been able to negotiate that Walker make another appearance to work up to 100 pitches. It wasn’t pretty or inspiring, but he did accomplish that task. Meanwhile, his replacement, Spencer Turnbull carried a no-hitter into the … Read more
Ranger Suárez has been a mainstay of the Phillies rotation since the middle of the 2021 season. He has pitched like a solid mid rotation starter during the regular season, and an ace in the postseason. For the first time in his career, he showed up ready to go in Spring Training, and he was … Read more
There will always be truths to baseball. One of those will be that players should not swing at bad pitches and should swing at good pitches. There is more nuance to that and I encourage you to read Rob Orr’s piece on that and the metric SEAGER that he created to measure it. It is … Read more
We are currently 6 games into Spring Training, a time when we are still seeing minor league players get into games and the novelty of the return of major league baseball has not worn off. There are very few actual takeaways one can make from 6 games, and especially 6 games where a starting pitcher … Read more
Whit Merrifield used to be a really solid baseball player. He came to the major late as a 9th round pick out of college who spent a bunch of time in the minors. At his peak he was a second baseman who had above average offense due to great contact rates, and great speed (which … Read more
The Major League Baseball offseason has been insanely slow. The Phillies entered the offseason with one big goal and then some modest ones. They needed to bring back Aaron Nola or replace him. They opted to strike early and bring back Nola. They targeted Yoshinobu Yamamoto as a rare young pitcher who could be part … Read more
This week both Fangraphs and Baseball Prospectus put out there season standings predictions, and both came out fairly similarly on the Phillies predicting 85 and 84 wins respectively. It is dangerously close to the Mets and a large distance behind the Braves. For a team that won 90 games, changed pretty much nothing, and has … Read more
The Phillies have made two major league signings this offseason. The first was bringing back Aaron Nola, the second was signing Kolby Allard to go to AAA as starting pitching depth. This plan and lack of action has caused Phillies fans to do something between go insane with boredom and totally forget who is still … Read more
To the frustration of many Phillies fans, the Phillies offseason has consisted mostly of resigning Aaron Nola and making some minor league moves. Fans see players like Ohtani and Soto change organizations without the Phillies involved, and not only a lack of rumors around top free agents, but outright denials from the team, and wonder … Read more
Yesterday was the deadline for teams to add players to the 40 man roster to protect them from the Rule 5 draft (and to the AAA roster for the minor league portion, but we don’t actually get that roster). The deadline helps spur movement as teams make decisions about the volatility of their 40 man … Read more